No power loss after blaze cuts three units from network but planned maintenance work may cause blackouts on weekend

This article is more than 3 years old

This article is more than 3 years old

A fire at a power station in Adelaide knocked out part of South Australia’s electricity generation capacity on Friday as the state faced the prospect of weekend blackouts because of planned maintenance work.

Three units at the Torrens Island power station were cut from the network at 3.35pm on Friday because of the blaze. The nearby Pelican Point power station also tripped at the same time but the incident did not result in blackouts.

To meet demand, the Australian Energy Market Operator directed additional generation to turn on. Aemo also asked consumers to conserve electricity where possible to avoid the need for load shedding.

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It said that could include running air-conditioners at a higher temperature of about 26C.

The energy minister, Tom Koutantonis, said there were no immediate reports of injury at the Torrens Island site, which is part of South Australia’s energy infrastructure.

The Metropolitan Fire Service said it sent four fire units to the facility but staff had managed to extinguish a series of spot fires before they arrived.

The loss of generating capacity in SA prompted the spot price of electricity to surge to the maximum limit of $14,000 a megawatt hour.

The incident also came after Aemo warned of potential blackouts over the weekend because of planned work on a transmission line in Victoria.

It said supplies were expected to be sufficient but there would be a lack of reserve power for almost 12 hours on both Saturday and Sunday.

Somewhat prophetically, it said if there was an issue with the network during the planned outage of the Moorabool to Mortlake line, then South Australia could separate from the rest of the national electricity market with likely interruptions to power supplies.

“There are sufficient capacity reserves in the South Australia region to meet electricity demand but following the next credible contingency it may not be possible to bring the required additional capacity into service in time to avoid automatic under-frequency load shedding,” Aemo said on Friday.