Hazelwood — the shutdown begins — lowest cost electricity forced out by government decree

TonyFromOz reports that some generators are switching off. I don’t expect we will see any particular crisis or price spike this week, but I know people are very interested in this process. If only the Victorian government saw value in keeping an old cheap power generator going. Marvel that even though this plant can sell electricity at 3c per KWhr it is unable to make a profit. There is no free market in electricity in Australia, only the illusion of it. — Jo

Hazelwood Update – The shutdown has started

At 1.51AM Monday 27th March, Unit 8 was the first Unit at Hazelwood to shut down. It reduced power at around 3.45PM on Sunday afternoon from around 170MW to between 128MW and 134MW, trying vainly to stay operational for as long as possible. At 11.05PM Sunday night, power started falling even more, leading me to believe it was starting the shutdown process, which took almost three hours. Power fell off over the next almost three hours and finally, it stopped generating at 1.51AM on Monday morning.

At the end of Sunday, Hazelwood had generated 14.8% more power than every wind plant in Australia over the […]