Unplanned outage at YWPS2 extended – return to service slated for 15th December 2025 (and may well extend further)

One more article to the list on a busy Wednesday afternoon 24th September 2025 with this snapshot from the ‘Forecast Convergence’ widget in ez2view at the 17:00 dispatch interval.

With respect to this image:

1)  Remember that the ‘Grid’ view allows one to ‘look up a vertical’ in order to ‘see that other dimension of time’;

2)  And that with the ‘MT PASA’ selection, we’re looking at the very useful MT PASA DUID Availability data:

(a)  forever grateful to ERM Power for submitting the ‘ERM Rule Change’

(b)  but equally mystified as to why the AEMC did no see fit to include Semi-Scheduled units in the coverage, leaving them invisible.

3)  With this view we can see that it was for the 15:00 data update run yesterday (Tuesday 23rd September 2025) when the unplanned outage was extended by

(a)  From an earlier return to service date of 22nd October 2025;

(b)  To now have it coming back on 15th December 2025

i.  which is ~8 weeks later than the preceding expectation;

ii.  and which is also, quite coincidentally, the expected RTS for VP5 at present.

What damage is there to the turbine?

Remember that this unit came offline on 26th August 2025 due to ‘LP turbine issues’ … which would never be a good rebid reason to see.  But since that time I have seen little information in the public domain about the extent of the damage.

Today with a little searching I did spot an article in the Herald Sun ominously titled ‘China option for Yallourn turbine fix’:

… and with the added details speaking of ‘sourcing a spare turbine from China’.  But I’m not a subscriber to that, so can’t read further…

It does make me wonder, though, whether 15th December 2025 is going to end up anywhere close to the eventual return to service date?

Other examples in memory

Remember that Callide C4 ended up taking several years to repair:

1)  Though note I am not suggesting it’s ‘apples to apples’ comparison (including that the situation there was complicated by other issues with the cooling tower)

2)  But it might be used as a note of caution that these types of repairs are complex.

There were also cases at Loy Yang A2 that we can recall:

1)  A lengthy outage beginning 18th May 2019; and

2)  Another lengthy outage resulting from an electrical fault at Loy Yang A2 in 2022.

… in both cases with return to service lengthy as the scope of the repairs became more fully known.

What about the rest of the plant?

I’m also curious about the rest of the plant for several reasons, including the following:

1)  I’m assuming that the turbine inlet valves would have slammed shut the instant the issue in the LP turbine was detected.

(a)  I’m wondering what the impact of that might have been further ‘upstream’ in the boiler, with all that latent energy suddenly constrained?

(b)  But I have not seen any reporting about that elsewhere?

2)  On the plus side, however, it would not surprise me if EnergyAustralia is taking advantage of this enforced downtime to conduct maintenance on other parts of the plant at the same time.

Insurance, and Closure considerations?

My vague understanding from the Callide C4 process was that insurance was involved, and that this was one consideration that (amongst other things – politics possibly also being a factor in QLD) meant that alternate plans (such as closure of the unit and replacement with battery units) were unable to be considered.  I would expect insurance is also involved for YWPS2, in which case I wonder if ‘hands are tied’ in terms of other options onsite at YWPS2?

I also wonder what’s the thinking (inside of EnergyAustralia, but also with AEMO and the Victorian Government (complete with its Secret Squirrel support plan) with respect to the mooted closure of Yallourn?

PS1 missed some articles in The Australian

One of our readers has pointed me to the article ‘EnergyAustralia extends Yallourn outage until December’ by Colin Packham in the Australian, which was also published Wednesday 24th September 2025.

This article discusses other options (from Japan) for supply of replacement turbine, and raises other interesting points (for those who have access).

That article superseded ‘EnergyAustralia considers buying a Chinese turbine to solve Yallourn outage’ by Colin Packham on Wednesday 17th September 2025, a week earlier.