Coal outages strike across two states as power prices march up

A series of unplanned coal plant outages have hit the National Electricity Market, taking out fossil generation capacity in two NEM states just as major gentailers around the country warn of a further hike to power prices for consumers.

In Victoria, Energy Australia’s ageing Yallourn power station, which is set to retire in 2028, appears to have had two outages, in units four and three, the latter outage being only brief according to Watt Clarity.

“We see that the unit (3) had been offline and was trying to get back online when it tripped,” writes Watt Clarity’s Paul McArdle. “In the hours following that point, the unit was able to successively ramp to ~240MW.”

A statement from EnergyAustralia on Monday says Yallourn, Units 1, 2 and 3 are online, with Unit 4 offline “on maintenance.” Unit 4 disappears from the generation mix at around 11.30am on Monday.

Also in Victoria, AGL Energy’s Loy Yang A2 (535MW) is offline – the same unit of the brown coal-fired power station that suffered prolonged outages throughout 2022 – disappearing from the mix at around midnight on Sunday.

Loy Yang A is scheduled to close down in 2035.

In Queensland, CS Energy’s 750MW Kogan Creek black coal-fired power station has gone offline as at 1pm on Monday, an outage that Watt Clarity reports was not planned. The Millmerran 2 also tripped this afternoon returning to service after an outage, Watt Clarity reported.

It adds to the extended outages from the Callide C generator that blew up two years ago, and then faced further delays because of a partial collapse in one of the cooling towers. The two main units at Callide C are not expected to be fully back on line for another year.

The outages caused a flurry of price spikes in NSW and Queensland, particularly the latter in the early evening. The so-called “north-south” price differential between the coal dominated northern states and the renewables-blessed southern states was made worse by network constraints that impeded transfers.