That’s all folks: the last unit of Liddell Power Station closes

Australia’s oldest utility-scale generator, Liddell Power Station, has shut off its last remaining unit this morning after nearly 52 years of operations. At roughly 10:30am AEST, Liddell Unit 1 finally ramped down its output to 0MW which marks the full retirement of the power station, a process that was announced just over seven years ago

We’ve been covering the closure of Liddell here on WattClarity, starting with Unit 3 roughly one year ago, and followed by Unit 4 on Monday and Unit 2 on Wednesday.

The sequential closure of Liddell’s last three units this week.

Source: ez2view Trends

Perhaps in a sign of the times, the unit’s closure comes the same day that the AEMO’s QED highlighted that renewable energy was driving down wholesale energy costs and an LOR2 condition was intermittently forecast for NSW tomorrow (Saturday) afternoon.

With one large coal generator now retired, the next cab off the rank is scheduled to be Origin’s Eraring Power Station, which is currently slated to close (possibly as early as*) in August 2025.

* we think it’s important to reiterate that (as much as we are aware) Origin has always retained the caveat ‘possibly as early as’ in relation to closure expectations for Eraring Power Station.  Paul noted this on 18th February 2022  in relation to the initial closure announcement the day before.

Media and Social Media Coverage

From a brief scan, I have come across the following articles this morning that marked the occasion:

• The ABC published Hunter Valley’s Liddell Power Station closes in end of an era for Australia’s oldest coal-fired plant;
• RenewEconomy posted “World is changing”: AGL to replace Liddell with battery, hydrogen, wind and solar ;
• The Australian posted ‘Bittersweet day’ as Liddell coal plant shuts down for good.
• but no doubt many others as well…

On Social Media there’s been an inundation, but worth highlighting two ….

• On Twitter today, AGL marked the event with this tweet:

•  Giles Parkinson of RenewEconomy tweeted a series of photo updates of the Liddell control room, where AGL CEO Damian Nicks was present.  Here’s one of them: