AGL has confirmed the appointment of Melbourne-based engineering contractor Delta Group to oversee the demolition of the 1,680 MW Liddell Power Station in the New South Wales Hunter Valley with the coal-fired facility to be shut down entirely in less than three months.
AGL Chief Operating Officer Markus Brokhof said it will be the first of company’s thermal generation sites to be converted into an integrated, low-carbon industrial energy hub, which will support the energy market and regional economic development.
“After over 50 years of generating electricity for Australia, Liddell Power Station has reached the end of its operational life and will close in April 2023,” he said.
AGL has already secured planning approval to build a 500MW big battery with up to four hours of storage at the site, which the company said will provide a new source of dispatchable power and allow the company to reuse the existing grid connection infrastructure.
The demolition process is expected to commence in early 2024 and take approximately two years. Work will include removal of all main structures (boilers, chimneys, turbine houses, coal plant) and ancillary buildings, and levelling of the site using recovered crushed concrete.
More than 90% of the materials in the power station, including an estimated 70,000 tonnes of steel, are expected to be recycled during demolition. Critical infrastructure, such as transmission connections, will be retained to support the ongoing use of the site as an industrial energy hub.
The demolition of the Liddell power station signals the beginning of the end for AGL’s coal-fired generation fleet.
The company has confirmed its Bayswater power station in the Hunter Valley will close down between 2030 and 2033 and last year announced it will shut down the Loy Yang A power plant in Victoria’s Latrobe Valley 2035, a decade earlier than planned.
To replace that capacity, AGL said it plans to have up to 12 GW of new generation and firming capacity in place before 2036. This includes an interim target to have up to 5 GW of new renewables and firming in place by the end of the decade.
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