The annual Electricity Statement of Opportunities report from the Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO) released today shows that Queensland and Victoria, both states that are placing greater reliance on renewable power, are set to fair differently over the coming summer.
Queensland appears to be the best-placed state to get through the summer without major power outages, but Victoria may not be so lucky, with more than a million households potentially facing blackouts.
The AEMO report aims to draw a response from suppliers to head off any power shortfalls.
Media reports quote Queensland’s state Labor government Energy Minister Anthony Lynham playing up the ongoing involvement of public generators in the state’s supply mix.
“The latest AEMO report confirms that Queensland will have secure, reliable supply this summer, pending weather events like cyclones,” Mr Lynham is quoted as saying.
“This vindicates our ongoing public ownership of our electricity assets, and our commitment to a steady transition to renewable energy.”
The main threat of involuntary load-shedding in the National Electricity Market (NEM) will be in Victoria, especially if repairs to a unit of AGL’s Loy Yang A coal-fired power plant and one at Origin Energy’s Mortlake gas-fired plant are not completed.
The combined 759 megawatts of capacity are scheduled to back on line by December.
“However, if both power station outages were extended over the summer, and if no additional supply was secured, involuntary load-shedding may be experienced in Victoria during extreme weather events, potentially over multiple events, equivalent to between 260,000 and 1.3 million households being without power for four hours,” AEMO warned.
AAP Newsagency reports the Energy Minister in the conservative federal Liberal-National government, Angus Taylor, has seized the Victorian weakness to warn that Victoria must come to the table and help prevent widespread blackouts on extremely hot days this summer.
Other states within the national electricity market are not expected to experience such problems this summer.
In New South Wales, this is partly thanks to the Liddell coal-fired power station being kept open for longer than expected.
Mr Taylor praised AGL for extending the life of the ageing coal asset and has called on Victoria’s state Labor government to step up to the plate.
“We need similar levels of collaboration from other state governments including Victoria,” he told reporters in Queensland.
“If the Victorian government continues to insist it can knock down coal-fired power stations and replace them with solar and wind, which has not got the backup to keep the lights on and keep prices down, then they need to be held to account.”
Victoria’s energy minister Lily D’Ambrosio said the state government did not own the power stations and the generators could only give estimated repair times.
“The problem is when you have a look at the record of the failures of some of these old generators, the dates they say they’ll come back is becoming less and less reliable and they’re getting pushed out,” she said.
She said national rules should be changed to allow AEMO to make contingency plans.
“If the market operator was allowed to sign three-year contracts it would cost us the same amount of money as we’re doing now for one single year.”
In the longer term, an extra five gigawatts of committed new power generation projects over the next three years, most of which involve renewable energy, will only make a “limited contribution” to meeting demand during peak hours, the AEMO report said.
AAP reports AEMO chief Audrey Zibelman said the outlook report showed the need for “urgent action and prudent planning and investment” to deliver affordable and reliable power.
She said it was not sustainable or cost-effective for consumers and businesses to “reactively” secure extra electricity resources to meet peak summer demand.
“A more measured course is to take a number of deliberate actions that address the challenges of our ageing coal fleet and which meet the need for secure and dispatchable supply, whilst also taking advantage of Australia’s natural resources,” she said.
Further action could include a new “reliability standard” which ensured each region has enough power to meet peak demand requirements 90 per cent of the time, a standard used internationally.
Also needed was the acceleration of upgrades and construction of interconnectors and transmission to enable better use of existing and new supply resources.
Acting federal opposition Labor leader Richard Marles placed blame for the blackout risk at the feet of the Liberal-National government, which had put forward 16 different energy policies since 2013
“We have an ageing electricity grid which has suffered from a lack of investment in it,” Mr Marles told AAP in Brisbane.
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