Pelican Point gas power station in South Australia back to full capacity in 2017 after Origin fixed-charge deal

Pelican Point gas-fired power station, operated by French company Engie, near Adelaide's Outer Harbor.

South Australia's Pelican Point power station has been returned to its full available capacity of 479 megawatts by Engie – the company that shut down its 1600MW Hazelwood power station in Victoria. (Engie had shut down the second gas turbine at Pelican Point in 2015, arguing it couldn’t compete with wind energy.)

The reopening of the turbine has been enabled by Engie’s agreement with Origin Energy to provide 240MW of Pelican Point power for a fixed charge. Origin said the agreement, from 2017-2020, would better position Pelican Point to support peak demand over the 2017/18 summer.

Increased supply from Pelican Point has been a significant factor in pushing wholesale power prices down in South Australia.

The state government said the Engie-Origin gas-fired power deal would not have been reached had Port Augusta's coal-powered station remained open.

Alinta Energy, which ran the coal-fired Playford A and B and Northern Power stations at Port Augusta before closing them all by 2016 due to “unfavourable market conditions”, sought a permit in 2017 for a 300-megawatt gas-fired power station to be built north of Adelaide at a cost of $450 million. It envisaged a six-turbine natural-gas-fired plant at Reeves Plains, between Gawler and Mallala, although the first stage would be a 100-150MW plant with up to three turbines.

Alinta said the project has not been put off by the state government’s own intervention in the South Australian electricity market.