Coal generator fined for lousy response to coal plant explosion that rocked the grid

The Queensland government owned Stanwell Corporation has been hit by fines by the energy regulator after it was discovered it had incorrect settings at three of its generating units.

The fines, totalling $263,400 for six infringements, were imposed by the Australian Energy Regulator as part of its investigations into the blackouts that swept across parts of Queensland and northern NSW in response to the explosion at the Callide coal plant in May, 2021.

According to the AER, Stanwell had applied a “protection setting” in 2017 to the three generating units without prior written approval from the Australian Energy Market Operator.

“The setting applied by Stanwell meant that the units’ protection systems were not capable of maintaining continuous uninterrupted operation for voltage disturbances within the range required by its performance standards,” the AER said. The problem has now been fixed.

The fines echo those applied to various wind farms in response to the state-wide “system black” in South Australia in late 2016, when it was found that various installations had different settings to those anticipated by the market operator.

Of course, those findings were used by nay-sayers as “proof” that wind energy was unsuitable for the grid because they could not respond to such incidents. Of course, the regulators have said nothing of the sort, and it’s doubtful those same naysers would say the same thing about coal.

The Stanwell fines, however, are just a fraction of the $900,000 fines imposed by the AER in response to a self-reported incident from Neoen that its Tesla big battery, aka the Hornsdale Power Reserve in South Australia, had delivered less capacity than thought through its system protection services.

That problem emerged in its response to another coal plant failure, this time at Kogan Creek. Even though the response to the frequency excursion was sufficient to stop any outages, Neoen and Tesla discovered that the Hornsdale battery had been delivering less capacity than thought, due to a software error.

They repaid some $3.3 million in excess revenue to AEMO, but were also hit by the fines imposed by the AER.

“The security and stability of our power system relies on generators complying with agreed performance standards, meeting protection system obligations and providing accurate and complete information to AEMO,” AER board member Justin Oliver said in a statement about the Stanwell fines.

“This allows AEMO to determine the appropriate secure operating limits and ensure the power system is resilient to unstable conditions.”

“As Australia transitions to new forms of electricity generation with different technical characteristics it is more important than ever that all generators comply with the rules,” Oliver said.

The AER says it is continuing its investigations in relation to the May 2021 power system incident.