Owner(s) EnergyAustralia (Yallourn W)

Location of the Yallourn Power Station

Country Australia
Location Yallourn, Victoria
Coordinates 38°10′42″S 146°20′21″E Coordinates: 38°10′42″S 146°20′21″E
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yallourn_Power_Station

Construction began 1921

Commission date Decommission date Units operational
Yallourn A: 1928 A: 1969 A: 70 MW (94,000 hp)
Yallourn B: 1932 B: 1970 B: 100 MW (130,000
hp)
Yallourn C: 1954 C: 1985 C: 120 MW (160,000
hp)
Yallourn D: 1957 D: 1986 D: 120 MW (160,000
hp)
Yallourn E: 1961 E: 1989 E: 2 × 120 MW
(160,000 hp)
Yallourn W: 1973- Operating 2021 1,480 MW (1,980,000 W: 2 × 350 MW
1982 hp) (470,000 hp)
W: 2 × 375 MW
(503,000 hp)

Owner(s) EnergyAustralia (Yallourn W)

Thermal power station Primary fuel Brown coal Power generation

The Yallourn Power Station is a complex of six brown coal–fuelled thermal power stations built
progressively from the 1920s to the 1960s. Located in the Latrobe Valley of Victoria, Australia, the
complex was situated beside the Latrobe River, with the company town of Yallourn located to the
south west. Today only the 1,450 megawatts (1,940,000 hp) Yallourn W plant remains, the second
largest power station in Victoria which supplies 22% of the state's electricity and 8% of the National
Electricity Market needs. The adjacent open cut brown coal mine is the largest open cut coal mine in
Australia, with reserves sufficient to meet the projected needs of the power station to 2032.

Yallourn A, B, C, D and E[edit]

