OOPS somebody has tripped and erased this inconvenient truth (ODT)

ONE OF AUSTRALIA”S newest and most efficient “supercritical” coal-fired power plants – CS Energy’s 750MW Kogan Creek Power Station on the Darling Downs in Queensland – tripped unexpectedly on the weekend, taking out 500MW of generation out of the mix for several hours on a hot Saturday afternoon.

Now, this is neither particularly unusual or even newsworthy, as Hugh Saddler has explained here, coal plants regularly “trip”, even the newest ones. And while inconvenient for the market operator and not great for wholesale prices, this rarely leads to customers losing power.

It does, however, go to the point that coal power – regularly and vigorously championed by the Federal Coalition as the only reliable source of “fair dinkum power” – is not necessarily all that reliable. Particularly not in the heat.

via Power plant failure validates coal inefficiency