AEMO has been sending electricity market notices out on Thursday, June 16 warning there may not be enough supply to meet demand over coming days.
In Victoria, blackouts may come into effect from 2pm to 3.30pm and from 5pm to 5.30pm, which are times when expected requirements for energy will be greater than the minimum capacity reserve.
In NSW, Energy Minister Matt Kean expected to get through the night without blackouts, but was encouraging people to turn off non-essential items if possible from 6pm to 8pm — emphasising he considered heating essential.
Problems are expected to continue into the weekend.
Federal Energy Minister Chris Bowen has said the NSW power grid would come under “significant pressure” on Thursday night but was confident blackouts could be avoided.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese slammed recent Coalition governments for not doing enough to future-proof the country for a crisis of this nature, saying it was impossible to fix a decade of inaction in less than two weeks.
“The tragedy of this is that the solutions have been identified by the sector itself,” he said.
“What we are doing is listening to the experts, as we have, we announced a policy, we are putting this in place today. But you can’t fix a decade of inaction in 10 days.”
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