CAQA Powergen Station
CAQA Powergen Station is a registered generator in the National Electricity Market. Its main asset is a 420 megawatt combined cycle gas turbine station at Newport West with two gas turbines, two heat recovery steam generators and a single steam turbine. The business also operates the 96 megawatt Ridgeback wind farm of 32 turbines in the Ararat district and a 28 megawatt hydro station fed by a concrete gravity dam in the Mitta Ranges. Together the three sites supply dispatchable and renewable energy to the grid and provide frequency control services to the market operator.
The business is organised around a central control room at Newport West that operates all three sites and is staffed by a unit controller and a field operator on every shift across a rotating roster of four panels. Maintenance is split into mechanical and electrical, control and instrumentation crews based at Newport West, with a renewables crew that travels to the wind farm and hydro station on a planned cycle. An outage planning team schedules major maintenance around market demand, and a health, safety, environment and quality team supports all sites.
Powergen holds an environment protection licence for the main station and dam safety obligations for the hydro storage. Every task on plant is controlled by the permit to work and isolation system, and every operator and technician works only within a current authorisation. Plant condition, defects, incidents and environmental monitoring are recorded in controlled systems, and performance is reviewed each month against reliability, safety and emissions targets. The business complies with the National Electricity Rules, the state electricity safety and occupational health and safety laws and the conditions of its licences.