Tasmania's Tarraleah Hydropower Upgrade Reaches Major Milestone

Hydro Tasmania has achieved a significant milestone in its Tarraleah hydropower upgrade, successfully completing excavation for the project’s intake tower. This marks a crucial step in the redevelopment of one of Tasmania’s oldest hydropower schemes.

Over the past 27 months, Tasmanian company Hazell Bros Group led the excavation efforts, removing approximately 240,000 cubic meters of rock and soil. This deep excavation will house a new concrete intake tower, designed to enhance the efficiency and longevity of the hydropower facility.

An innovative plastic concrete cut-off trench, developed by Entura, was incorporated to prevent seepage from Lake King William. This trench also provides greater flexibility for future construction phases, ensuring smooth progress in upcoming works.

Hydro Tasmania’s Interim Executive General Manager of Construction, Tammy Chu, highlighted the impressive scale of the work completed so far.

“This has been a remarkable effort, requiring the use of 3,700 rock bolts—some as long as six meters—to stabilize the excavation. Despite challenging geology and the typical harsh Tasmanian winters, we’ve successfully navigated these obstacles,” she said.

The project has also provided a boost to local employment, with a peak workforce of 30 people actively involved in delivering this stage of construction.

With excavation complete, the next major step is constructing the 30-meter-high concrete intake tower. This structure, designed by Entura, will house intake screens, a large steel gate, and an associated hydraulic hoist. A tender for this phase has already been released, marking another key milestone for the project.

Alongside the intake tower, work on a 950-meter tunnel connecting the intake to a future conveyance system is well underway. Hazell Bros Group is collaborating with tunneling experts from Tunnelling Solutions, executing around 260 controlled blasts to remove 100,000 tons of material along the tunnel’s length.

The Tarraleah hydropower scheme has been supplying clean energy to Tasmania since the 1930s. With demand for renewable energy growing, Hydro Tasmania is committed to a major redevelopment to ensure the facility continues to support the state’s energy needs for generations to come.

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