Victoria at heightened risk of summer blackouts, Australian Energy Market Operator warns

Victoria faces a heightened risk of electricity blackouts this summer amid major delays in rolling out new transmission lines and renewable projects, the nation’s energy market operator has warned.

Victorians face a heightened risk of electricity blackouts this summer with authorities to ­activate a search for emergency supplies amid major delays delivering transmission lines and renewable projects.

Reliability gaps have deteriorated in Victoria and NSW and will decline through the decade in South Australia, ratcheting up concerns over a choppy transition to green power as the bulk of Australia’s coal power stations retire this decade.

Australia’s energy market operator has blamed the worsening outlook on a series of delays, with a year-long lag delivering the EnergyConnect power cable between NSW and SA and a similar delay to the Central West Orana transmission line.

Many delays to the commissioning of committed and anticipated battery, hydro storage, wind and solar projects have added to the tighter outlook while the shutdown of gas and diesel generation in SA will lead to a supply squeeze in Victoria.

Victorians face a heightened risk of electricity blackouts this summer. Picture: Supplied

Australian Energy Market Operator will on Tuesday put out a call to the market for emergency power supplies for NSW and Victoria to minimise the risk of blackouts during peak demand next summer.

“While new generation and storage capacity continues to increase, project development and commissioning delays are impacting reliability throughout the horizon,” AEMO chief executive Daniel Westerman said.

The risk underscores the challenge for Australia of more than doubling its renewable capacity to Labor’s target of 82 per cent by 2030 while keeping a lid on household bills.

Still, AEMO pointed to a giant pipeline of green projects expected to be delivered to the market in the next decade along with unprecedented intervention from state and federal governments to avoid a bumpy path to a renewable-powered grid.

The electricity outlook does not include federal or state government energy programs or a 280-gigawatt pipeline of proposed generation and storage projects in development stages, representing nearly five times the current capacity of the national electricity market.

“Adding new generation and storage projects through federal and state government programs then shows that reliability risks have the potential to be managed within relevant standards over most of the next 10-year horizon,” Mr Westerman said.

AEMO said the report highlighted a call for “timely investment” in projects to manage reliability risks driven by retiring coal plants.

Coal is still the dominant source of electricity in Australia, with the 20GW of capacity accounting for about 60 per cent of the country’s power. To replace coal, however, Australia will need to build significantly more capacity than the amount of coal already in the system due to the intermittent quality of renewable energy.

The revised outlook from AEMO lands amid heated debate over the role of gas, which has split the Labor Party and ignited a fresh political row with the Greens.

The government last week committed to the fuel source ­remaining a key part of the energy mix to 2050 and beyond.

Last week, Labor also teamed up with the Greens to ditch changes aimed at fixing the “broken” offshore gas approvals ­system in return for the passage of its petroleum resource rent tax changes and the introduction of tough standards reducing emissions for new passenger vehicles by more than 60 per cent by 2030.

Originally published as Victoria at heightened risk of summer blackouts, Australian Energy Market Operator warns