Coal’s long goodbye: NSW generator blazes a trail

afr.com:

It’s no longer “on” and then “off” when it comes to Australia’s coal power stations, as developments this week have made clear.

Past examples of shutdowns of the carbon-polluting plants – with five months’ notice in the case of Hazelwood in Victoria and even the seven years’ advance warning for AGL Energy’s Liddell plant in NSW – may turn out to be out-of-the-ordinary in their finality.

EnergyAustralia’s Mount Piper plant in NSW is one of the country’s most flexible coal power generators. Nick Moir

While Australia’s energy market operator has been constant in its predictions of an earlier demise of coal power, EnergyAustralia this week revealed a plan for its NSW coal power station that envisages another 17 years of operation, but increasingly in a “reserve” role, only running when needed to fill in the gaps between wind and solar power.

Managing director Mark Collette outlined a scenario where the 1400-megawatt Mount Piper generator would gradually move from ramping down each of its units to about 20 per cent of their capacity to fit alongside renewable energy, to switching off altogether for a couple of days at a time.

The stoppages would then gradually increase as replacement supply comes into the system, lengthening to perhaps weeks, if not months, at a time when cheap wind and solar is plentiful, but leaving the plant still available to generate when needed to prevent price spikes during cold, cloudy and windless winter weeks.

“It will be a progressive change,” Mr Collette told AFR Weekend. “As the new capacity is added online, we run less but we keep the capacity available for those really difficult parts of the energy transition.”

It is the first time a power station operator in Australia has outlined such an