When worlds Callide

摘要

In a coincidence that was no way hilarious and rich in schadenfreude, less than a week after the announcement of Kurri Kurri, the 825 MW Callide C coal-fired power station in Biloela, central Queensland, suffered a "catastrophic failure": an explosion and fire in the C4 turbine that disconnected 2000 MW of load and caused what is probably Queensland's biggest blackout.Over 470,000 homes from Cairns to the Gold Coast were without electricity at the peak of the mass outage. Both of Callide C's units went down, causing such instability that Callide B then went down, before tripping plants at Gladstone and Stanwell. Traffic signals went down in Brisbane, the international airport suffered an outage, and the Gold Coast University Hospital and Robina Hospital operated in Code Yellow for the afternoon. Even households on the NSW North Coast lost electricity for about an hour. Thankfully, no one was injured in the incident and grid stability was eventually returned... thanks to interstate and renewable (wind and hydro) power.