A map of the major towns and coal-fired power stations in the Latrobe Valley.
Power generation at Yallourn was first proposed in 1919 when the Victorian Government appointed
a committee to investigate the use of coal from the Latrobe Valley. The plant was operated by the
State Electricity Commission of Victoria, and the first sod was turned at the Yallourn Power Station
site in 1921. Along with the power station, the town of Yallourn was constructed nearby to house
workers of the plant. Coal was moved from the open cut mine to the power station by the Yallourn
900 mm Railway, a narrow-gauge electric railway running along temporary tracks in the mine. The
Morwell Interconnecting Railway was later provided to the Morwell power station and briquette
works for the transfer of Yallourn coal to the briquette works, as Morwell mine (now called
Hazelwood mine) coal did not briquette satisfactorily.
In the complex, Yallourn A was the first plant opened in 1928. "A" station consisted of 6 Metro
Vickers sets each 12.5 MW. Steam was supplied by 12 John Thompson chain grate boilers each
producing 80,000 lb/hr at 260 PSI and 640 deg F.
Yallourn B entering service on 11 April 1932. B station consisted of 4 Metro Vickers sets of 25 MW.
Steam was supplied by 10 John Thompson chain grate boilers each producing 120,000 lb/hr at 260
PSI and 670 deg F. Yallourn A was demolished in 1968, and Yallourn B following in the early 1970,s.
Yallourn C, D and E stations were commissioned in 1954, 1957 and 1961 respectively,[6] and
provided the bulk of Victoria's power until Hazelwood Power Station became operational in the mid
1960s. Yallourn A, B, C & D were constructed as 'range'-type power stations that connected
individual boilers to a common steam range before connecting to the turbine.
C station had 2 turbo alternators, each 60 megawatts (80,000 hp). Steam was supplied by 6
pulverized coal burning water tube boilers. Each boiler produced 200,000 lbs/hour at 645 psi and
825 deg F. D station was exactly the same as C station.
E station had 2 units, each 120 megawatts (160,000 hp) with hydrogen cooled generators but no
stator water cooling. Steam came from 2 PF boilers, each producing 950,000 lbs/hour at 1600 psi
and 1050 deg F. Yallourn E was the first unitised station constructed in the complex, as each boiler
was paired with its own turbine.
Yallourn E station ceased generating power in January 1989, with C, D and E plants being demolished
from 1995 onwards, with the site being cleared by 1999. The narrow gauge railway in the mine was
replaced by conveyor belts in 1984, and the Morwell Interconnecting Railway was replaced by road
haulage in 1993.
Briquette factory
In conjunction with the power station, the open cut mine also fed a briquette factory operated by
the SECV. The first stage of the factory came into operation in November 1924 with a capacity of
about 400 long tons (410 t) per day, with a major extension approved in 1927 and completed early in
1931 increasing the capacity to 1,200 long tons (1,200 t) per day. Using German technology, the
factory also generated electricity, with a maximum output of approximately 10 megawatts (13,000
hp) it produced 220 megawatt-hours (790 GJ) daily, of which about 50 megawatt-hours (180 GJ) was
used in the factory and 170 megawatt-hours (610 GJ) was fed into the state grid.[8] The plant closed
in 1970, after the discovery and reticulation of natural gas in Victoria which led to the closure of the
major Lurgi briquette gasification plant in Morwell. Remaining demand for briquettes was met by the
Morwell briquette factory that was opened in 1959. It was shut down in 2014.
Yallourn W.
The current Yallourn W power station was built in the 1970s at Yallourn West. The four units are
Toshiba built 3 stage reheat turbines with steam supplied by four 'subcritical' pulverized coal-fired
boilers.[11] In 1969 it was announced that the town of Yallourn would be demolished to enable an
expansion of the coal mine, with demolition commenced in the 1970s and completed by 1982.[12]
Yallourn W power station was the second Victorian generating entity to be privatised in 1996 when it
was sold to a consortium including PowerGen, Itochu, AMP, Hastings and NSW State Super. The
plant is currently owned by Hong Kong-based CLP and operates under the Energy Australia brand
(formally TRUenergy).
With the coal supply from Yallourn's East Field mine expected to be exhausted in 2007, work
commenced on a diversion of the nearby Morwell River in 2002 to enable access to further coal
sources from the Maryvale coal field. Without this, the power station potentially faced significant
modification or even closure. The Morwell River Diversion, and the access to coal supplies it allows,
will ensure Yallourn can continue to operate until 2032. The 3.5-kilometre (2.2 mi) diversion was
constructed over five years at a cost of A$122 million, and came in on time and on budget. On 6 June
2012, a levee bank failure resulted in the flooding of the Yallourn coal mine causing damage to its
infrastructure and cutting fuel supply to the power station.
In 2007 the station's name was shortened to be "Yallourn Power Station". In late 2007, a subsidence
in the mine wall resulted in the Latrobe River bursting through, damaging coal conveying plant and
flooding low levels of the mine. Urgent earthwork repairs were made with the co-operation of other
power generators. Coal production was limited for some weeks.
Carbon Monitoring for Action estimates this power station emits 10.7 million tonnes (11.8×106 short
tons; 10.5×106 long tons) of greenhouse gases each year as a result of burning coal. The Australian
Government announced the introduction of a Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme commencing in
2010 to help combat climate change. It is expected to impact on emissions from power stations. The
National Pollutant Inventory provides details of other pollutant emissions, but not CO2.
Fire
On 21 June 2013 a fire broke out in a control panel causing three units to trip.[17] This multi-unit
contingency caused a "Pricing Event" on the National Electricity Market, and the Market Operator
reported the event as part of an industrial action campaign.[18] Police later announced their finding
that the event was an act of sabotage.
State Electricity Commission of Victoria
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_Electricity_Commission_of_Victoria

Type State Owned Enterprise

Industry Electricity
Successor AusNet Services
Founded
1918; 102 years ago
Defunct 1994
Headquarters Melbourne, Victoria
Area served Victoria
Website
www.secv.vic.gov.au

