FEW but grid watchers would have known, but NSW came dangerously close to blackouts on Thursday afternoon when one of Liddell power station's four 500-megawatt units was forced out of service because hot oil surged out of a high-voltage transformer, sending an experienced Liddell operator to Royal North Shore Hospital's burns unit.
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The workplace incident was serious enough, but the loss of power put the NSW electricity grid on edge, with Tomago Aluminium approached by the Australian Energy Market Operator to prepare for a possible power cut by its supplier, Liddell's operator AGL.
As it turned out, another customer stepped into the breach, but Tomago's outspoken chief executive Matt Howell says the smelter has become an increasing focus of "demand management" - an innocuous phrase to describe the anything-but-innocuous practice of having big industrial users reduce their power use, often at short notice.
Deliberately using Tomago smelter as "the state's biggest battery" would have been unthinkable just a few years ago, but federal Energy Minister Angus Taylor announced a similar deal on Monday when he confirmed Victoria's Portland aluminium smelter would be paid up to $76.8 million over four years in exchange for the ability to use its potlines as a battery during that time.
The rough mathematics appear compelling.
Tesla's famous South Australian battery had an estimated cost of $90 million.
Various figures have been quoted - and the South Australian battery was not built for such a purpose - but its 100-megawatt nameplate capacity is widely accepted as enough to run Tomago, for about 12 minutes.
By comparison, Tomago could shut down a potline for up to three hours, if needed, making it the back-of-an-envelope equivalent of 15 South Australian batteries. And it has three potlines.
This is all speculation, and Tomago says its high voltage equipment needs upgrading to handle repeated switching off and on.
But the Victorian deal shows what Canberra is considering, given the inherent instability of wind and solar power, whether the renewables lobby wants to admit it or not.
It might be speculation, but the state's power problems are very much in the here and now.
The apparent inability of the NSW grid to recover without cutting demand from Liddell's Thursday afternoon outage shows how serious the situation has become.
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IN THE NEWS:
Ian Kirkwood
Reporting journalist at the Newcastle Herald since 1987. Editorial writer, general reporter, industrial relations, industry and coal.
Reporting journalist at the Newcastle Herald since 1987. Editorial writer, general reporter, industrial relations, industry and coal.
