Australian heatwave causes firms to power down, Sydney braces for blackouts

SYDNEY- MELBOURNE: Major energy users on Australia’s east coast shut down yesterday, and residents were asked not to go home and cook or watch television, to ease demand on strained power supplies as an extreme heatwave moved from the desert interior to the coast.

Authorities were preparing to temporarily suspend power to selected areas of New South Wales ( NSW) state late yesterday to prevent overload just days after 40,000 homes and businesses lost electricity in the state of South Australia.

NSW Energy Minister Don Harwin asked residents to consider reducing their energy usage after work.

“Rather than going straight home and turning on the television and cooking, (you might) want to consider going to a movie, going out to a shopping centre, keeping the load low, every bit like that helps,” Harwin told journalists in Sydney.

A paper mill, water treatment operations and Australia’s largest aluminium smelter, Tomago, were among those that halted operations to conserve energy, with many industrial users required to do so under their contracts.

The Tomago smelter, which exports to Southeast Asia, Japan and China, is the single largest consumer of electricity in NSW and is jointly owned by AngloAustralian group Rio Tinto and Oslo-based Norsk Hydro. Dispatch power prices surged yesterday as blackouts loomed.

Weather forecaster Olenka Duma said a build-up of heat in Australia’s interior was being pushed east across NSW, the country’s most populous state.

“It was like the windows and doors were closed for a long time, and now a weather front has dragged the hot air here,” Duma, an official of the Bureau of Meteorology, told Reuters.