The Palaszczuk government was last night urgently moving to ensure its other coal-fired power stations could step in to fill a 2000 megawatt shortfall after a major fire took out its Callide power station in Central Queensland, causing a widespread blackout and extreme spikes in power prices.

The cause of the fire at 1.45pm remains unknown but the outage will have major ramifications for the state’s energy industry and the National Electricity Market. The energy market operator issued an urgent call late Tuesday for replacement supplies to prevent the collapse of the power system.