The Snowy Hydro Scheme is considered one of Australia's greatest engineering achievements.
With 16 dams, nine power stations and more than 100 kilometres of tunnels, it took more than 20 years to build.
Now, the Turnbull government wants to increase the Snowy Hydro's output by 50 per cent in just four years.
The Prime Minister says it was always designed with future expansion in mind.
"These projects were designed and engineered decades ago by the men and women who built this. The capacity was there. All that was missing was leadership and money, and my government has both. We share that vision."
The project is meant to cost $2 billion dollars.
It's by far the government's most expensive intervention to date, in its ongoing effort to ward off a predicted electricity shortage.
The upgrade aims to provide power for half a million more homes.
The storage system works by pumping water uphill when electricity is cheap, then releasing it again to generate power in times of peak demand.
Mr Turnbull described the upgrade as "thoroughly commercial", saying many of the construction costs would be cheaper now than they were in the 1960s and 70s.
"Of course, it's a lot cheaper to build 27-kilometre tunnels now that it was 30 years ago because they didn't have big tunnel-boring machines like we do today. So a lot has changed, and it's all for the good."
But the Prime Minister's positivity has done nothing to prevent an escalating fight with the states over energy.
The federal energy minister and the premier of South Australia publicly traded barbs at a media conference.
Energy Minister Josh Frydenberg attacked South Australian premier Jay Weatherill's plan to build a new gas power station, and a battery to store green energy.
"Well look the premier made a $550 million admission of failure just a couple of days ago. Clearly, he has a big job to do to explain to the South Australian people why, on his watch, the lights went out. Not once, not twice, not three times but four times."
The two men stood shoulder-to-shoulder in an increasingly tense exchange.
Premier Weatherill, who goes to the polls in his state next year, says he's unimpressed by the Snowy Hydro announcement, which will mostly provide power for New South Wales and Victoria.
"We're standing up for South Australia. We have today this two billion-dollar insult where money is being spent to keep the lights on in Sydney at a time when we're facing energy shortages over the coming summer. That's why our plan is about acting, it's about acting in South Australia's interests, it's about making sure that we can stand on our own two feet because we know that we're being let down by a federal government that's anti-South Australia."
The federal government has been vocal in criticising the South Australian government since a series of blackouts over the summer months, accusing the state of an overreliance on renewable energy.
The head of the Grattan Institute's energy project, Tony Wood, has reiterated his calls for an end to the bickering between the commonwealth and the states.
"The next fundamentally important step is to try and find a way of moving away from the shouting at each other, blaming each other approach. Because the federal and all the state governments signed up to a commitment through the COAG energy council only a year or so ago, to be committed to a national, integrated approach to our electricity supply."
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