The State Electricity Commission of Victoria (SECV, ECV or SEC) is a government-owned electricity
supplier in Victoria, Australia. It was set up in 1918, and by 1972 it was the sole agency in the state
for electricity generation, transmission, distribution and supply. Control of the SECV was by a Board
of Commissioners appointed by the Victorian Government. After 1993, the SECV was disaggregated
into generation, transmission and distribution companies, which were further split and then
privatised in the mid to late 1990s. However, electricity supply agreements with the Portland and
Point Henry aluminium smelters were retained by SECV, which continued as their electricity supplier.
Background.
SECV shield as used from formation until the 1970s
When electricity generation first became practical, the main uses were lighting of public buildings,
street lighting and later, electric trams. As a result, electricity generation and distribution tended to
be carried out by municipalities, by private companies under franchise to the councils, or by joint
private-public bodies.
Prior to the establishment of SECV, electricity was generated and distributed by a number of private
and municipal generator and distribution companies. The main municipal-owned power station in
Victoria was opened in 1892 by the Melbourne City Council, which generated electricity from its
Spencer Street Power Station for the city’s residents, as well as being a wholesale supplier to other
municipal distributors. The main privately owned company was the Melbourne Electric Supply
Company which was established in 1899 and operated under 30-year franchise arrangement with a
number of other municipal distributors. The company operated the Richmond and Geelong power
stations. The final major generator of electricity was the Victorian Railways which operated the
Newport Power Station, for the supply of electricity to Melbourne's suburban trains. These early
generators all relied on a fuel supply provided by the strike prone black coal industry of New South
Wales.
Victoria has large reserves of brown coal located in the Latrobe Valley, to the east of Melbourne.
Brown coal has a low energy density due to the high moisture content and would have been
uneconomic to transport to Melbourne. However, advances in electrical transmission technology
allowed electricity to be generated near the fuel source and transmitted to the consumer.

History
Formation
Following an overseas tour in 1911, Herbert Reah Harper, engineer with the Melbourne City Council
Electricity Supply Department, recognised the potential for Victorian brown coal, after seeing
Germany's use, and recommended the establishment of a public utility on the lines of the Ontario
Hydro Electricity. He was subsequently appointed to the Victorian Government Brown Coal Advisory
Committee (chaired by Department of Mines director Hyman Herman), which reported in
September 1917. It recommended the establishment of an Electricity Commission to develop the
brown coal reserves, construct a power station and transmission lines. In December 1918,
Parliament passed a bill to establish a Commission with both regulatory and investigative powers,
including taking over the enforcement of the existing Electric Light and Power Act, which regulated
all electricity generators and distributors.
The Victorian Electricity Commissioners were created in 1919 under the Electricity Commissioners
Act 1918 and took over administration of the Electric Light and Power Act from the Public Works
Department.

