A series of articles published and tagged with ‘coal unit outage’. These outages might be either:
1) Planned far in advance
2) Not planned far in advance (in which case there are several sub-categories of outage here).
Following this ‘framework for exploring what factors were contributing to the volatility in NSW on Monday 12th October 2026’ , we take a look at supply-side factors (including beyond coal unit unavailability).
For several reasons (including thoughts on Energy Security with the War in the Middle East) we take an updated and deeper trended look at coal unit starts.
The trip coincided with the drop in frequency, which happened at the start of the dispatch interval.
One factor in the forecast LOR3 we're currently seeing for NSW on Thursday evening 18th December 2025 is that 4 of 12 coal units in NSW are offline (and another has a story).
System frequency remained within the NOFB, appears well managed given the supply loss approached 600 MW.
At 09:06 (NEM time) this ‘Notifications’ widget alert from ez2view flags Loy Yang A4 coming offline ... which helps explain the directions for System Strength.
On my commute this morning (Friday 3rd Oct 2025), I noticed this update on LinkedIn yesterday evening from the team at Delta Electricity, speaking about their annual shutdown at Vales Point 5.
A brief look at recent operational challenges at Yallourn unit 4.
Subsequent to earlier article about VP5, the expected duration of the outage pushed out by more than a month.
On Tuesday 26th August 2025 the VP5 unit came offline, with rebid reasons suggesting that ‘turbine vibrations’ were a factor. We take a look ~10 days later.
As a further update on outage expectation for the damaged YWPS2 (which tripped with 'LP turbine issue' on Tue 26th August) the latest return to service expectation is now not until 22nd October 2025.
We assess whether the trip at Yallourn 2 on 26 August 2025 was large enough to drive a frequency disturbance.
A short note with a snapshot of the ‘Generator Outages’ widget in ez2view (at 08:30 on Wed 27th Aug 2025) to highlight some coal units offline.
System frequency shows improved resilience to sudden coal generation events since 2020.
A count of coal generator events indicates large unit trips are less frequent.
Taking a look at the three of the Yallourn Units offline on Monday morning 16th June 2025.
With BW04 returned to service on Sat 14th June 2025, worth noting that sibling unit BW01 came offline on Sunday afternoon 15th June 2025.
Worth a short note on Thursday 12th June 2025 to highlight the short-lived return to service at YWPS4:
Yallourn unit 3 came offline for a tube leak - but ABC reports (on Mon 9th June 2025) that 'an air duct in unit three collapsed during maintenance', so we take an initial look.
It’s fitting to book-end the week with a look at frequency performance overnight (into Saturday 31st May 2025) with two coal unit outages in NSW overnight to see what happened in terms of more ‘old style’ frequency disruption.