Spring racing fever is in the air, and nowhere is the excitement more electrifying than at the starting gates of the 2025 EPIC Cup, featuring the most outrageously expensive and incompetently costed nation-building electricity mega-projects. Ted Woodley reports from the track.
The prestigious EPIC Cup (Electricity Projects Incompetently Costed) is the energy industry’s rival for the Melbourne Cup and Sydney’s Everest. It was inaugurated in 2017, the year of Snowy 2.0’s foaling, to celebrate electricity projects with spectacularly underestimated construction costs.
Whilst the ‘sport of kings’ is notorious for separating mug punters from their cash, EPIC is the ‘sport of governments’, squandering the hard-earned savings of taxpayers and consumers on hopelessly costed electricity projects.
Snowy 2.0, the undefeated eight-time national champion and perennial crowd favourite, is at short odds for the 2025 EPIC. Though this year the field is becoming more competitive, so he might have to break a sweat to win by his usual country mile.
Yearling sale steal
Looking back, what a bargain Snowy 2.0 was at the 2017 yearling sales when snapped up by the legendary colt-picking nation-builder Malcolm Turnbull for just $2B, with a ludicrously optimistic expectation for full stallion-hood by 2021. MT was right on the money when he gushingly predicted Snowy 2.0 would be an ‘electricity game-changer’ – what foresight.
Six years later, his new Labor owners were thrilled to discover that his stud value had blown out to $12B. And last month Snowy Hydro bragged of another reset (his sixth), which pundits are predicting could exceed a mindboggling $30B after including his financing costs, extra gear and transmission connections. But we will have to cool our heels for nine months while his Italian trainer, WeBuild Lento Molto, undertakes a meticulous nose-to-tail reassessment.
Florence continues to provide staunch support, hobbling around for nearly four years, first in soft turf, then in hard rock. ‘Go-slo’ Flo’s newborn filly, Monica, is being trailered to the other end of the seventeen-kilometre headrace track to mosey on back to Mum. Hopefully, Monica has inherited her mother’s laidback pace so that their underground reunion is not for many years, further delaying Snowy 2.0 and enhancing his value.
Thankfully, there is Buckley’s chance of Snowy 2.0 ever being sold or scratched, given the Government’s lifetime sponsorship deal and taxpayers’ deep pockets. With at least another five years to go before he is fully grown, who knows what further records he will set.
Even though this year’s EPIC remains a one-horse race, let’s turn our binoculars to a few of the also-rans warming up at the starting gates.
Flo at the starting gate (March 2022), before her nine-month, 150 metre saunter, followed by a year’s spell under a sinkhole she burrowed in her spare time. Image supplied by punters.
Snowy 2.0’s twin mare connections
Pleasingly, HumeLink and VNI-West, Snowy 2.0’s transmission connections to Sydney and Melbourne, respectively, are starting to hit their straps.
HumeLink was picked up at the 2020 yearling sales as SnowyLink North for just $1B – clearly another bargain, this time for TransGrid (on a tip from AEMO). She matured to $5B in 2024, despite shedding three hundred megawatts to prance in sync with her Dad. HumeLink is overdue for another revaluation, and let’s hope this time that her $2B northern extension to Sydney, Sydney Ring South, gets included.
Equally impressive twin sister VNI-West was also picked up at the 2020 sales as SnowyLink South for $2B, quadrupling to $7.5B a few months ago, with an upper estimate of $11B. She continues to face hoarse opposition from local spoilsports objecting to her gallivanting across vast tracts of Victoria. Lily D’Ambrosio’s legislation to compulsorily access private paddocks has so far failed to quell the opposition.
VNI-West isn’t expected to complete her preparation till sometime next decade, so there’s plenty of time to scale greater heights.
Snowy Hydro’s pongy runt
The Kurri Kurri Gas/Diesel Power Station, dubbed KK, has been doing his best to keep up with his dad and sisters, but lacks the physique.
Initially purchased by Scott Morrison for $0.6B , KK has grown to over $2B after allowing for his financing and hugely expensive piping, due to there being no gas within cooee of his stable. But this is chickenfeed in today’s energy market.
KK has almost completed his training and, to his credit, has taken three times longer than expected. Also, he has tried his hardest in his qualification trials, being sin-binned for a few weeks after he belched plumes of putrid diesel smoke, which drifted as far as Newcastle. There are rumours that the pernickety EPA Stewards may even slap him with a fine, though it is unlikely to increase his value by much.
Sadly, KK seems doomed to have few track outings, pinning his hopes on Anthony Albanese’s hydrogen feed arriving one day from cloud cuckoo land to turbocharge his cost and give him clean energy credentials for a zero-emissions future.
