It’s been another ‘interesting’ week in the NEM this week, including the AEMO’s update to the 2023 ESOO on Tuesday, and the (quite related) announcement of the extension to service life for Eraring Power station on Thursday.
Bubbling along in the background, there’s been some activity on various fronts with respect to Callide C.
Operations onsite at Callide C
Let’s look at physical operations first:
Approaching return to service for Callide C4
Bubbling along in the background, it did not escape our attention that the countdown clock continues to tick, with expected return to service of the Callide C4 unit now under 40 days away (still set at 30th June 2024) … as we see in this snapshot from the ‘Generator Outages’ widget in ez2view at 10:45 Friday morning 24th May 2024:
Let’s hope it all goes smoothly.
Ongoing operations at Callide C3
For the sibling Callide C3 station (which began the return to service on 1st April 2024, after 518 days offline) the operation looks to be back to full capability – as seen in this snapshot from the ‘Bids & Offers’ widget in ez2view at 11:00 this morning:
Our last operational update about Callide C was on 11th April 2024, which we can see in the context of the 60-day trend of bids above. Since that time, we see the unit has settled into operations with PASA Avail of 434MW and Bid Availability of 424MW (slightly below the 466MW Maximum Capacity of the unit).
Updates in the courts etc….
However it’s not going so smoothly in the court & insolvency processes, it seems.
Other recent articles
Remember that we’d previously written:
1) On 13th April ‘The Australian notes how Callide C was back in court again this week’
2) On 8th May ‘More court action about ‘the Brady Report’ for Callide C4’
3) On 16th May ‘News update in the AFR about Callide C’ … which was now 8 days ago
External updates
Further to the above, on a quick scan now I’ve seen:
1) This week on Monday 20th May, Nick Evans wrote ‘Callide C explosion secrecy beyond a farce as forensic engineer blocked from answering questions’ in the Australian.
The first two paragraphs noted:
‘Forensic engineer Sean Brady has still not completed his long-awaited report into the explosion that crippled Queensland’s Callide C power station three years ago, he did not contribute to CS Energy’s February report on the same incident (i.e. this one we wrote about at the time), and he did not form an early view on how long his investigation would take.
Those are the only three clear answers from almost four hours of Dr Brady’s examination in front of the Federal Court on Monday by lawyers for FTI Consulting’s John Park, appointed by the court in January as a special purpose administrator to the collapsed company that owned half of the power station.’
… and the rest of the article is well worth a read
2) I noted that the MEU followed on from the decision above with ‘Callide Power Station workers call for transparency around explosion cause before restarting unit ’ on Wednesday 22nd May.
3) Then on Thursday 23rd May (i.e. yesterday afternoon) Angelica Snowden and Nick Evans wrote ‘Callide C sale delayed after go-slow on explosion report and court dates’ in the Australian.
… this article is also worth a read.
Court References
Remember that there are a couple different matters related to Callide C4 (and Callide C3) in the Federal Court at present:
QUD61/2024 … by Sev.En (part owner of part owner)
In several articles we’ve highlighted updates on the Court Case referred to in Nick’s articles above … most recently on 29th January 2024 with ‘Federal Court rules about Callide C – independent investigation authorised’.
In this case the Federal Court website reference is here (docket number QUD541/2023).
QUD61/2024 … by the AER
On 9th February 2024 we wrote ‘The matter of Callide C back in Federal Court (this time via AER)’ … and that the relevant reference Number appears to be QUD61/2024.
Updates from Stakeholders
With respect to the key stakeholders:
(a) At CS Energy
I could not see anything on the news section of the CS Energy website … nor did I see any updates here on the company profile LinkedIn.
… but we did find this ‘Video, from CS Energy, of the installation of new turbine and generator stator at Callide C4’.
(b) At Sev.en Global Investments
I also did not see anything under ‘Press Releases’ or ‘News Highlights’ on the 7GI website.
CS ENERGY CALLIDE C4 https://www.csenergy.com.au/ArticleDocuments/251/CS-OHS-53%20-%20High%20Voltage%20Electrical%20Isolation%20and%20Access%2008%2023.pdf.aspx
4.1.1.4 is the way the CS Energy has ensured that they will not switch off the 220vdc again with unit in service
What has CS Energy changed with their 220v batteries and what happened to the castell interlocking key systems that ensure that the UCB is open and the unit is out of service. Where are the critical HV isolation instruction sheets. Who turned off the 220vdc? The C4 unit operator involved would have PSD poor guy. What has CS Energy done to him? He was left in the dark! CS-OHS-53 is available on Google. Snowy hydro HVSI is a good information source
CS Energy’s Ltd Callide C4 Management allowed maintenance staff to isolate the critical 220V DC Battery supply with the C4 unit in Service without informing the unit C4 operator who was in control. He was left with his control panel switched off.
Process Safety proceedure had been removed by CS Energy’s management’s lack of knowledge or understanding
A critical insurance payment has been lost as it is impossible to insure against a lack of knowledge or understanding and behaviour that shows a lack of good sense of judgement.
Technical Writer gobbledygook has been used to try and hide what happened