The Callide C Power Station joint venture (JV) informed the market today of a revised return to service date for Unit C3 of 26 August 2024 (previously 3 August).
Unit C3 was safely brought offline last Friday after a technical fault occurred on one of its battery chargers. The Callide C JV provided an initial forecast of 3 August for the unit’s return to service until we could obtain a better understanding of timeframes for repairs and restoration of the charger.
The charger manufacturer has since inspected the charger at site and advised that it will undertake a rebuild and factory testing before returning it to Callide for installation and commissioning. This process is expected to take approximately four weeks.
Preliminary investigations by the battery charger manufacturer indicate that the fault was the result of a component failure within the charger and was an extremely rare event. The affected equipment is within its warranty period as it was commissioned in December 2023.
What occurred on Unit C3 last Friday was not the same type of incident as what happened with Unit C4 in 2021. CS Energy has additional redundancy built into its battery charger system because of the improvements we have made since the Unit C4 incident. These safeguards worked as designed last Friday and the team were able to safely shut down Unit C3 when the fault was detected.
Background
Callide Power Station is comprised of two power plants, Callide B and C, each with two generating units (B1 and B2, C3 and C4).
CS Energy (through its subsidiary Callide Energy Pty Ltd) owns Callide C in a 50/50 joint venture with IG Power (Callide) Ltd. CS Energy operates Callide C on behalf of the JV.
CS Energy owns 100 per cent of the neighbouring Callide B Power Station.