COAG Energy Council orders review of electricity reliability
Faced by ‘real risks’ of blackouts this summer, the nation’s energy ministers are trying to get ahead of the game for future years. They’ve also backed a national strategy on hydrogen.
SA News
Don't miss out on the headlines from SA News. Followed categories will be added to My News.
- How the new offers will bring down your household costs
- Latest subscriber exclusive giveaways, specials and prizes
The reliability of the national electricity market will be reviewed to try to avoid in future the risks of blackouts forecast for this summer.
“We’re looking at real risks this summer,” federal Energy and Emissions Reduction Minister Angus Taylor said after a meeting of the COAG Energy Council.
“The Australian Energy Market Operator has been working on a summer readiness plan and they have established a reserve to ensure there is enough power to meet peak demand.
“In Victoria, in particular, they have identified real risks.
“But part of the job is to make sure we don’t leave ourselves in this situation in future summers.
“This is crucial work, particularly in markets in states like Victoria, South Australia and, over time, NSW where we know there will be very serious pressure.”
The review, to be led by the Energy Security Board chaired by Kerry Schott, was tasked with reporting to the next COAG Energy Council meeting in March.
SA Energy and Mining Minister Dan van Holst Pellekaan said there was broad agreement between states and the Commonwealth about the need for a review, especially with looming problems in a few years time.
“All states have challenges,” he said.
“But we were also were very focused on not burdening consumers with additional costs.”
The national standard for reliability is an expectation that over a year sufficient power will be generated 99.998 per cent of the time to meet demand.
South Australia has been easily achieving the standard but Victoria missed the mark because of outages in January.
Reliability does not include outages caused by distribution and transmission problems, which account for more than 95 per cent of blackouts, according to the Australian Energy Market Commission.
In August, the Australian Energy Market Operator warned ongoing problems in Victoria may cause load-shedding blackouts affecting 260,000 to 1.3 million households for four hours this summer.
However, since then several events have improved the supply situation including AGL’s Barker Inlet Power Station in Adelaide beginning operation, the SA Government approving units at AGL’s Torrens Island Power Station to continue operating past a planned closure date and EnergyAustralia installing a new 30MW turbine at the Hallett Power Station.
The council also agreed to adopt a national strategy for hydrogen.
The strategy “will support the development of a clean, innovative, competitive, technology-neutral and safe hydrogen industry that benefits all Australians”, the council said in a communique.
“Ministers agreed Australia should take a leadership role in tracking and certifying the origin and emissions intensity of hydrogen,” the communique said.
Talking after the meeting, federal Resources Minister Matt Canavan said the Federal Government took a “technologically neutral approach” to how hydrogen is produced.
This would include using stranded brown coal assets in Victoria, he said.