Massive explosion at Mortlake gas-fired power station

interconnector, SA Power Networks, CitiPower, transgrid, western power, energy grid, Victoria, AER, DMIS, synergy, transmission

A massive explosion has occurred at Origin’s Mortlake Power Station in Victoria, causing significant damage to a major gas generator.

According the Herald Sun, fire crews were called to the station on the morning of July 8, after an electrical fault caused the explosion that caused significant damage to one of its two generating units. Staff suggested it could take six months to get it back online.

Country Fire Authority commander Paul Marshall told 3AW, “It was a rather large explosion, it certainly wasn’t a minor explosion, so that will obviously take a while to rectify”.

An Origin spokeswoman said the electrical fault activated the generator’s fire detection system, and that CFA crews were on site for more than two hours.

“Origin is undertaking an investigation to determine when the unit can be returned to service,” she said.

No one was injured in the blast.

The outage comes in conjunction with a unit outage at AGL’s Loy Yang power station in the Latrobe Valley, with AGL expecting it could take until December to restore.  

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