Falling water levels at hydroelectric dams and coal-fired power stations are ringing alarm bells as the NSW drought raises the risk of blackouts in the south-east this summer.
While plant owners say the situation is far from the crisis of last decade, the energy market operator highlighted the threat in its latest electricity outlook on Friday, noting the situation for water availability for hydro and thermal power generation would be "closely monitored" and reported on later this year.
Water levels at 14pc Water levels at Snowy Hydro’s plants are "on the low side" at about 14 per cent, compared with a mid-20s per cent level a year ago, said Snowy chief executive Paul Broad.
"Our real worry is that the forecast for the rest of the winter is really dry, and so making sure what’s up there runs into the dams," Mr Broad said, noting that in 2007 water levels fell as low as 3 per cent while the snowpack was very shallow as well.
AGL Energy, owner of the large Bayswater coal power station in the Hunter Valley, which had to curtail generation in 2008 due to water shortages, said prolonged drought over many years "is a challenge for managing reliable electricity production".
AGL Macquarie draws cooling water for Bayswater from the Hunter River under licenses negotiated with the state government.
Origin Energy also said the drought wasn’t affecting water availability at its Eraring coal generator in NSW, the country’s biggest, which uses water from Lake Macquarie, nor at its Shoalhaven hydropower plant.
"Customers can be assured that even through the drought and hot summer months Origin power stations can continue to play a critical role powering NSW, with secure water supply for both Shoalhaven pumped hydro scheme and Eraring, which accounts for around a quarter of the state’s power needs," said head of energy supply Greg Jarvis.
Weekend outages The concerns on summer power supplies come after outages during the weekend in two interstate power cables, causing mass blackouts in NSW and elsewhere as Queensland and South Australia were "islanded" from the rest of the grid.
Still, Mr Broad described Mr Taylor as having "enormous knowledge" about Snowy Hydro’s operations and noted he is the grandson of William Hudson, the engineer who headed up construction of the Snowy hydroelectric scheme.