THE PERFORMANCE OF VICTORIA'S PRIVATISED POWER STATIONS
 
Contents

1. INTRODUCTION
The current status of the power generation capacity in the State of Victoria is given in Table 1.  This table also gives the date of sale and the current name of the operating company.  Most of the owners are consortia of various investors, usually including Australian investment houses.  There have been modifications to the equity structures of some of the stations since the original sales, so the "significant owners" are basically the owners dominant in the operation of the station.

When considering the effect privatisation has had on the performance of the power station, the public is interested in at least four measures of power station performance. These are:
 

This paper considers the first two of these measures.  As will be seen both of these have apparently dramatically improved.  Environmental and safety measures are not the subject of this paper but, in so far as information is available, they appear to be, on average, improving.
 
Table 1:  Power generating capacity in Victoria and interconnection capability.
 
Source of energy Company (Plant) Significant Owners Sale  Capacity MW
Hydro Southern Hydro Infratil, Australia, Alliant,US 1998  475
Brown coal  Edison Mission Edison-Mission,US 1991,1997 1000
Brown coal Loy Yang Power CMS & NRG, US 1997 2000
Brown coal Hazelwood Power Corporation National Power, UK 1996  1600
Brown coal Yallourn Energy PowerGen, UK 1996 1450
Gas Ecogen, (Newport & Jerralang) AES, US 1999 965
Brown coal Energybrix (Briquettes, Co-gen) HRL, Australia 1997 110
Gas/Waste gas Various (Co-generation) Various Always private 240
Brown coal Alcoa (Anglesea) Alcoa Always private 150
TOTAL 7990
Interconnection capacity 1000 MW to NSW   500 MW to South Australia
Victorian owner GPU, US
 
National Conference 1999
 
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