State narrowly dodges power break down

Australia’s biggest state looks to have narrowly avoided a widespread power break down, but only after residents, businesses and government employees took steps to “reduce demand”, the state’s energy minister has said.

In a statement on Wednesday evening, NSW Energy Minister Penny Sharpe confirmed the Australian Energy Market Operator had downgraded its blackout warning for the state.

“The risk of power supply shortage in NSW has considerably reduced and AEMO has downgraded its warning,” Sharpe said.

“We thank the households, businesses and NSW government employees who have taken steps to reduce demand on the system this evening.”

AEMO is expected to provide an update on the stability of the grid shortly.

Earlier, the market operator had warned heatwave conditions and the unavailability of major power stations had reduced electricity reserves for the afternoon.

“Ahead of this tight supply-demand period, AEMO has requested that all available generation and transmission resources be deployed to ensure consumer electricity needs are met,” the agency said at 3pm.

“Additional reserves have also been secured through the Reliability and Emergency Reserve Trader mechanism to help manage the forecasted shortfall.

“The NSW government has enacted protocols to reduce electricity demand from government agencies.”

In the morning, NSW Premier Chris Minns urged businesses and homes to decrease their energy consumption between 3pm and 8pm to reduce the risk of blackouts amid the ongoing heatwave across the state, which is anticipated to become the “nature of Sydney summers” in the future.

Ms Sharpe also said in the morning the state’s power reserve would be “tight” on Wednesday afternoon, and a “range of action” would be taken to reduce demand on the energy grid.

AEMO said the peak period for power use in NSW would be between 3pm and 8pm – the time when people usually return home from work and school and output from the state’s network of rooftop solar panels declines.

The NSW government activated two protocols to reduce the likelihood of load shedding and blackouts, with government agencies, local councils and ACT and Commonwealth agencies reducing their electricity use between 3pm and 8pm.

The second voluntary demand reduction was requested of significant utilities in the state, including Sydney Water, some energy providers and local councils.

Businesses and households in NSW were asked to consider following the same route, making “small changes” to their electricity use between 3pm and 8pm, including high-powered appliances like washing machines, dishwashers and pool filters, as “every small step makes a difference”.

Energy could be used as normal until 3pm, as rooftop solar panels power much of the state, the political leaders stated.

However, once the solar power production slows down, people were encouraged to cool down their houses with airconditioning before curbing their energy usage.

“Solar is going gangbusters at the moment, so if you have airconditioning, go for it as hard as possible and cool down the house before you get home tonight, if you can,” the Energy Minister told reporters on Wednesday.

Premier Minns has also urged the public to “be careful” as the ongoing heatwave grips the state, encouraging them to “stay in the shade”, keep hydrated and “try and avoid direct sunlight”.

“This is reasonably early … in the year to have a series of days well-above 30 degrees, but increasingly this will become the nature of Sydney summers, and obviously, we have to adapt to that,” he told reporters on Wednesday.

The warning comes after power was restored for thousands in Wagga Wagga after a storm caused an outage on the Transgrid transmission line between Wagga Wagga and Albury, leaving many residents in the dark for hours.

Reports of a blackout were first recorded at about 5.30am on Wednesday, affecting more than 6000 customers and was restored shortly after 9am.

Residents across southern NSW were impacted, with parts of Wagga Wagga, Culcairn, Henty, Uranquinty, Holbrook and surrounding areas experiencing a power outage.

A spokesman for Essential Energy told NewsWire power had been restored through a back feeder line.

They said the outage was “caused by fault on the Transgrid transmission line between Wagga Wagga and Albury and is not related to load shedding”.

A Transgrid spokesman told NewsWire the outage was triggered by early morning storms in the Riverina region, with storm-related debris cleared from the area before 10am.

Those impacted by the outage were notified of the power outage via SMS on Wednesday morning, a spokesman for Essential Energy confirmed.

Residents have also been encouraged to stay “at least eight metres away from fallen powerlines or damaged electricity equipment”.

A blackout also hit the beachside suburb of Cronulla in the afternoon, with power provider Ausgrid reporting nearly 1900 customer had lost power about 4pm.

But the blackout is likely connected to an underground fault rather than heat, an Ausgrid spokeswoman told NewsWire.

The outages hit the streets north of the Cronulla train station close to Cronulla beach, according to the Ausgrid outage map.

But some businesses in the area continued to trade normally and were not impacted, including the Hoyts cinema on Kingsway Rd.

Ausgrid expects power to be restored for affected businesses about 6.30pm.

The outages come as a heatwave sweeps the state, sending temperatures soaring to 39C in some parts.

In order to enable stable supplies of electricity across the state, AEMO said it intends to launch negotiations with companies to help reduce the demand, known as the Reliability and Emergency Reserve Trader (RERT) scheme.

The RERT scheme is a rarely-used system that “(protects) the reliability of the national electricity market” due to an increased demand for electricity as households swelter through the heatwave.

On Tuesday, AEMO warned that energy supplies may be at “risk” as the sweltering heat continues into Wednesday.

“We are experiencing some quite unseasonably hot weather … and effectively that is a summer heatwave while we are still here in spring,” AEMO CEO Daniel Westerman said. Combined with scheduled maintenance works on three of the state’s four coal-fired power stations in Bayswater, Vales Point and Eraring, the AEMO warned residents of a “tightness in electricity supply”.

“It is pretty normal both generation and transmission to use periods in autumn and spring to undertake maintenance activities that do need to happen,” he continued.