A quick look at Pelican Point CCGT, with its recent upgrade

I was away for over a week at the end of January (and it seems it’s taken just as long to ‘catch up’ upon my return).  There are quite a few things that I missed, but I’d just like to highlight two of them here today that form a happy coincidence:

1)  We saw that ESD News had written about ‘Major project: Pelican Point Power Station upgrade’ on Thursday 29th January

That article is well worth reading fully on their site, but I just wanted to reference the following paragraph in context here:

‘Carried out between June and November 2025, the upgrade was designed to make the nearly 25-year-old power station more flexible and responsive.’

… and …

‘The recent upgrade was all about flexibility. A mechanised Diverter Damper Bypass Stack was installed in the same position as the temporary stack. This smart addition means the gas turbine can now switch between open cycle for fast starts and combined cycle for efficiency, giving the power plant more options to respond to changing demand and better support grid stability..’

… particularly noting

(a)  The timing of the upgrade; and

(b)  The reason for the upgrade.

Digging a bit further led me to the Engie Media Release ‘South Australia’s latest battery to join forces with flexible gas’ from 26th November 2025 that said:

‘The 200 MW/ 400 MWh Pelican Point BESS will be built adjacent to the 489 MW Pelican Point Power Station, which has had one of its units recently converted to an open cycle turbine for faster start and ramp up, adding flexibility and resilience for this key asset in South Australia’s energy grid.’

2)  A day before ESD news published their update (two weeks ago today) Dan Lee wrote ‘Our Generator Statistical Digest 2025 has been released today, on Wednesday 28th January 2026’.

I’ve been flipping through the electronic copy of the GSD2025 (in part because of the ASX Australian Power Symposium next week), and came across the ‘A’ Page and ‘B’ Page for the PPCCGT DUID which I’ve copied in here as follows:

I’ve blanked out about half of the content across the two pages, in order that readers can focus on both:

Page 2)  Firstly, the daily stats for Calendar 2025 in the ‘B’ Page on the right

… particularly noting the period at the end of the year (coinciding with part of the upgrade process) that saw the unit operate at lower availability for several months.

Page 1)  Secondly, the 10-year trend of monthly stats (especially how they in the chart highlighted).

… interestingly, despite the lower volume of energy available through calendar 2025 (we see lowest since 2016) what also jumps out at me is the increased percentage of that energy ‘bid in green’.  More on that later…

The GSD2025 ends at 31st December 2025, so we need to utilise our ez2view software (and particularly the ‘Bids & Offers’ widget) to take a look at how operations have changed in 2026 year-to-date:

On this 60-day trend of bids, I’ve highlighted:

1)  The 5 periods of extreme volatility over the time range:

(a)  Sunday 28th December 2025 (a day for which we did not publish any articles at this point)

(b)  Tuesday 6th January 2026;

(c)  Sunday 18th January 2026 (no articles pertaining to South Australia at this point);

(d)  Monday 26th January 2026 (a day for which Dan noted ‘SA sees a long period of sustained high prices near the MPC amid 40°C heat on the evening of Australia Day 2026’, amongst other articles)

(e)  Saturday 7th February 2026 (no articles pertaining to South Australia at this point).

2)  And:

(a)  I’ve highlighted how the increase in availability commences on Thursday evening 22nd January 2026.

(b)  Worth also noting the jump in PASA Avail in the bid from late December 2025 (perhaps related to the completion of part of the upgrade process).

That’s all for now…