Was speaking earlier this morning with someone about how some of the widgets in ez2view could be used to gain some sense of changing generator* outage plans (via screenshare) and I noticed something I thought might be more generally of interest.
* alas only fully Scheduled units, as Semi-Scheduled unit outages remain invisible, from this perspective!
So I started typing … and, in the process of doing so, was gazumped by some good news…
(A) Return to service commences
Lo and behold, the alerts triggered from the ‘Notifications’ widget in ez2view give us the good news!
In this snapshot of an email received at 11:56 on Friday 30th August 2024 we see that Callide C4 has reached 26MW on its way to returning to service (after an outage that began way back on 25th May 2021).
(B) In the AEMO market data via ez2view
We’ve written a number of articles before about the long-running outage at Callide C4 (longest outage in the history of the NEM, perhaps) and noticed that there’d been some interesting changes in plans for the unit – as we see firstly in the ‘Generator Outages’ widget in ez2view (snapshot at 11:40, so just prior to restart) here:
With respect to this image, note the following
1) Return to service expectation remained (in the snapshot above) that it would be available for part-load tomorrow
(a) i.e. 210MW availability on Saturday 31st August 2024;
(b) but keep in mind that this MT PASA DUID Availability data for tomorrow is ‘stale’ (i.e. last updated for 18:00 on Saturday 24th August 2024) so potentially could have changed
(c) but note that there is a green cell for Sunday 1st September 2024, so we know that plans can’t have changed by too much.
(d) and indeed, as we see above it’s started to return a bit early.
2) My recollection was that (the last time I looked specifically at this unit), it was going to sit with availability at 210MW for a week or so before stepping up to 420MW.
3) However now we see:
(a) Lower availability (i.e. 168MW) for Sunday 1st September 2024 and Monday 2nd September 2024
(b) Then stepping up (210MW) for three days
(c) Before a three-day outage (Friday 6th September, Saturday 7th September and Sunday 8th September) … presumably some form of post-rebuild and commissioning inspection
(d) Then 7 days available at 420MW
(e) Followed by a one-day outage (Monday 16th September)
(f) After which it will be available up at its Maximum Capacity (i.e. 466MW)
(g) Except for some deratings on 22nd and 23rd September that also look like some form of commissioning related activity.
I could not remember seeing this when I last looked (but I note that the image posted yesterday at the bottom of this article did indeed have the same) so I wonder when these changes were made.
Thankfully, the ‘Forecast Convergence’ widget in ez2view (again, snapshot at 11:40 … just prior to restart) provides a ready-made way of seeing changes such as these:
Remember that this widget allows one to ‘look up a vertical’ to ‘see that other dimension of time’
We can see both:
1) The upper change (horizontally) which was added for yesterday morning (Thursday 29th August 2024 … not noticed in all the focus on the 2024 ESOO) ; plus also
2) Plans (the vertical slice) for a ‘major’ outage slated for April-May 2025.
(C) Any updates from Stakeholders?
There’s no more recent update from CS Energy here on their news page than what was published at 12th July 2024 (which we recorded as ‘Callide C4 return to service pushed back 3 weeks, now slated for late July 2024’ shortly afterwards).
But I have noticed a series of updates on their LinkedIn page, with the latest being this one from about 3 weeks ago:
Fingers crossed for a smooth return-to-service (and commissioning) over the coming weeks!
“The Callide Unit C4 incident was the result of the simultaneous failure of key electrical equipment and system back-ups in a complex series of events that could not have been anticipated, with some of the contributing factors being traced back to the original design of the power station,” Mr Busine said.
What is the total cost? $50M on coverup, maybe $500M on rebuild because the Insurance has refused a payment all because CS Energy allowed maintenance staff to switch off the critical 220V battery with the C4 Turbine in service.
The C4 operator in the central control room did not know that the 220V battery had been isolated.