Bob LeFridge 
The Lake Onslow pumped storage project which the Luxon government killed in 2023 may be back on the cards. A consortium led by former Meridian CEO Dr. Keith Turner has had the project accepted for the fast-track process.
Remember the scary costs which were bandied about before National canned the project? Turner says the MBIE estimated costs ballooned because they included items such as life-time operation costs and life-time financing costs.
"The costings have been pretty widely represented in the public arena as sort of $15b-$17b, but those numbers are not correct. If you go to the MBIE project files, the capital cost of the project is somewhere between $8.5b and $10b, depending on how big a bottom pond you have. Those $15b to $17b numbers were not the capital cost at all."
BigD