Mildly hot day leads to major problems for electricity grid

The Climate Change Minister will tell parliament it was ‘magical thinking’ to suggest extending the life of coal-fired power stations would make the electricity market more secure, a day after NSW residents were told to avoid using household appliances.

AEMO used emergency powers on Wednesday to cut energy usage as the temperate in the Sydney CBD hit 32.9C.

Climate Change Minister Chris Bowen will declare renewables are the only solution to the nation’s energy woes and put the blame for volatility in the electricity grid on coal-fired power stations, after NSW residents were told to avoid using dishwashers, washing machines and pool filter pumps to prevent blackouts.

After the Australian Energy Market Operator was forced to use emergency powers to instruct some NSW businesses to cut ­energy usage because of feared supply shortages, Mr Bowen will on Thursday tell parliament it was “magical thinking” to suggest extending the life of coal-fired power stations past 2035 would make the electricity market more secure.

Blaming “heatwave” conditions in Sydney of more than 30C and outages at major coal generators, AEMO on Wednesday morning notified ­industry it would negotiate with companies to reduce electricity usage to ensure there was stable supply.

While some suburbs in western Sydney reached as high as 39.9C on Wednesday, maximum temperatures were more moderate in the city centre (32.9C) and many regional centres including Dubbo (30.6C), Coffs Harbour (28.9C), Port Macquarie (30C) and Ballina (28.1C).

NSW Premier Chris Minns ­issued an extraordinary request for residents in the nation’s biggest state to avoid using energy-­intensive household appliances between 3pm and 8pm, warning that rooftop solar production would reduce during that period.

Bondi Beach was packed on Wednesday. Picture: Sam Ruttyn

“Solar production in the energy market starts to come off at 3pm, exactly when people start to return home,” Mr Minns said.

“So if you (could not use) your pool filter, dishwasher, washing machine, between 3pm and 8pm, you’d be helping the grid.”

The five-hour “low-usage window” the government asked residents to adhere to, if safe to do so, also included closing blinds, windows and doors.

The risk to power supply had been significantly reduced by Wednesday evening, with AEMO downgrading its earlier warnings.

NSW Energy Minister Penny Sharpe lauded actions taken to avert blackouts, including “households, businesses and NSW government employees who have taken steps to reduce the demand on the system this evening”.

With energy set to be a major policy divide at next year’s election, Mr Bowen will use his annual ­climate change statement to ­declare that renewables will lower electricity prices and increase grid stability. Mr Bowen promised before the 2022 election that Labor’s ­renewables policy would reduce electricity prices by $275, but household bills have risen since the Albanese government was elected.

Mr Bowen, who also blamed the energy disruption on a “severe heatwave”, will back recent comments by Australian Energy Regulator chair Clare Savage who declared coal-plant outages were “causing havoc for supply and driving up prices”.

“The notion that Australia’s ageing coal fleet should – or in fact could – be relied on to an even greater extent to power our system, is nothing short of magical thinking,” Mr Bowen will say, according to an early copy of his speech. “Already consumers are feeling the impacts of running old coal generators longer. There has not been a single day in the past 18 months without some coal-fired generation experiencing unplanned outages.”

Mr Bowen will say that the ­Coalition’s plan to rollout nuclear energy is a “dangerous furphy”, with a delay in the renewables rollout to increase electricity costs.

In a further blow to the credibility of Labor’s pre-election climate change promises, Mr Bowen is crediting new policies formed since the election – including the capacity investment scheme and vehicle emissions standards – as driving the forecast that Labor is on track to meet its target to lower emissions by 43 per cent of 2005 levels by 2030, up from the 37 per cent projected last year.

Climate Change Minister Chris Bowen. Picture: NewsWire / Martin Ollman

This is despite Mr Bowen and Anthony Albanese repeatedly saying the 43 per cent target was the assessed impact of the policies it announced before the election, which included tax discounts for electric cars and an overhaul of the safeguard mechanism.

Labor’s pre-election costings also predicted 82 per cent of electricity would be generated from renewables and 90 per cent of new car sales would be electric by 2030.

The Clean Energy Regulator will release figures on Thursday showing there will be a record 7.2-7.5 gigawatts of renewables added to the electricity system this year. The regulator predicts renewables will account for an average 45 per cent of electricity next year. “This significant new generation capacity is mainly wind (70 per cent) and will result in a material step up in the share of ­­renewables as these new power stations reach full generation in the second half of 2025,” the CER will say in a report tomorrow. “There is an additional 1.2GW of capacity under application that we expect to approve in early 2025.”

Opposition energy spokesman Ted O’Brien said Labor’s “failing energy plan” was “consigning Australians to energy poverty”.

Mr O’Brien also accused Labor of “lying” to Australians on the ­impact of its climate agenda, including claiming its pre-election policies would lead to emissions reductions of 43 per cent by 2030.

“Labor foolishly set targets from opposition that they could never meet, and instead of recalibrating to accept reality, they’ve doubled down out of desperation,” he said. “Australia has been sprayed with a flurry of new ­policies never taken to the last election in an attempt to make up ground, no matter what the consequences or costs. They’ve introduced everything from a secret carbon price, a capacity investment scheme and other rushed measures.”

Grattan Institute director of energy Tony Wood said energy-rationing in NSW was a “nasty combination of circumstances”.

“If you want to prepare your energy system for what might be a hot summer, what you do is you make sure your machinery is working well before summer,” Mr Wood said. “So a number of units were taken off line for preparing them for summer, and summer came early. In some ways what (AEMO) did was quite sensible but then they got caught. And the problem is we are going to get caught more frequently.

“We really haven’t done a great job of keeping on top of this.”

Origin Energy’s Eraring coal power station – which generates about 25 per cent of NSW’s electricity – is operating at only three-quarters capacity, as one unit remains offline due to planned maintenance. Eraring was scheduled to be back up and running at full capacity on Wednesday, but The Australian understands it will now not return to full capacity until the end of Friday following the discovery of some issues at the end of a planned service.

Other coal power stations, AGL’s Bayswater and Vales Point – owned by Delta Electricity – are both undergoing scheduled maintenance and not expected to return to full service until December.