Energy from Brown Coal
The extent of the brown coal deposits was known to the Department Of Mines as early as 1875. It is the largest single deposit of brown coal in the world. It covers an area approximately 64 kilometres eastward from Yallourn W Power Station, and is between 8-20 kilometres in width.
The first recorded attempt to mine coal in Latrobe City was in 1874, by a partnership of three men, led by a surveyor named George T. Jones.
The Yallourn ‘A’ station was completed and operating in 1924, and continued until 1968. Several more power stations, including Yallourn 'B', 'C', 'D' and 'E' were built over the years at Yallourn, and progressively closed up until 1989. Yallourn ‘W’ and Loy Yang are the most recent and continue to operate to this day.
Construction of Hazelwood Power Station was taking place by 1961. The first of the proposed eight generators were in service in 1964. The remaining generators were in service by 1971. The Power Station requires approx. 50,000 tons of coal daily.
The next power station project was the giant Loy Yang project, to be located at a new Open Cut to the south-east of Traralgon. Loy Yang is the location of one of the easily accessible seams of coal, containing nearly half of the total brown coal reserves in Latrobe City. Construction of Loy Yang ‘A’ commenced in February 1977, with a peak workforce in mid-1983 of 3,000. The first generating unit was commissioned in September 1984, with the fourth and final unit completed early 1988.
Yallourn W Power Station commenced operations in 1974 commissioned between 1974 and 1982. Every hour 2,400 tonnes of brown coal is used to boil water onto superheated steam to drive four turbine generators. These turbines have combined capacity of 1,480 megawatts of electricity which is enough to supply around two million homes.
A unique feature of the power station is its three vast concrete cooling towers, once the steam has passed through the turbines water from the towers cool and steam so it can be pumped back to the boilers and reheated to steam, once again driving the turblines.
Government approval was given in 1985 to a second, nearly identical, project known as Loy Yang ‘B’. Construction commenced in 1987 and was completed in 1996. An annual total of 31 million tonnes of brown coal is required for these two power stations, which produce approximately 45% of Victoria’s power requirements.
In 1996, the State Government announced that the electricity generation business of the State Electricity Commission would be ‘privatised’. This resulted in the Latrobe City Power Stations being sold to various generating companies.