Energy security in Tasmania will not be impacted by this morning’s announcement from Basslink Pty Ltd of a fault in the Basslink undersea cable.

CEO Steve Davy said Hydro Tasmania would continue to manage energy supply using a range of levers at its disposal, including water in storages and wind.

We recently announced that we have made a commercial decision to restart the CCGT at Tamar Valley Power Station. As a result of today’s developments, Hydro Tasmania will investigate bringing forward the re-start date of the CCGT from January 20 next year.

Mr Davy said Hydro Tasmania was made aware of the extent of the fault through Basslink’s announcement this morning. The interconnector has tripped on a number of occasions since it was first commissioned. These ranged from a few minutes to a number of days.

Hydro Tasmania then advised the Government of the announcement this morning and contacted Basslink Pty Ltd to seek a reassurance it was responding quickly to assemble a team of experts to diagnose and repair the fault, and return the interconnector to service as soon as possible.

Basslink Pty Ltd has since informed the national market of a 60-day outage this afternoon via Australian Energy Market Operator’s (AEMO) forecasting tool. The actual length of time it will take to fix will become clearer as Basslink progresses its investigations.

Mr Davy said there was no doubt the fault would create further challenges on top of the record dry experienced in Tasmania over the last four months. Storages currently stand at 24.6 per cent.

“We are reviewing all our options but remain confident that the fault will not impact on energy security in Tasmania,” Mr Davy said.

“As we have done in the past, Hydro Tasmania will respond to this challenge through prudent and careful management of the options we have at hand.”

Released by Ian Colvin on 03 6230 5800