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The national energy market operator has issued new warnings of possible summer blackouts in coming years, due to delays in key transmission projects and looming retirements of coal generators.
The Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO) has issued a renewed call for urgent investment in new generation and transmission infrastructure, warning reliability outlooks have recently worsened in New South Wales, Victoria and South Australia.
The operator has put out an update to its 10-year outlook released last year, noting decisions to delay a new transmission line between NSW and SA, and dumped plans to return two gas and diesel generators in SA to service.
The NSW-SA transmission line is Project EnergyConnect, which is now expected to deliver full power from mid-2027 instead of 2026.
It says those decisions have materially changed the outlook, prompting the new warnings for the years ahead.
In particular, reliability risks have increased in NSW and Victoria from this summer, while SA is also facing increased challenges in 2026-27.
AEMO plans to bid for “reliability reserves” to shore up the market in NSW and Victoria over summer, such as paying for additional generation or for large energy users to reduce demand.
AEMO CEO Daniel Westerman said while there were plenty of generation or transmission projects in the pipeline across the grid, it was critical they were actually delivered on time.
“While new generation and storage capacity continues to increase, project development and commissioning delays are impacting reliability throughout the horizon,” he said.
AEMO notes its forecasts deliberately do not consider a large number of publicly announced projects, even if they have been granted state or federal contracts, because they are not yet advanced enough.
But it says if those projects do substantially advance, they would significantly lower risks to the national grid.
Looming coal closure could be delayed
One of the most significant looming pressures on the grid is the closure of Origin’s Eraring Power Station near Newcastle, scheduled for mid-2025.
The coal-fired power station is the largest in the country, supplying a quarter of NSW’s power needs.
The NSW government is already in talks with Origin about extending the life of the project but has ruled out a state takeover of the plant.
NSW Energy Minister Penny Sharpe said these warnings would factor into those conversations.
“There’s a discussion about whether its life will be extended, that decision hasn’t been made yet, but we’ll be letting people know once those discussions are finalised,” she said.
“Those discussions are underway and will be completed soon.”
Federal Energy Minister Chris Bowen said AEMO’s primary forecasts did not factor in additional generation expected to land in the grid in coming years.
“The scenario in today’s report where some key government policies are included shows a dramatically improved outlook on reliability — and this boosted outlook isn’t even including the wider 32GW boost with our Capacity Investment Scheme,” he said.
“There are projects scheduled to commence operating and meet energy demand this summer. With AEMO procuring interim reserves, we can be confident of ongoing reliability across higher demand periods, even if anticipated projects are delayed.”
Source: Amp-abc-net-au.cdn.ampproject.org
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The post Warnings grow of blackout risks in summers ahead as NSW looks at extending Eraring coal plant appeared first on Energy News Beat.
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