What changed on the page
We reported on 28 July that the station was burning diesel overnight as part of final commissioning. At that point the company’s community updates page had last moved on 21 July, and it described the diesel phase as starting on or after Thursday 16 July, running overnight, one generator at a time, for about four weeks. Four weeks from 16 July ends around 13 August.
The same page now carries a last-updated date of 14 August 2026 and opens differently. It says commissioning on the primary gas fuel is finished:
After completing commissioning of Kurri Kurri Power Station on its primary gas fuel, the final phase of testing on the station’s backup diesel fuel has now begun.
Snowy Hydro, Kurri Kurri Power Station community updates page, last updated 14 August 2026, read 18 August 2026
And then, in a paragraph under the same heading, the sentence that is new:
During recent testing, we experienced some issues which prevented the station from fully starting up on its diesel backup fuel.
Snowy Hydro, Kurri Kurri Power Station community updates page, last updated 14 August 2026, read 18 August 2026
The page does not say what the issues were, how long they lasted, or whether they are
resolved. Neither do we. The older FAQ line we quoted in July is still
there, unchanged: The impacts of our recent testing is currently under investigation and
we will communicate as required in due course.
The schedule, which is the part with dates in it
Under a heading of Key dates, the page publishes a two-month testing calendar. Read on 18 August 2026, it shows this.
- 1 to 30 August: every day marked No planned testing.
- 31 August: Testing scheduled for GT1.
- 1 to 9 September: Testing scheduled for GT1, every day.
- 10 to 30 September: every day marked No planned testing.
The calendar carries a legend with two markers, blue for planned diesel testing and green
for planned gas testing. Every marked day in both months is blue. The page’s
own FAQ refers to testing both of our generators
, so GT1 is one of two, which is
consistent with the one-generator-at-a-time approach the company described in July.
So the published position is that the diesel phase which began on or after 16 July is not running now, and the next planned diesel testing is a ten-day block starting 31 August, on one machine. The page does not describe this as a pause, a delay or a restart, and we are not putting any of those words in its mouth. It simply carries a calendar, and the calendar is empty for August.
The page does attach a general caveat to the schedule, worth reading alongside it:
Commissioning involves testing various parts of the unit to ensure it works efficiently. This process can identify aspects that require minor adjustments which can affect the final completion date of testing.
Snowy Hydro, Kurri Kurri Power Station community updates page, last updated 14 August 2026, read 18 August 2026
A note on how the schedule is published
The calendar is an image. It is a PNG uploaded to the site, 1,244 by
1,645 pixels, and the dates exist only as pixels inside it. There is no table, no list and no
text alternative: the image is served with an empty alt attribute, which tells
assistive technology to skip it entirely.
Our view, offered as a view. This is the one page Snowy Hydro points neighbours to for knowing which nights to expect noise, plume and odour, and the operative detail on it cannot be read by a screen reader, cannot be searched, and cannot be picked up by anything that reads the page automatically. A resident who is blind gets the paragraphs and not the dates. That is a straightforward fix, a table or a list beside the picture, and it costs nothing to make. We raise it because the page is otherwise unusually communicative: a 24-hour hotline, a named email address, and an admission about testing problems that the company did not have to publish at all.
It also has a practical consequence for reporting. We nearly recorded that the schedule carried no dates, because the section reads as empty to a plain fetch. The dates are there; they are in a picture, and we downloaded and read it.
What has not changed
The station’s published parameters are the same ones we set out in July. Kurri Kurri is an open-cycle gas turbine plant providing 660 megawatts to the grid, run on gas with diesel as backup, and its approval permits it to operate up to 12.5 per cent of the year, or 1,100 hours. The company says it expects to run for less than that. Those numbers are what make it a peaker rather than a baseload station, and nothing on the updated page moves them.
How we did this. Everything above comes from Snowy Hydro’s Kurri Kurri community updates page, read on 18 August 2026, which carries its own last-updated date of 14 August 2026. The schedule was read by downloading the calendar image the page embeds and reading it directly, because its content is not present in the page text. The July comparison comes from our own report of 28 July, which recorded that page as last updated 21 July.
What we have not established. We do not know what the testing issues were, whether they are resolved, or why August carries no planned testing, and the page does not say. We have not contacted Snowy Hydro, the EPA or the community hotline. We would publish a response, and if the page changes again we will report that.
On the words we have avoided. The company does not call this a delay, a fault or a setback, and neither do we. What is reportable is that the schedule published in July and the schedule published now are different, and that the company has recorded an issue with starting on diesel.
Note added 28 August 2026: the source link no longer shows what we quoted, and that is worth explaining rather than leaving you to find it. Snowy Hydro publishes its Hunter Power Project community updates at a single address that carries only the current update. We read and quoted the version published there on 18 August 2026. Re-checked today, that address carries one item dated 28 August 2026 and the wording quoted below is no longer on it. We have also checked the Internet Archive, which holds no capture of the page between June and today, so the version we read is not retrievable from any public URL.
Nothing in this story has changed and no quotation has been altered. We are recording the limitation because a reader clicking through today will not find these words, and a citation you cannot follow deserves an explanation rather than silence. The current update at that address is newer than this story and may well supersede it; we will read it and report separately if it does.
Sources
- Snowy Hydro, Kurri Kurri Power Station community updates (last updated 14 August 2026, read 18 August 2026): that gas-fuel commissioning is complete and the diesel phase has begun; the statement that issues during recent testing prevented the station fully starting up on diesel; the unchanged FAQ line about impacts being under investigation; the commissioning caveat quoted above; the 660 megawatt figure; and the approval to operate up to 12.5 per cent of the year or 1,100 hours.
- Snowy Hydro, testing calendar image embedded on that page (
wp-content/uploads/2026/08/image.png, 1,244 x 1,645 pixels, downloaded and read 18 August 2026): every day of August marked no planned testing, testing scheduled for GT1 on 31 August and on 1 to 9 September, no planned testing from 10 September, and the legend distinguishing planned diesel testing from planned gas testing. - The Connection Point, A 750 MW power station is burning diesel overnight at Kurri Kurri (28 July 2026): the July schedule of diesel testing from on or after 16 July, overnight, one generator at a time, for about four weeks, recorded from the same page when it was last updated 21 July 2026.
Have we misread the page, or has Snowy Hydro published an update? Tell us and we will check it against the source and log the outcome here.