There are growing safety concerns at Yallourn Power Station in Victoria, one of Australia's biggest coal-fired power plants. Experts say that could be bad news heading into a long, hot summer.
"But these sorts of structural failures are extremely significant."Tony Wood from the Grattan Institute said Yallourn, like all ageing power stations, was becoming less reliable and increasingly prone to problems."The analogy of the human body is not too far off because something like 50 per cent of the money that's ever going to be spent on your health is going to be spent in the last five years or so," Mr Wood said.
A dean at Federation University Australia, Professor Mareels said coal-fired generators were under mounting pressure from renewable energy on two fronts. He said no plants were more exposed than Yallourn, where key pieces of equipment such as the boilers were being pushed to breaking point."That's a really big deal."If your boiler doesn't work, then nothing works."Professor Mareels said Yallourn's problems highlighted the urgent need to build capacity that could replace retiring coal-fired generators, but worried it was not happening quickly enough.
"Planning to take a generator of that size out of the system needs to be compensated for and it takes a lot of time and effort.
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