Coal breakdowns drive 80MW Summer shortfall, reliability risk: AEMO
The Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO) has today warned that Queensland could face an electricity reliability gap this coming summer as electricity demand grows and the state's ageing coal power stations keep breaking down.
The central scenario forecast an 80 MW shortfall for Queensland, enough to power the equivalent of approximately 20,000 homes.
According to the Queensland Conservation Council, the new 2025 Electricity Statement of Opportunities report by AEMO should light a fire under the Queensland Government to plan for the closure of our failing coal units.
QCC campaigner and energy expert Stephanie Gray said
AEMO’s latest report underscores how urgently we need to build new renewable energy and storage projects in Queensland to replace our ageing coal and gas stations.
Our research found that over the last summer period, Queensland's coal-fired power stations were offline or broken down 78 times.
We’re concerned that the Crisafulli Government is not prioritising Queensland’s energy transformation. At the end of the day, all Queenslanders will end up paying the price if we’re not building enough new clean energy capacity to replace coal, manage power bills and lower emissions.
To date the Crisafulli Government has prioritised implementing unprecedented planning reforms to make it harder to build renewable energy over actually having an energy plan for Queensland.
The mixed signals and energy policy uncertainty we’re seeing from the Energy Minister David Janetzki, means clean energy investors no longer see Queensland as the best place to spend their money.
No matter how many hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars the Crisafulli Government throws at our ageing state-owned coal fleet, we’re going to keep seeing unplanned outages because inflexible coal struggles to keep up with cheaper renewable energy.
Queensland can't afford a summer of blackouts and breakdowns, brought to you by our ageing coal fleet.
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