Flight to View Power Stations
July 2019

There's a lot of talk these days about the need for new power plants.

There are several power plants of different types near here,

so I wanted to fly out and have a look at them.

This is the Tarong power plant, near Nanango, Qld.
Built in the 80's, it's an example of the mess that old-fashioned coal-fired plants generate....
Coal mine in the background and ash disposal in foreground.....

There are actually two power plants on this site.
On the left is the old Tarong coal-fired plant, max power 1400 mW, with lots of smoke...
Several efforts have been made to reduce those emissions, 
but not very successful it seems....

On the right is the Tarong North power plant, 443 mW, on line 2003.
With a much cleaner exhaust 
due to the more modern supercritical design, 
and filtering and bagging particulate from the exhaust.
Looks much better....

View of the Tarong plant from the mine site....

This is the Kogan Creek coal-fired power station near Chinchilla, Qld.

750 mW, commissioned in 2007.

This is a good example of a supercritical power plant.

There's been a lot of effort here to clean up their act.

It's air-cooled by radiators instead of the steam condensing towers

so very much cuts down on water needs.

The ash is pumped back to the mine site and buried under the tailings.

There was an effort to use solar boost to pre-heat the steam,

which sounds like a great concept,

but 'technical' and particularly management issues, 

caused the project to fail before completion......

The plant had a complete failure on a hot day in Jan 2019,

and has had a series of other unexplained failures last year.

It seems that these supercritical plants record a higher failure rate.....

The day after this photo, it was scheduled to shut down for two months

for a scheduled overhaul, costing $91 million.

The last shutdown overhaul was just three years ago, 

so that's costing $30 million a year, plus two months downtime,

just for such regular maintenance.....

Doesn't sound like low cost coal-fired power.....

The view of the Kogan Creek plant from the mine site.
The waste ash being prepared for burial in the mine,
and remedial landscaping under way.
Good effort at cleaning up the site.

These are three gas-fired power plants and a solar plant west of Dalby, Qld.

Braemar 1 and 2 - (502 mW), and (450 mW) to the left of the transmission line,

 Darling Downs power station (630 mW) and solar farm (110 mW) to the right of the line.

Ideally situated right on a major transmission line with gas fields all round.
These gas-fired plants are ideal for working along with solar and wind power,
because they can be in standby when there's plenty of solar and wind
then fired up in minutes when needed.
.
A coal-fired station can't be turned on and off at will, 
so must keep running even when the power isn't required.

These gas-fired plants are so much cleaner and more efficient than coal-fired.

Seems to me that these are the extra power plants that we need 
to supplement the solar and wind that's coming on so rapidly.

The Condamine gas-fired power plant near Miles, Qld. (140 mW)
Another really tidy gas-fired power plant.

The gas comes from fields like this.

A whole lot better than open-cut coal mines I reckon.....

There have been issues with some early coal seam gas projects,

but better techniques and tighter regulations are promising.

And the gas is transported easily with minimal disruption in pipelines like this.

As you can gather, I'm a fan of domestic gas.
And Australia hasn't really started accessing the shale gas,
which has dramatically lowered energy costs in the USA.
There are a lot of good possibilities here....

John Gilpin 
July 2019

p.s.- 

Then I remembered this other type of power station near here, 

so went to have a look today.

Wivenhoe pumped hydro power station.

Water is pumped from the lower Wivenhoe dam up into the upper dam

at off-peak times when the power is cheap

then releases the water to generate power at peak times when the price is high.
It can generate 500 mW for 10 hrs.

At least that's the way it's meant to work......

Read the link to see what's really going on....