Increases in rooftop solar power generation, and the downturn in the Port Kembla steelworks, are major reasons the next stage of the Tallawarra power station has not been built, owners say.
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With planning permission for construction of Part B of the Tallawarra gas-fired power plant soon to expire, Energy Australia wants another five years’ approval so it can get started.
It says its fortunes will be improved by a forecast 20 per cent drop in Australia’s coal fired power capacity.
The Tallawarra A station, a 400MW combined cycle gas turbine, was completed in 2009 and Energy Australia claims it operates with carbon emisisons less than 50 per cent of the national electricity market average.
In preparation for building the next stage, another plant adjacent to Tallawarra A, the remaining coal fired power infrastructure was cleared.
Since then, demand for power from the region’s major industries has fallen, with BlueScope closing down one of its two blast furnaces in 2011, and several other contractors closed in the flow-on effects from the major manufacturer’s woes.
This meant the market conditions for power generation did not justify building the second stage.
But Energy Australia’s Graham Dowers, in an application to the Planning Department, said other factors were involved.
Between 2010 and 2015 then-owner TruEnergy experienced a “sudden plateauing and subsequent fall in electricity demand” driven by industrial plant closures, energy efficiency measure, and rooftop photovoltaic (PV) systems.
This created “a large excess of capacity in the national electricity market”.
“Retail demand [fell] away as households utilised more efficient lighting and appliances and most importantly the rapid uptake of intermittent generation sources including solar PV,” he wrote.
Energy Australia’s application for a five-year extension to build Tallawarra B is now on public exhibition via the NSW Major Projects website.
After the State Government sold off power retail assets, TruEnergy became Energy Australia.
But Mr Dowers wrote that the national electricity market is not projected to “recover” by 12 per cent by the year 2020, led by a pickup in residential and commercial power usage, driven by population growth.
Energy Australia says that with Australia joining the Paris global agreement on climate change, gas fired power will be viewed as a “low carbon approach” to generation needs.
