Fears gas-fired Quarantine power station on Torrens Island could fail in hot weather

AN inquiry will be launched into the operations of a gas-fired generator on Torrens Island, after the national energy operator became concerned it could have failed during hot weather.

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AN INQUIRY will be launched into the operations of a gas-fired generator on Torrens Island, after the national energy operator became concerned it could have failed during hot weather.

The Australian Energy Market Operator on Wednesday ordered the second generator at Pelican Point to fire up and stabilise SA’s power supplies, amid concerns the Origin Energy-owned Quarantine power station on Torrens Island may fail in the 37C heat with little warning.

The order to Pelican Point came as SA began eating into an energy supply buffer which AEMO is seeking to maintain in a bid to avoid enforced blackouts like those witnessed last month.

AEMO is now investigating the issues at Quarantine, with no date on when it will report.

An Origin spokesman confirmed the company notified AEMO of risks at Quarantine, but the plant was now back in service and it does not expect a repeat problem in the foreseeable future.

Treasurer Tom Koutsantonis said he understood the plant had “a local gas distribution problem”.

Premier Jay Weatherill on Thursday also told Question Time his “dramatic” plan to fix the state’s energy crisis, first promised almost a month ago, would be revealed in the “coming weeks”.

It has led to Opposition claims that the State Government is floundering, and has no real plan to fix a system is says has been damaged by the aggressive expansion of unreliable wind power.

Opposition Leader Steven Marshall said the Government should be spending taxpayer money on developing storage technologies, as well as investigating baseload renewables.

The Quarantine power station on Torrens Island.

“They do not even know what they are going to do,” Mr Marshall told Parliament.

“They need to look at demand management, lowering the total energy consumption here in SA, because it is the peakiness of our demand which pushes up the total price.

“They need to be investing in storage technologies. The simple fact of the matter is that we have all this intermittent renewable energy but it is not available when we actually need to use it.”

He said SA's renewable energy target must be scrapped, and linked to a national benchmark set in Canberra, as baseload renewable technologies like solar thermal and hydro were investigated.

AGL, which operates the large Torrens Island gas power station, said it had no update on the future of the ageing generator which had been planned for part mothballing last year.

“AGL deferred the planned mothballing of the A Station of Torrens Island in June 2016 in response to retirement of other baseload generation assets in South Australia,” a spokesman said.

“AGL advocates for orderly closure of plant to give the market time to plan and provide the investment certainty needed to invest in new generation infrastructure.”

The company has said there is an urgent need for market reform to deliver that.