Late on Monday evening, 16th October 2023, Colin Packham wrote of ‘EnergyAustralia warns coal supplies for Mount Piper power station at risk’ in the Australian:
Colin’s article contains this paragraph:
‘“The multi-mine supply contract executed with the coal supplier this year has diversified supply sources to maintain continuity of supply in the face of this risk. Despite the mitigation, a shortfall in coal deliveries is expected until the end of the year,” EnergyAustralia’s parent company, CLP Holdings said.’
After a bit of digging, I found this update in the parent company’s ‘Quarterly Statement 2023 (January – September)’ (i.e. from CLP Holdings):
I missed Colin’s article at the time, but it’s now circulating on social media, such as here, from RM Hedge (in part because of the note from Proactive Investors ‘Mount Piper coal station’s operations at risk; EnergyAustralia warns amid vulnerable grid’ published yesterday).
One more interesting data point for what might be a challenging summer 2023-24?
Paul
Limited coal supplies are not a good thing, but probably less of a concern for summer reliability than in winter (cf last year’s winter energy crisis).
Summer demand and price peaks tend to be of much shorter duration, and average demand levels are lower in summer than winter. Provided the power station manages its coal stockpile so that it’s able to operate both units at full capacity over peak demand hours during periods of hot weather and higher demand (which don’t extend over weeks and weeks) – and that coal deliveries don’t fall to very low rates – then I’d be surprised if this leads to reliability isses this summer. But I’ve been wrong before.
Allan