Victoria’s electricity spot prices soar as state’s largest coal generator suffers outage

AGL says all four units of the 2,210 megawatt Loy Yang A are offline as spot power prices reach ceiling of $16,600 per MW-hour

Victoria’s power grid is enduring a “significant” power system event amid a heatwave and the state’s largest generator going offline, sending electricity prices soaring.

The Australian Energy Market Operator said the event was the result of “multiple tripping of generation and transmission lines” in the Victorian region. The incident has resulted in 2,300 megawatts of generation halted, with more than 1,000MW of load interrupted.