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  • 21 Aug, 2019

  • By, Wikipedia

Stanwell Power Station, Queensland

Stanwell Power Station is a government-owned coal-fired power generation station located in Stanwell, 23 kilometres (14 mi) south-west of Rockhampton, Queensland, Australia. At the time of construction, it was one of the largest industrial developments undertaken in Queensland. With a capacity to generate 1,445 megawatts (MW), Stanwell Power Station supplies electricity for distribution to customers via the state's high voltage electricity grid.

History

The station is located on 4,000 acres (1,600 hectares) of land. Construction of the station took seven years, with infrastructure built to withstand cyclonic winds. The first unit at Stanwell was commissioned in 1992, and the station became fully operational in 1996.

Fuel

Coal is transport via rail from several Central Queensland coal mines. About 4 million tons of coal are used each year.

Design

There are four generating units at Stanwell Power Station. The four units and their components are housed in a 20 storey boiler house and a turbine hall the length of three football fields. The power station is highly automated and achieves both an efficient, effective workplace and high asset performance through the application of innovative technology and organisational design. These innovations have been recognised both nationally and internationally. Stanwell Power Station previously held the world record at 1,073 days of continuous operation on Unit 4. This was surpassed in 2021 by Canadian public entity Ontario Power Generation's Darlington Nuclear Generating Station Unit 1, which ran for 1,106 days continuous.

The station features a 210-metre-high-chimney stack which was constructed using approximately 750,000 bricks. The station has two cooling towers, each stands 130 metres high (about the height of a 40-storey building) and is 100 metres in diameter. Fifteen thousand cubic metres of concrete was poured for each tower. The plume seen coming from the cooling towers is steam, lost through evaporation during the water-cooling process.

Additional facilities

The Queensland government and Stanwell decided to build a 1 MW / 10 MWh iron redox flow battery. Construction of a 300 MW / 1,200 MWh battery storage power station at AU$747 million for 2027 started in 2024.

See also

References

  1. ^ Stanwell Corporation Ltd (October 2008). Factsheet: Stanwell Power Station. Stanwell Corporation Ltd.
  2. ^ "Stanwell Coal Power Station, Australia". www.power-technology.com. Verdict Media. Archived from the original on 2 November 2021. Retrieved 27 November 2021.
  3. ^ Virtual plant model Archived 2017-01-13 at the Wayback Machine created by the University of Queensland, based on the actual VisSim model used prior to construction.
  4. ^ World Record for Continuous Operation Archived 30 March 2022 at the Wayback Machine. Guinness World Records. Retrieved on 27 November 2021.
  5. ^ "Our story > Darlington's Unit 1 heads into planned outage after record-breaking run". OPG. Archived from the original on 17 July 2021. Retrieved 13 February 2021.
  6. ^ "Stanwell signs major deal for Australian-made long duration iron flow batteries". RenewEconomy. 5 October 2023. Archived from the original on 10 May 2024. Retrieved 10 May 2024.
  7. ^ "Queensland quadruples size of Stanwell Tesla battery to make it biggest in the state". RenewEconomy. 8 May 2024. Archived from the original on 10 May 2024. Retrieved 10 May 2024.
  8. ^ "Stanwell begins work on huge 1200MWh mega battery as it starts transformation of major coal hub". RenewEconomy. 12 August 2024.