It's not the headline you'll be wanting to see if you're in Victoria or South Australia this morning, but with spring on our doorstep, the energy market operator is warning that much of the national power grid is facing substantial reliability problems in the coming 10 years.
The Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO) has released its latest 10-year outlook, and is warning that the outlook for the national grid has worsened since February.
AEMO says these reliability problems mean "imminent and urgent investment" is needed, or "the reliability of the National Electricity Market (NEM) will be at risk.
But it's not just South Australia and Victoria which are facing issues — the NEM includes all states and territories except for Western Australia and the Northern Territory.
So what's behind the reliability problems? A lack of investment in renewable energy generation, storage and transmission as coal-fired power stations shut down.
AEMO's chief executive Daniel Westerman says the forecast hotter and dryer summer ahead is a significant risk to the grid.
"Breaching the reliability standard doesn't necessarily mean that there will be blackouts," he told AM.
"What it means is that there's not enough electricity supply to meet the standard and that more investment is needed, and that's what we're calling for.
"However, we are also saying that this summer, we'll see an elevated risk compared with recent years, and that is primarily because this summer is forecast to be hotter and drier than the last summers.
"But it's also because the reliability of our old coal fired generators is at historic lows and plant operators are telling us that that's unlikely to materially improve.
"Now, as you'd expect, for this summer, like every summer, AEMO, together with industry and governments are well underway with our preparation to manage these conditions, but we're flagging reliability risks to remain."









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