Northern Power Station

The Northern Power Station is located in Port Augusta, South Australia. The power station is operated by Flinders Power, a subsidiary of Alinta Energy. It uses brown coal, was commissioned in 1985 and generates 540 megawatts. The sole supply of coal for the power station is supplied from the Leigh Creek mine, 280 kilometres to the north..

Fading away
Alinta Energy, which bought the power station in 2006, describes it as being an "baseload" supplier to the power grid. The Australian Energy Market Operator report that the level of utilisation of the plant in recent recent has slumped from an average of over 90% in the three years from July 2006 to just under 59% in 2011/12. AEMO also report that Alinta has advised it that the Northern Power Station will be "fully operational in the summer but only available over the next two winter periods after a recall time of three weeks. From October 2014 Northern Power Station will return to normal operation all year."

Handout from carbon tax package
Alinta Energy received $59,482,064.73 of the $1 billion cash payments given out in 2011/12 to the operators of the most polluting coal-fired power stations. The cash was paid from the Energy Security Fund which was established as a part of the carbon tax legislation passed in 2011. Alinta sought the payment for the "Augusta power stations" inferring it was for both the Northern Power Station and the Playford power station.

Greenhouse gas emissions
In 2010 it was estimated that the Northern Power Station emitted 3.42 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalents.

Related SourceWatch articles

 * South Australia and coal
 * Australia and coal
 * Australian Coal Association
 * Queensland and coal
 * Western Australia and coal

External articles

 * Cameron England, "New lease of life for power station", Adelaide Now, November 06, 2012.