The Swanbank Power Stations are located in

Swanbank Swanbank is an industrial locality in the City of Ipswich, Queensland, Australia. In the Swanbank had a population of 0 people. Geography The predominant land usage in Swanbank is industrial, including the Swanbank Power Station (). There ...

within

South East Queensland South East Queensland (SEQ) is a bio-geographical, metropolitan, political and administrative region of the state of Queensland in Australia, with a population of approximately 3.8 million people out of the state's population of 5.1 million. T ...

, Australia. The original power station was coal fired, but the site has since moved to gas. By 2007 the site had consisted of the highly efficient gas-fired Swanbank E Power Station and the smaller gas-fired Swanbank C Power Station. Swanbank E was written off by the Queensland Audit Office as having no value, as it is uneconomical to run in 2021.

Components

Swanbank A was commissioned in 1967 and decommissioned in August 2005. It had six

steam turbines A steam turbine is a machine that extracts thermal energy from pressurized steam and uses it to do mechanical work on a rotating output shaft. Its modern manifestation was invented by Charles Parsons in 1884. Fabrication of a modern steam turbin ...

, and was powered by coal. The three high, concrete smoke stacks were collapsed on 20 August 2006. All three were collapsed on the same day with a 10 second delay between each stack. The deconstruction and demolition project, undertaken by Trio Industries, was scheduled to be completed in February 2007. Swanbank B was commissioned in 1971 with four steam turbines, powered by coal. Four units of Swanbank B were decommissioned in April 2010, June 2010, 2011, and May 2012, due to the plant reaching the end of its operational life. The coal for Swanbank B came from coalfields in South-East Queensland, including

New Acland Mine The New Acland Mine is located adjacent to Acland township, about 10 km north of Oakey on the Darling Downs in Queensland, Australia. Geologically it is part of the Wallon Coal Measures and contains more than 500 million tonnes of c ...

, by road. Water is supplied from

Lake Moogerah The Moogerah Dam is a concrete, mass concrete arch dam, double curvature arch dam with an Spillway#Types, un-gated spillway across the Reynolds Creek that is located in the South East Queensland, South East region of Queensland, Australia. The ma ...

and the

Western Corridor Recycled Water Scheme The Western Corridor Recycled Water Scheme, a recycled water project, is located in the South East region of Queensland in Australia. The scheme is managed by Seqwater and forms a key part of the SEQ Water Grid constructed by the Queensland Gove ...

began to supply the power station with water in August 2007. Swanbank C was a small gas turbine generating plant, rated at . It had two

Rolls-Royce Avon The Rolls-Royce Avon was the first axial flow jet engine designed and produced by Rolls-Royce. Introduced in 1950, the engine went on to become one of their most successful post-World War II engine designs. It was used in a wide variety of ai ...

gas generators discharging into a power turbine which drove the generator. Middle Ridge Power Station was a similar design, with four gas generators discharging into two power turbines, one on each end of the electrical generator. It was commissioned in 1969, and, in 2002, was expected to be decommissioned in December 2002. Swanbank D was a small

open cycle gas turbine A gas turbine, also called a combustion turbine, is a type of continuous flow internal combustion engine. The main parts common to all gas turbine engines form the power-producing part (known as the gas generator or core) and are, in the directi ...

. Delivering only , it was installed in 1999 but was sold by CS Energy in 2003/2004 and was decommissioned by 2004. The much larger and more efficient Swanbank E was commissioned in 2002 with a single

combined cycle gas turbine A combined cycle power plant is an assembly of heat engines that work in tandem from the same source of heat, converting it into mechanical energy. On land, when used to make electricity the most common type is called a combined cycle gas turb ...

. The gas turbine of Swanbank E was the largest of its type at the time of its commissioning. In 2021, its owner, CleanCo, wrote down the entire value of the power station to zero, and expects to receive net losses until its expected retirement in 2036.

World record

In 2011, Swanbank E set a world record for the continuous operation of an Alstom GT26 gas turbine. It had been running for 254 days when it was shut down on 9 July 2011 for planned maintenance.

Protest

On 11 July 2008, four activists from Greenpeace Australia Pacific occupied the top of a 140-metre high Swanbank B smokestack for 33 hours. They descended over two hours on the next day, leaving a message for Australia's leaders – "Go Solar"- painted on the side of the smoke stack.

References

External links

YouTube videos of chimney demolition
26 seconds, emotional response3 minutes 43 seconds, multiple angles
{{Authority control Coal-fired power stations in Queensland Natural gas-fired power stations in Queensland Ipswich, Queensland 1967 establishments in Australia Energy infrastructure completed in 1967

Components

World record

Protest

See also

References

External links