The $4.8 billion HumeLink project is a State Government drive that will build 365 kilometres of new transmission lines in southern New South Wales, connecting Wagga Wagga, Bannaby and Maragle. The Yass Valley is one of the areas the HumeLink project will run through. Project Director Jeremy Roberts spoke to Jo Shipley on her Wellness Valley program in which he answered a number of questions and gave a number of insights into the project.
He said, “The HumeLink project is essential for Australia’s energy system. As we retire coal-fired generators around New South Wales, we need to build new transmission lines to the new generation locations. HumeLink will allow power to flow from the renewable generators that are being built in the region and west of Wagga Wagga to provide a super-highway to move this critical power around New South Wales, which will also provide the essential link to the Snowy 2.0 hydro scheme and again allow power to flow across New South Wales to where it’s needed.
“Locally here in Yass Valley, we are building a worker accommodation facility, which will support the project. It will house up to around 300 workers when it’s fully in construction there. We’ve begun construction on that site, earth moving is underway. The next phase will start to see the delivery of accommodation modules and cabins to the site.
“That’s planned from mid next month. The benefits the community will have will be that there’ll be a lot of additional people in the local community to support businesses and shops, but without impacting the local housing and accommodation, which we’ve had strong feedback on through the engagement phase of the project.
“We’re also building a lay-down compound for the project. You may have already seen there in town some drums of conductor being delivered to site and that’ll be stored there until it’s needed on the project.
“The cables, so they all get stored there until the towers are built and then they will be strung along just like the other high voltage transmission towers you see in the area.
“We’ll be using multiple methodologies, so at some places, yes, we’ll use helicopters to string them through. We’re also trying to use drone technology in some areas, there’s some innovation there to use a draw wire to pull it through with drones. In other areas, we will drive on the ground to be able to do it, and there are pulleys that are put up on each of the towers and then it’s drawn through so similar to stringing a fence wire. It’s just a lot higher up in the air. And then there are what we call break and winch sites every few kilometres where the drum will be pulled out from.
“We’ve got local contractors in the area right now building the earthworks and civil works at the moment, which is great.
“Similar to a lot of our other projects, we have to find the most efficient and prudent way to build these transmission lines because all of the costs that come through have to be determined by the Australian Energy Regulator and the costs are borne by the energy consumers, so our power bills pay for these transmission lines and we must find through the regulated process, the most efficient way to build them and that was found through the inquiries and our previous investigations, that the most economical way is to build them overhead with the transmission lines that we currently build in Australia as opposed to underground which is shown to cost significantly more than building it overhead. That’s really where the main consideration comes down to, in the end, the cost to build it.
“We heard very strongly through the inquiries of New South Wales Government was the visual impact, the value of prices and the part of the compensation process that we go through with landowners to ensure that they are compensated, reasonably for any loss of value, any impacts to the way they use their property, so that was absolutely looked after through that process, or compensated, and I do know absolutely that there was a lot of the land owners that do not want this on their land and I empathise and understand it is very difficult for a lot of landowners, so the financial compensation does not cover all the compensation that a lot of them feel they need, but that was definitely taken into consideration the visual impacts through the environmental assessment that we were approved through the New South Wales and Commonwealth governments, but in the end the Energy Regulator and the enquiries found that the most prudent way and we’re talking multiples, so in some studies, it’s three to seven times more expensive, so HumeLink is a $5 billion project, so that would become very uneconomical to pass on to the energy consumers across New South Wales to be paying considerably more in electricity bills when everyone’s feeling the pressure of the electricity prices and the bills going up at the moment.
“Our delivery partners, which are around the Yass area are called HumeLink East, so that’s a delivery partner delivering that portion of the project. They’re out at the moment with expressions of interest for any local businesses to get involved in the project and we are very keen to get local individual workers to come and work on the project or businesses to come and work with us and that can be office style work or out in the field as well. There are many opportunities. To get involved the best way is to get onto the TransGrid website and navigate to the HumeLink page, where you can register interest in employment opportunities or as a business that will contract into the project.
“We’ve had more than $12 million signed up and that’s across more than 25 local suppliers across the east corridor to date and with plenty more opportunities ahead of us for local employment with a lot of training provided as well as contractors as well, that are looking to get involved.
“We are looking for some single traders or sole traders to small mum and dads size businesses to larger businesses as well. It can be sometimes complicated or daunting or a lot of extra paper-work, but we’re more than happy to help out there. We have a facility in Yass at our TransGrid depot and are willing to come out and support where we can as well.
“I think the first stage is just getting in touch and registering interest. There are also other contact details there besides the email address with phone numbers as well so we can do that, then at least we know who you are as a starting point and we can help through that process definitely to work through any of the pa-perwork complications.
“We’ve just launched our community grants program and that’s open until the 27th of July so mark that in the calendars, that’s when that closes. There are a few weeks to get involved and get an application in.
“The first stage for this is to put in an expression of interest and that again is on the Transgrid.com.au website and navigate to HumeLink. There’s over $2 million of funding available across the eastern Corridor, which covers the Yass Valley area, and these are quite sizeable grants as well, so they could be up in the orders of $50,000 each for grant opportunities, and we’re looking for local groups, organisations, or individuals for their simple passion about the community that want to provide or be receiving of grants that will provide a long-lasting investment in the community.
“There’s quite a large range of areas that we would consider, so whether that’s to improve isolation, caring for country, boosting tourism, creating new training and job pathways, as long as it delivers real long-term benefits, then we’re looking to find eligible participants.
“We are heavily scrutinised on our expenditures so we petitioned hard and had to go through a lot of scrutiny to get the funding that we did for the community. We’ve got $15 million approved for expenditure and that’s such as these grants to get community investment, we’re also looking to improve telecommunications along the route. A lot of feedback across the community was about the black spots or lack of connectivity in areas, so we’re looking to utilise that funding there as well and begin to provide long-lasting benefits in the region that is impacted.
“We are very supportive and advocate where we can to increase the community benefits. The strategic landowner payments were an initiative that TransGrid heavily supported and pushed for it to happen, and that’s under the New South Wales Government to increase the payments for the affected landowners that have the transmission lines on their properties. I know that that is what the combined councils are looking to have something similar for council areas and we would be supportive of that arrangement to support the councils in that process to seek additional funding from the New South Wales government for strategic benefits. But again, we are bound by the energy regulator for our funding amounts but are supportive and understand the impacts that the local areas are going through.”
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