Blackout warning forces Energy Minister Tom Koutsantonis’s urgent bid to restart diesel generators

Energy Minister Tom Koutsantonis is warning of electricity load shedding unless mothballed diesel generators are revived.

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South Australia risks forced blackouts because of inadequate electricity supplies unless two mothballed diesel-powered generators are urgently forced to restart, says Energy Minister Tom Koutsantonis.

Lack of supply could force load-shedding, or rolling blackouts to curb electricity demand, Mr Koutsantonis has warned the Australian Energy Market Commission (AEMC) in a letter seeking to re-open diesel plants in Port Lincoln and the South East.

Generator owner Engie in February announced the mothballing from July 1 of diesel-powered peaking generators at Port Lincoln (75MW) and Snuggery (63MW) ahead of closure in 2028.

But Mr Koutsantonis told the AEMC the electricity supply outlook was “materially worse” because of delays in the Project EnergyConnect high-voltage line between SA and NSW.

Asking the authority to direct Engie to restart the diesel-powered generators, Mr Koutsantonis warned if this did not happen, reliability “would be significantly undermined” if the electricity market operator “was forced to load shed households and businesses due to a lack of supply”.

Energy Minister Tom Koutsantonis is warning of load-shedding blackouts unless diesel generators are restarted. Picture: Kelly Barnes

Mr Koutsantonis said blackout warnings during a hot day in NSW last Wednesday, when Premier Chris Minns asked families to avoid washing their clothes or dishes to help keep the lights on, meant each state should have sufficient capacity to look after itself.

“We have to make sure when we need the power, the power is there because if it is hot across the NEM – I can guarantee the premiers of New South Wales and Victoria aren’t going to be saying: ‘Let’s load-shed here to provide South Australia with power’,” Mr Koutsantonis told FIVEAA.

“They’re going to be making us load-shed. So my job is to make sure we’ve got every piece of kit we have available when we need it.”

It comes as industry leaders warn households face being plunged into summer blackouts – while paying even more for power – without urgent action on Australia’s gas shortage.

SA averted manual electricity load-shedding in February, despite an outage at one of the nation’s largest-coal fired power stations in Victoria, where more than 500,000 homes and businesses were without power during the rolling blackouts. These are triggered to protect power grid security and prevent long-term damage to infrastructure.

SA’s electricity demand hovered close to supply for a short time after the unexpected shutdown of AGL Energy’s Loy Yang A.

Woolworths Glenelg supermarket service manager Naomi Goode with customer Lisa McCarthy and son Harry shopping by torchlight during electricity blackouts on December 2, 1999. Picture: John Sherwell

Much of South Australia was plunged into chaos on this day 25 years ago, when about 400,000 of the state’s 780,000 electricity customers suffered power cuts and three major network failures triggered rotational load shedding, or staged blackouts.

French electricity firm Engie in February said the Port Lincoln and Snuggery plants were no longer financially viable to keep running because of the pace of the transition to renewables.

Mr Koutsantonis said he believed renewables were cheaper but needed to be firmed, or backed up, and gas-fired generators were “critical” for this.

“If you want renewables you need to have gas sitting in reserve ready to turn on when you have renewable droughts and renewable droughts still occur,” he said.

“Gas is expensive so you want to use it as little as possible and you want renewables operating.

“But if the wind doesn’t blow and the sun doesn’t shine and you can’t charge your batteries you’re in trouble, so you need to have that gas as backup.”

Originally published as Blackout warning forces Energy Minister Tom Koutsantonis’s urgent bid to restart diesel generators