Sugarloaf Power Station, part of the Rubicon Scheme

The Electricity Commissioners became the State Electricity Commission of Victoria (SECV) on 10
January 1921 under the State Electricity Commission Act 1920.[6] Sir John Monash was both
chairman and general manager and Harper was the first chief engineer, retiring in 1936.
Capital works
The first capital works to be carried out by the SECV was the development of the 50 MW Yallourn
Power Station, briquette factory, and open-cut brown coal mine in the Latrobe Valley. The SECV was
allocated $2.86 million for the Yallourn works, which had been recommended in 1917. Transmission
of electricity to Melbourne began in 1924, a distance of 160 km using a 132 kV line. The SECV moved
to 220 kV transmission in 1956 and 500 kV in 1970. The SECV built Newport 'B' Power Station in 1923
to supply electricity to Melbourne until the Yallourn power station entered service. Newport 'B' was
fuelled by imported black coal and Yallourn briquettes.
Work on hydroelectric power commenced in 1922 on the Rubicon Hydroelectric Scheme to the
north-east of Melbourne. For the first ten years of its operation, it supplied on average 16.9% of
electricity generated by the SECV. The Kiewa Hydroelectric Scheme was approved in 1937, but World
War II delayed its progress.
Industry structure
The legislation also gave the SECV the authority to decide whether rival organisations could be set
up in competition to it, as well as the authority to take over existing private companies when their
franchises expired. By 1953 the SECV acquired control of the following undertakings when their
franchises expired:
The North Melbourne Electric Tramways and Lighting Company in 1922
Melbourne Electric Supply Company in 1930
Electric Supply Company of Victoria in 1934
Newport B Power Station from Victorian Railways in 1939
Melbourne City Council Spencer Street Power Station in 1941
Newport A Power Station from Victorian Railways in 1951
Mildura Electrical Undertaking in 1953.
The SECV also took over a number of small municipal electricity distributors during the 1920s, and in
the 1930 the Melbourne Electric Supply Company was acquired along with their street tramway
operations in Geelong,[10][13] followed by Electric Supply Company of Victoria in 1934 - similarly
with their tram systems in Ballarat[11][13] and Bendigo.[12][13] Despite these acquisitions,
municipal controlled distribution companies known as Municipal Electricity Undertakings (MEUs) in
the inner urban areas of Melbourne remained outside of SECV control until the privatisation of the
industry in the 1990s.[3] The eleven municipalities which had MEUs were: Melbourne (established
1897), Footscray (1910), Brunswick (1912), Box Hill (1912), Port Melbourne (1912), Preston (1912),
Northcote (1913), Heidelberg (1914), Coburg (1914), Doncaster & Templestowe (1914) and
Williamstown (1915).[14] The other councils purchased electricity in bulk from one of the private
companies that operated a power station for distribution in its area. The private companies also
operated their own distribution and retail networks in other areas of Melbourne, and in one case
they also operated some of Melbourne’s first electric tramways (in Essendon).[9][14] MEUs served
only inner Melbourne, and the supply of electricity to the rest of the state had to wait until the
establishment of the SECV.[14]
Pricing policy
Electricity pricing was set by the SECV, which set different tariffs for towns of different size,
dependent on the costs of providing the electricity supply. Country interests argued that this was
unfair to rural consumers, and in June 1928 a conference of rural and regional councils demanded
the government equalise tariffs, but this was rejected by the Labour Government.
Equalisation of tariffs was not brought in until 1965, and it was due to the SECV itself rather than a
response to political pressures.
Growth

Hazelwood Power Station

The modern Yallourn W plant

Newport Power Station in suburban Melbourne

During World War II construction and maintenance work had delayed, and after the war the SECV
had difficulty with keeping up with increasing electricity demand. Existing thermal power stations
were expanded at Yallourn and Newport, with much bigger generators of 50 MW capacity used,
much larger than the 15-25 MW units used pre-war. The hydroelectric resources at Eildon and Kiewa
also saw continued development. The Richmond Power Station was also converted to oil firing, and
smaller 'prefabricated' power stations were erected in Geelong and Ballarat. These additions
resulted in a reduction in the dependence on black coal by the 1950s.
By the 1960s the trend towards more efficient large capacity equipment continued, with additional
generators of 120 MW capacity installed at Yallourn, and the Hazelwood Power Station with eight
200 MW units commissioned along with a new open cut mine and briquette factory. The Hazelwood
mine was not as successful as planned as Morwell coal was unsuitable for making briquettes,
resulting in coal needing to be railed from the Yallourn mine.
By the end of the decade brown coal was used to generate 90 per cent of Victoria's electricity
supply, with all of the coal sourced from open cut mines under SECV control. As a result, the SECV
was not forced to raise power costs during the 1970s oil price shocks, in contrast to other electricity
suppliers around the world.
Expansion in the Latrobe Valley continued through the 1970s with the Yallourn W plant replacing the
older units and delivering much greater reliability with Japanese and German technology, compared
to the previously utilised equipment from the UK. A new gas fuelled power station was also
proposed in the early 1970s for Newport to replace existing plant, but met considerable opposition
from nearby residents becoming the first major SECV project that met widespread opposition from
the general public.[3] It was not opened until the 1980s and with only half the proposed capacity.
In the 1980s work on a third open cut commenced at Loy Yang, as the Yallourn and Morwell coal
fields were both committed to fuel existing power stations. The plan was for two new stations (Loy
Yang A and B) consisting all a total of eight 500 MW units, all fed by the common coal mine. The
project was hit by cost overruns, with an independent review initiated by the government in late
1982, finding excessive rates of pay for construction and operation staff, poor project management,
over investment in both the coal mine and power station and general overmanning.
Electricity costs to consumers also begun to rise in the 1980s, due to the need to pay greater
dividends to the Victorian Government and to service greater debt levels from the heavy expansion.
The SECV was also a part to the Portland Smelter Contract, which provided the Alcoa aluminium
smelter with favourable electricity prices at the expense of other consumers.
Demise
In 1994, the Kennett government disaggregated the SECV into five distribution and retail companies
(absorbing the MEUs in the process), five generation companies, and a transmission company. Along
with other state-owned utilities (such as the Gas and Fuel Corporation of Victoria), these businesses
were all corporatised, then privatised between 1995 and 1999.
The State Government retained ownership of the wholesale market operator Victorian Power
Exchange (VPX), which was subsequently reorganised with its market and system operation
functions being transferred to the National Electricity Market Management Company (NEMMCO)
and its transmission planning functions being transferred to VENCorp (now Australian Energy
Markets Operator—AEMO).
The SECV continues as a much-diminished state-owned entity, run by an executive committee.[2] It
held indentures for debts owed to it by brown coal gasification company, HRL Limited,[15] and
remained the electricity supplier for the Portland aluminium smelter, under the name Vicpower
Trading. It was also the electricity supplier to the Point Henry aluminium smelter, although that
facility was closed in July 2016.

