More than 250,000 without power amid major Victorian outage
AGL Energy will restore full operations at its Loy Yang coal power station within 24 hours, however many Victorians could be left without power for ‘days, if not weeks’.
AGL Energy will restore full operations at its Loy Yang coal power station within 24 hours after a storm across Victoria felled high-voltage power lines and left some 500,000 homes and businesses without power.
Loy Yang is Victoria’s largest electricity generator, and it went offline when a storm ripped through Victoria on Tuesday afternoon. AGL said operations of two of the four units have already restarted, and the other two will begin within the next day.
However, many Victorians could be left without power for “days, if not weeks” after the state’s largest electricity power station suffered the outage, forcing the country’s energy market operator to execute emergency measures to safeguard the stability of the grid.
AGL Energy’s Loy Yang A coal plant went offline shortly after 2pm (AEDT), with the state government attributing the outage to the physical collapse of six transmission towers due to storm damage.
An earlier unrelated partial outage at Victoria’s second largest generator, EnergyAustralia’s Yallourn, further exacerbated the shortfall, leaving Alinta’s Loy Yang B as the only remaining coal power station in a state where coal still provides more power than any other energy source.
“Given the extent of the widespread damage, it may take days if not weeks to restore electricity to all of those impacted,” a Department of Energy, Environment and Climate Action (DEECA) spokesperson posted to X
The outages forced the Australian Energy Market Operator to order electricity wholesalers to switch off power to 90,000 households, in a practice known as load shedding – a deliberate reduction of supply to selected areas during extreme events to protect the electricity network from long-term damage and widespread blackouts. The remaining 400,000 odd homes and businesses were disconnected due to other storm damage.
Loy Yang A’s trip caused wholesale electricity prices to spike exponentially, with industry experts concerned the situation could worsen amid the evening peak, with the temperature across Victoria still high after reaching 40C in some parts of the state, as storms brought cloud cover and gusty winds, limiting the availability of solar and wind power.
Victorian Energy Minister Lily D’Ambrosio met AEMO chief executive Daniel Westerman amid the crisis, which she attributed it to the “unprecedented impact of extreme weather on Victoria’s power grid”.
Authorities scrambled to restore power. But by 7.30am on Wednesday, AEMO said approximately 285,500 homes and businesses are still without power in Victoria due to storm damage across the state, down from a peak of 530,000.
“It is not possible for me to say exactly when but emergency crews are working tirelessly, day and night, to restore power. Half are back and I expect that number to continue to fall. I don’t think all will be finished today but certainly some of those may take several days to fully restore,” Mr Westerman told ABC Radio.
Energy industry experts, business groups and the state opposition pointed the finger at the government, with Victorian Chamber of Commerce and Industry chief executive Paul Guerra, warning that support for the government’s target of net zero carbon emissions by 2050 would “start to weaken” if reliability, security and affordability of energy supply could not be guaranteed.
The outage caused financial pain. Wholesale prices hit a cap of $16,600/MWh, which will take a toll on retailers immediately before flowing through to households when the next price tariffs are implemented on July 1.
Prolonged high wholesale prices will cause higher bills, which authorities are desperate to avoid after two years of price increases of more than 20 per cent.
Victorian Chamber of Commerce and Industry chief executive Paul Guerra said the biggest risk for businesses and consumers was the reliability, security and affordability of energy.
“This outage merely highlights how fragile our system is,” Mr Guerra said.
“Support for net zero will start to weaken if we get events like this regularly.”
Opposition energy spokesman David Davis said the outage highlighted Victoria’s vulnerability, following “Labor’s failure after nine years in power to plan the renewable transition properly”.
Mr Davis said Ms D’Ambrosio had been warned about the vulnerability of the grid in AEMO’s Electricity Statement of Opportunities last August. “Lily D’Ambrosio appears not to have taken the necessary actions to protect Victoria’s electricity supply,” he said. “Lily D’Ambrosio needs to come clean on the widespread load shedding, explaining which industries were forced to shut, for how long and how much they were paid … A key responsibility of the Victorian government is to ensure a reliable, secure and affordable power supply is available. They failed this test on Tuesday.”
IPA deputy executive director Daniel Wild said Tuesday’s outage showed how fragile Victoria’s energy security was.
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