Liddell Power Station, New South Wales

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Liddell Power Station

Liddell Power Station is located at Lake Liddell near Muswellbrook, in the Hunter Valley, New South Wales, Australia. It is coal powered with four steam driven turbo generators with a combined capacity of 2,000 MW of electricity.

The first generator was completed in 1971, two more in 1972, and the fourth in 1973.

Much of the coal is supplied by overland conveyors from mines it shares with the nearby Bayswater Power Station.

Liddell was the first major power station in NSW to be built inland, using fresh water for cooling instead of the more abundant salt water used in coastal power stations. To accommodate this, Lake Liddell was expanded to provide more water. In addition, water is drawn from the Hunter River when necessary to supplement the lake.

In addition to the coal power station, Liddell runs two 25 MW oil-fired gas turbines^[1] and a 0.85 MW mini-hydroelectric generator^[1]^[2]. It is also "licensed to co-fire plant biomass and coal to produce electricity", which essentially means it can use sawdust and wood shavings from the nearby timber industry as a portion of its fuel, replacing up to 5% of its coal requirements^[3]^[4]. In practice, however, biomass accounts for only about 0.5% of Liddell's output.

A project is underway at Liddell to replace some of the station's boiler feed-water by hot water from a solar thermal array^[5]. The project is currently at a second-stage prototype but has not yet been connected to the power station (Mar 2007).