Hazelwood Countdown: 53 years old and making more electricity than Australia’s entire wind industry

Three days to go: The Hazelwood shut down begins

The situation in Australia right now:

The total fossil fuel output compared to total wind power generation, NEM, Australian electricity market, 21 March 2017

One old coal plant makes more electricity than all the wind farms

Guest Post by TonyfromOZ and Jo Nova

I’ve been watching the output of all eight generators at Hazelwood closely all month and comparing it to the total wind farm generation across the National Electricity Market (NEM). The old warhorse is a remarkable engineering and economic success.

I’ve kept a total of the power output each day from midnight to midnight and a running cumulative total. So far, the running total output from Hazelwood has always stayed ahead of the total from wind farms. So this 53 year old coal fired plant that is being shut down next week has produced more energy than the 43 wind plants on the National Energy Market. Even if we could store the energy from the wind farms, it still doesn’t add up to the same as one very ancient coal plant. The shut down starts in three days time on Friday March 24th.

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