It seems that infamous Callide C station is never as far from the news as some stakeholders would like it to be.
On Monday 22nd June 2026 our team noticed several media articles about a new case, being brought before the Federal Court of Australia, between the two joint venture owners.
1) I first noticed this in the AFR early Monday morning, with Angela MacDonald-Smith wrote ‘Queensland’s CS Energy hit with $1b lawsuit at troubled coal plant’ …
Angela’s article begins: ‘Queensland government-owned CS Energy has been hit with a $1 billion-plus legal action by its partner in the Callide C coal power station over allegations that its mismanagement of the generator led to more than 1700 days of lost output.’
2) over at the Australian, Perry Williams had written ‘CS Energy sued for $1bn by partner Sev.en over catastrophic Callide C failures’.
Perry wrote: ‘Sev.en has been in talks over an “extended period” with CS Energy, which operates Callide C, over resolving the financial dispute but failed to agree on any terms.’
3) in our ABC, we also saw Stephen Clarke had written ‘Operator of troubled Qld power plant sued for $1 billion’.
Stephen notes:
(a) With respect to the Callide C4 explosion and aftermath … ‘C4 was offline for more than three years as a result of the incident, and Sev.en GI claims repairs to the unit have cost approximately $250 million.’
(b) With respect to the Callide C3 cooling tower issue … ‘Sev.en said the costs to repair, demolish and rebuild the cooling towers exceeded $330 million.’
(c) And with respect to the C3 outage from April 2025 following boiler clinker explosion … ‘That explosion left the C3 unit offline for another 58 days.’
4) It may well have been reported elsewhere, as well.
This morning (I think we correctly) managed to find reference to this in the Federal Court – so (for ease of future reference) I’ve recorded this here:
Court: Federal Court of Australia, Queensland Registry
Number: QUD384/2026
Title: IG POWER (CALLIDE) LIMITED ACN 082 413 885 v CS ENERGY LIMITED ACN 078 848 745 & ANOR
Filing Date: 19-Jun-2026
… with the following image coming from this URL at comcourts.gov.au on Tuesday morning 23rd June 2026:
It was a “complex chain of factors” and “unforeseen circumstances” that could not have anticipated that the 220 VDC was isolated!
They had removed or never installed the mechcanical interlocks that had been used for many years to stop just that from happening in most power stations!