KK signals his first track run, riling the locals. Image courtesy NBN News
Sunshine State’s big hope
When conceived in 2020 as a private venture, CopperString was a scrawny $1.8B, 840-kilometre-long transmission proposal between Townsville and Mount Isa.
But in 2023, the wily Annastacia Palaszczuk purchased her, upping her voltage and extending her gait (to 1100 kilometres) and tripling her value to $5B. With the Queensland Government already kicking in over $2B, the hot tip was that CopperString could reach $14B and give Snowy 2.0 a real run for his money. But those hopes have been dashed by her new LNP owners trimming her voltage and gait, cutting at least $2B from her value.
What a tragedy, though CopperString remains the Maroon’s best hope for a placing in this year’s Cup.
Pioneer-Burdekin Pumped Hydro scratched
Sunshine State punters were devastated when killjoy David Crisafulli scratched the centrepiece of Steven Miles’ 2024 election platform. The 5000MW Pioneer-Burdekin proposal, which would have been the world’s biggest pumped hydro storage, was scratched when the initial guesstimate of $12B more than doubled, with scuttlebutt of tripling to $37B.
It is devastating that a project two and a half times the size of Snowy 2.0 has been scratched – we can only dream of what might have been.
But Queenslanders can at least barrack for their more modest 2000MW Borumba pumped hydro project. Its initial $14B estimate has already blown out by $4B, and is one to keep an eye on, especially as it is not expected to be completed till 2035 and is destined to follow Snowy 2.0’s playbook.
Weight halved, but unlikely to be in the winnings
Marinus Link, connecting Victoria and Tasmania, has been showing promise on wet tracks. Initially valued at $3B, she shed half her weight and, remarkably, maintained the same value. She then impressed punters by bulking up her half-sized torso to $5B, which should rightly include another $1B for related grid infrastructure in Northwest Tasmania. Well short of Snowy 2.0 levels but commendable nonetheless.
She is the only EPIC entry with three government owners. The cunning Tasmanian Government managed to negotiate a minor share (18%) with an option to sell to the Feds at completion – what poker skills to be able to exit ownership, leaving Aussie taxpayers and Victorian and Tasmanian consumers with the tab.
The worth of a cunning owner
EnergyConnect, the 900 kilometre connection between South Australia and NSW, shows the difference between a crafty owner and a novice.
The 2016 valuation of EnergyConnect of $0.3 – 0.7B rose to a more respectable $1.5B in 2020 and was duly approved by the Stewards (the Australian Energy Regulator). Unsurprisingly, a year later the value edged up to 2.3B, split $1.8B for Transgrid’s 700 kilometre NSW section and $0.5B for ElectraNet’s 200 kilometre South Australian section. Again, duly re-approved by the Stewards.
True to form, in 2025 the crafty TransGrid doubled the value of its NSW section to $3.6B. TransGrid didn’t bother seeking the Steward’s approval, expecting this to be a mere formality, with NSW consumers to again pick up the overruns tab.
Contrast this cunning outcome with the naive ElectraNet, who confounded the Stewards and the racing fraternity when its South Australian section was completed on time, two years ago, and on budget –unheard of and inexcusable these days!
This year’s winner!
There are many others at the starting gates and in the embryo banks, but for this year, at least, you can put your glasses down.
Australia’s ‘Electric Phar Lap’ is at unbackable odds for an EPIC nine-peat in 2025.
Snowy 2.0 will undoubtedly be first past the post, further elevating his worldwide notoriety. Rumours are rife of a livery change for the tenth EPIC to Snowy 30B, to parade the unbelievable value of his snowballing virulency.
Second place will be tight, likely a three-way contest between HumeLink, VNI-West and CopperString, with only a nose separating them.
And trackside is abuzz with rumours of future foals, Snowy 3.0 and HumeLink 2.0, hopefully extending the dynasty for decades to come. What EPICs are ahead, with potentially six Snowy stablemates running together? Who knows what humungous amount their combined value might be?
How electrifying for the mug punters, us taxpayers and electricity consumers, and our government sponsors. “You win some none – you lose more”.
Postscript: Again, this year’s ACE Cup (Accurate Cost Estimating) was cancelled due to no eligible entries. The only potential entrant, ElectraNet’s section of EnergyConnect, was barred by the Stewards due to TransGrid’s NSW section being so over budget and time.
With no likely contenders, the Stewards have locked the ACE Cup in the trophy cabinet for what is looking like a lengthy spell.
Snowy 2.0 legal cost avalanche – more public money spent hushing more public information
Ted Woodley is a former managing director of PowerNet, Gas Net, EnergyAustralia and China Light & Power Systems (Hong Kong).