newy.com.au – Commissioning of the long-delayed Kurri Kurri Power Station has suffered another setback after a technical problem prevented the plant from completing a startup on backup diesel fuel.
Snowy Hydro has paused diesel testing while its engineers work at the Loxford site with turbine manufacturer Mitsubishi Heavy Industries. The publicly owned company said it hoped to resume the tests later in August but did not give a firm date or say whether the problem would further delay commercial operations.
The company said the issue “prevented the station from completing its startup sequence on backup diesel fuel”. It has not disclosed the cause or identified which of the plant’s two generating units was involved.
The interruption extends a stop-start commissioning program during which advertised testing windows have been rescheduled or cancelled as work on the plant has progressed. Snowy Hydro has used its community updates page to give residents short-term testing schedules, including warnings about periods of elevated noise and visible exhaust during some activities.
Commissioning is the stage between construction and normal operation. Engineers repeatedly start and stop the generating units, run them at different output levels and test their fuel, electrical, control and safety systems. The plant must also demonstrate that it can synchronise with the electricity grid and respond correctly when equipment or operating conditions change.
The 660-megawatt station has two open-cycle turbines capable of running primarily on natural gas, with diesel available as a backup. An open-cycle gas turbine works much like a large jet engine: compressed air is mixed with fuel and ignited, with the resulting hot gases spinning a turbine connected to an electricity generator.
Such plants can start more quickly than traditional coal-fired generators, although they are generally less fuel-efficient than combined-cycle gas plants. Kurri Kurri is intended mainly to operate during periods of high demand or tight electricity supply, including when wind and solar generation is low, rather than run continuously.
The former federal Coalition government announced the project in 2021 as dispatchable capacity ahead of the Liddell coal-fired power station’s closure in April 2023. It is being built on part of the former Kurri Kurri aluminium smelter site at Loxford.
The plant was initially expected to be operating by the end of 2023, but construction and commissioning delays have pushed it well beyond that target. Its forecast cost has also risen from an initial estimate of about $600 million to more than $1 billion.
Snowy Hydro said technical investigations would continue over coming days. Residents can check testing schedules through the project’s community updates page or contact its 24-hour hotline on 1800 570 529.
