Liddell power station accident

Liddell power station in Muswellbrook, in the NSW Hunter Valley region. AAP. A breakdown at NSW’s ageing Liddell coal plant has increased the potential for power blackouts during heatwaves this summer and forced the nation’s biggest aluminium smelter to cut production. The state‘s black coal plants are currently operating at only half their capacity, meaning the Liddell accident put authorities on edge with the national power operator calling on emergency supplies to ensure the lights stayed on. A transformer incident at AGL Energy’s 50 year-old Liddell facility on Thursday afternoon knocked one of the four turbines out of action, cutting 420 megawatts of the plant‘s overall 1680MW capacity. The 420MW of power supply is expected to be lost for the entire summer with a worker seriously injured and an investigation now underway. The accident contributed to a big jump in wholesale power prices to the maximum level of $15,000 a megawatt hour on Thursday which meant Tomago Aluminium - the nation’s largest power user which receives its electricity from AGL - was forced offline for a record fifteenth time since November….. Source: Weekend Australian