Government confident in power supply — but no guarantees

The government is confident Victoria’s power supply will hold up during the hot weather across Thursday and Friday.

But the Energy Minister has fallen short of making a guarantee.

NOW | Energy Minister Lily d’Ambrosio, fresh from briefings.

NEIL MITCHELL: “Any guarantees?”

MINISTER: “Oh look, what we need to focus on is the market operator’s done everything they need to do.”

— 3AW Melbourne (@3AW693) January 24, 2019

Her comments come after thousands of homeowners and businesses in the north of the state have already found themselves without power due to an unrelated fault.

Energy Minister Lily d’Ambrosio told Neil Mitchell the market operator has planned around potential issues, including ageing infrastructure.

“They have additional reserves … but at this stage they’ve indicated everything is going well and don’t see a need to activate those reserves,” Ms d’Ambrosio said.

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Earlier, an energy expert told 3AW Breakfast it is highly unlikely there will be any brown-outs as a result of the power grid being pushed to its limit over the next two days.

There are concerns businesses and homes will be left without power after a generator shutdown at Loy Yang A and another went down at Yallourn due to maintenance.

But the director of the Energy Program at the Grattan Institute, Tony Wood, told Ross and John normal supplies should be boosted tomorrow.

“Most likely, almost certainly, we’ll be fine,” he said.

“If we had some more failures or something else went wrong, it wouldn’t be a problem.”

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