NSW grid scrapes through power crisis, bigger test ahead

New South Wales survived the biggest test of its power system since the closure of AGL’s Liddell coal power station, but the government now faces a delicate task to ensure power reliability over the summer amid heightened worries about disruption and spiking prices.

Hot weather on Wednesday coincided with an unexpectedly high number of outages at coal power units, in a big scare for the transitioning electricity system. The near-miss prompted pleas from major industrial users to solve the reliability issue by replacing capacity faster before controlled blackouts are invoked.