As most readers here will know:
- Last week in Sydney was the two-day 2026 ACES conference and mini-exhibition, organised by the Clean Energy Council
- During which we were pleased to have a number of the team (at Global-Roam Pty Ltd) attend
On the sides of the conference, amongst the large number of conversations I had was with one person (who will remain nameless) who said to me ‘I hear you’re going to write an article about Yallourn?’ … but a phone conversation today (with a different person) prompts us to commence this analysis with some overview information (utilising the ‘Trends Engine’ in ez2view) as part 1.
… so, for those two people, here you are!
A coincidental address at the National Press Club
Given Chris Bowen is speaking at the National Press Club today (lunchtime Wednesday 5th August 2026) with a very apt title of “Energy Security in an Uncertain World”, and given Victoria appears to be close to appointing a replacement Energy Minister, I thought that these two trends might be particularly apt conversation starters today.
About the subject line…
Whilst many readers might have drawn the link to that infamous Monty Python sketch from Life of Brian with John Cleese (Reg) asking ‘what have the Romans ever done for us?’ perhaps it’s worth pointing out for others?
A 10-year trend of daily stats for Yallourn Power Station
Here’s a trend of daily stats for the Yallourn Power Station (aggregated across the whole station), utilising the ‘Trends Engine’ in ez2view:
Readers should remember:
1) That they can click on the image for a larger screen view;
2) That a megawatt (MW) is a rate, whilst a megawatt hour (MWh) is a volume;
3) And that those with a licence to the software can open their own copy of this query here.
Obviously there are a large number of stories that can be read in such a long-range chart … but perhaps most pertinent are the recent stats are the more recent ones. With what jumps out to me first being the high minimum output level across all four units seen in the colder months of this year.
Zooming into 2026 ytd for Yallourn Power Station
Utilising the same query and zooming into see just 2026 ytd we see the following:
Clients can click for the trend query for this one…
This reinforces how strongly Yallourn has been running as the weather has cooled.
Questions about the looming closure (in ~2 years)
This obviously prompts questions about the looming closure of Yallourn … which current plans have occurring in mid-2028 (which is only 2 years away now).
For instance, here are two to get you started:
1) where is the Energy going to come from (in just 2 years) to replace all that Energy that Yallourn has been producing this winter?
(a) in July 2026, the station produced roughly 959,000 MWh on an ‘as generated’ basis … so roughly 863,100MWh delivered onto the transmission grid (after ‘auxiliaries’ used onsite).
(b) compare this with:
i. 1,331,000 MWh produced on an ‘as generated’ basis from all wind farms in Victoria (so roughly 154% of what Yallourn provided)
ii. 171,000 MWh produced on an ‘as generated’ basis from all Large Solar Farms in Victoria (so roughly 20% of what Yallourn provided)
… and both give the reader some sense of the scale of growth in VRE required:
i. To close Yallourn in 2028 (in just two years time) we’d be required to grow the entire fleet of wind farms in the Victorian region by 65% again of the entire wind fleet in Victoria.
… obviously lots of assumptions here (curtailment, and imports from other regions etc), but a useful ‘back of the envelope’.
ii. You’d need to install 5 times more Large Solar than Victoria currently possesses
iii. Remember that batteries do not produce energy, in net terms (because of round-trip in-efficiency, they are a net load on the grid)
2) where the Capacity is going to come from as well!
(a) Through July 2026, the output range from Yallourn station as a whole was:
i. as low as 928MW (just at the start of the month, we see above … but commonly no lower than ~1,200MW for much of the month)
ii. as high as 1,423MW
(b) Whereas for Wind through July 2026, the output range across all Wind Farms was:
i. a low of 0MW (literally … I had to check)
ii. a high of 4,518MW
(c) For Solar through July:
i. A minimum of 0MW (understandable)
ii. A maximum of 1,215MW
(d) And across the whole Large Battery fleet in Victoria, the peak battery discharge was 1,346MW (across the entire fleet).
Obviously more will come to mind…
There is also rooftop solar, which has YoY growth of +30GWh/month in winter in VIC. So that “only” leaves 800GWh to replace in 2028. This is obviously variable as both May and June recorded VIC’s first ever YoY declines in rooftop solar (July is back on trend at +33GWh/month YoY).
VIC grid batteries will be at 10GWh by mid-2028, which gives ~500MW overnight average discharge. So “only” 700-900MW of capacity to replace. That’s assuming they can charge each day: +30GWh/month is +60GWh/month by July 2028 = +2GWh/day of extra rooftop solar. So “only” another 8GWh/day of new July generation needed to fill those batteries.
I expect Yallourn will be subsidised to stay open for a few more years as that will be cheaper than running gas. Perhaps operating seasonally like Playford B. Marinus is maybe 2030, Snowy 2 maybe 2029. Some solar hybrids in the North of the state seem like the best option.
Corop (230MW/704MWh) seems like the most likely to happen – might take OX2 a few months to sort financing out after taking over the project in July. Barwon (250MW/500MWh) and Elaine (125MW/250MWh) would also help, but Elgin so far hasn’t closed any of its projects. Only other one I know of that could be running around 2028 is Derby (95MW/210MWh). Ah, there’s Meadow Ck (332MW/1,000MWh) that got approvals in June. Cooba solar farm has approvals, but not much news in over a year from that one. Hazelwood North not expected to start until 2028 and operations in 2031, so too far out to consider.
We’ve got 2.7GW of gas that ran at 6% capacity factor in July with a daily peak of 28% on July 8 so IMO plenty of capacity for Yallourn to shut, likely with a bit of a price spike but not as bad as 2016.
Might give the industry impetus to build more generation as I’m not sure $53/MWh is helping anything get to FID.
And I’m hearing more and more suggestions lately for the NEM to have a capacity market that includes gas (John Titchen on Energy Insiders, Marc England from Transgrid on Cleaning Up with Michael Liebreich). I don’t think new gas will be built without this, and whilst 2028 is feasible without more gas the Vic 2035 plan IMO isn’t feasible.
Question 1 is interesting, but let’s do a simple thought experiment.
Imagine Hazelwood had not yet been retired and had operated over the last twelve months producing, say, 9 TWh (a shade over 1,000 MW average, from its 1,600 MW nameplate capacity). All other supply capacity on the system the same as now.
Would we look at that figure, compare it to the energy produced by Victorian wind and solar over the same period which was about 16 TWh, and conclude that in order to “replace Hazelwood” we would need to increase wind and solar capacity by more than 50%?
Of course not. The Victorian region of the NEM had ample energy available to meet demand throughout 2025/26 without Hazelwood, while still exporting about 4 TWh net to adjoining regions.
What the thought experiment illustrates is that power systems inevitably have substantial “latent energy capability”: flexibility to produce more or less energy to meet varying net demand requirements. So looking at an individual plant’s actual levels of production over a period and assuming this could only be replaced by new supply is completely wrong.
Looked at another way, in 2025/26 there was about 4.4 TWh of available energy not produced by the Loy Yang A & B stations (which ran at 80% utilisation of their available capacity after outages), and 3 TWh of offloaded or curtailed large-scale wind and solar energy which was not supplied. Not all of this >7 TWh of “latent” energy would have been available at the right times to “replace” Yallourn, but a large chunk of it would have. And that’s before thinking about net exports to other regions, offloaded / curtailed wind and solar in those regions, or energy available from gas plant.