Currently, the Essential Services Commission of Victoria is responsible for the regulation of retail
electricity distributors, and the Australian Energy Regulator is responsible for regulating distribution,
transmission and the wholesale electricity market.

Successors
After privatisation, the retail electricity distribution companies were:
United Energy
Solaris Energy (merged into Australian Gas Light Company)[17]
Powercor Australia
CitiPower
Eastern Energy
Current distribution companies[edit]
As at March 2020, the current electricity distributors for Victorians are:
CitiPower
Jemena
Powercor Australia
AusNet Services
United Energy
Each distributor is responsible for a geographic region of Victoria.[18]

Other responsibilities

The company town of Yallourn

Other than electricity generation, the State Electricity Commission of Victoria also:
Built and managed the company town of Yallourn for workers of the accompanying power station.
[20]
Produced briquettes at Yallourn and Morwell from brown coal.
Operated a 900mm gauge electric railway at Yallourn to convey coal from the open cut, later
extended to Morwell and Hazelwood.[21]
Operated a dedicated fire and rescue service, known up to 1984 as the "SECV Fire Service", and post-
1984 as "SECV Fire Rescue". The service comprised fully manned 24-Hour operating fire stations in
the Yallourn, Morwell and Loy Yang production areas. Firefighting appliances consisted of Hino rear-
mounted pumpers, Ford F350 V8 Turbo-charged Rescue tenders, MAN and Bedford 4wd 4000 litre
capacity rural fire tankers, 4 wd support vehicles and Volkswagen engine-powered trailer-mounted
pumps. One each of these vehicles were located at each station, along with a single RFW 6 wheel
Telesqurt / 75 foot Ladder/boom aerial vehicle. The Telesqurt was equipped with a high capacity
centrifugal firefighting pump. SECV Fire Rescue staff provided basic "First Attack" fire fighting
training to other SECV employees. Additional to their routine firefighting and rescue skills, SECV F&R
firefighters were trained in Motor Vehicle Rescue, High-Angle Rescue techniques, Confined Space
Firefighting and Rescue, Hazardous Materials Emergency Response, Industrial Firefighting and
Emergency Response to High Voltage Installations. A "memorandum of understanding" existed
between the SECV and the Country Fire Authority, which allowed for the deployment, when
required, of SECV Fire Rescue appliances and firefighters to emergency incidents outside of the SEC
Works Areas.
Operated six diesel shunting locomotives identical to the Victorian Railways F class for shunting the
Yallourn, Morwell and Newport Powerhouse rail sidings.
Operated and expanded the three provincial electric tramways in Ballarat, Bendigo and Geelong,
after taking over the previous electricity-generating companies (the ESCo (Electric Supply Company
of Victoria Ltd) and MESC (Melbourne Electric Supply Company)).