Generators the Weatherill government is buying to prevent blackouts this summer ahead of the March state election will use 80,000 litres of diesel an hour.
The fleet of generators, currently being shipped from Europe to South Australia, have been used for temporary generation around the world. But those behind the South Australian energy security project, costing taxpayers more than $300 million, yesterday could not say if the generators had ever been used as part of a permanent solution.
In a major revision to his $550m go-it-alone energy plan, Premier Jay Weatherill last week announced nine “state-of-the-art” generators providing up to 276 megawatts would be purchased to provide back-up power for the next two summers.
Rather than build a state-owned gas-fired power station, the generators would be moved to one permanent site in 2019 to become a power plant and be switched to gas.
Yesterday, executives from the Premier’s Department and privately owned electricity distribution company SA Power Networks appeared before parliament’s public works committee. The committee was told the nine hybrid turbines, to be installed at the Adelaide desalination plant in Lonsdale and the Holden site in Elizabeth, would involve “fuel costs in the vicinity of about 80,000 litres an hour for all nine turbines”.
Energy Plan Implementation executive director Sam Crafter said the protocols of when and how to turn the generators on were still being discussed by the Australian Energy Market Operator and SA Power Networks.
Mr Crafter said the objective of the generators was to prevent load shedding, rather than reducing the cost of power, over the next two summers.
“This was not part of the plan targeted at affordability; it was around security and reliability elements of the plan,” he said.
“However, having a more reliable back-up plan does help with the ability for people to have confidence and contracting, and minimising the risk elements that they put into their contracts.”
Mr Crafter said while a permanent site was yet to be chosen, it would require a gas connection.
“We weren’t able to get to a site with a gas connection and also connect to the transmission network by December 1, so that’s why we have landed on the two sites here,” he said.
Project sponsor Nick Smith said the ambitious project was a on a “tight timeline”.
“It is a tight schedule ... there are a lot of things that need to be pulled together to make it happen by December 1,” he said.
Technical support manager Paul Godden said the generators were “intended for both temporary and permanent solutions”.
Liberal MP David Pisoni said it was “extraordinary that you are not able to tell this committee where this is being used permanently”. Mr Crafter said while the generators operated in 2000 sites around the world, “I do not have the specifics of how they operate in each of those sites”.
