The Millmerran Power Station is a coal-fired power station in Domville, south of

Millmerran Millmerran , known as Domville between 1 June 1889 and 16 November 1894, is a town and a Suburbs and localities (Australia), locality in the Toowoomba Region, Queensland, Australia. In the , the locality of Millmerran had a population of 1,545 p ...

in the

Darling Downs The Darling Downs is a farming region on the western slopes of the Great Dividing Range in southern Queensland, Australia. The Downs are to the west of South East Queensland and are one of the major regions of Queensland. The name was generally ...

region of

Queensland Queensland ( , commonly abbreviated as Qld) is a States and territories of Australia, state in northeastern Australia, and is the second-largest and third-most populous state in Australia. It is bordered by the Northern Territory, South Austr ...

, Australia. The power station was commissioned in 2002 and cost $1.5 billion to build. The power station is owned and operated by InterGen, a multinational company owned by Sev.en Energy, a Czech industrial group and AIG Highstar Capital II, a private equity fund sponsored by a subsidiary of

American International Group, Inc. American International Group, Inc. (AIG) is an American multinational finance and insurance corporation with operations in more than 80 countries and jurisdictions. As of 2023, AIG employed 25,200 people. The company operates through three core ...

The plant takes advantage of the abundant deposits of bituminous coal from the

Surat Basin The Surat Basin is a geological basin in eastern Australia. It is part of the Great Artesian Basin drainage basin of Australia. The Surat Basin extends across an area of 270,000 square kilometres and the southern third of the basin occupies a larg ...

. Fuel is transported via conveyor belt from the open-cut Commodore Mine. Water is supplied via pipeline from the Wetalla sewage treatment plant in

Toowoomba Toowoomba ( ), nicknamed 'The Garden City' and 'T-Bar', is a city on the border of South East Queensland and Darling Downs regions of Queensland, Australia. It is located west of Queensland's capital, Brisbane. The urban population of Toowoom ...

. The 850 MW plant uses air cooling technology to reduce water consumption. In 2002, when the plant became operational, wholesale prices for electricity fell by about one third to $20/MWh. This was due to the market strategy to bid at short run marginal cost - so with high efficiency plant and cheap coal, this had a significant impact on the market. Millmerran Power Station which won the Banksia Environmental Award 2006 in the water category, supplies enough electricity to power approximately 1.1 million homes by selling all its electricity into the National Electricity Market (NEM). Carbon Monitoring for Action estimates this power station emits 5.75 million tonnes of

greenhouse gases Greenhouse gases (GHGs) are the gases in the atmosphere that raise the surface temperature of planets such as the Earth. Unlike other gases, greenhouse gases absorb the radiations that a planet emits, resulting in the greenhouse effect. T ...

each year as a result of burning

coal Coal is a combustible black or brownish-black sedimentary rock, formed as rock strata called coal seams. Coal is mostly carbon with variable amounts of other Chemical element, elements, chiefly hydrogen, sulfur, oxygen, and nitrogen. Coal i ...

.Millmerran
. Carbon Monitoring for Action. Retrieved on 23 November 2008 The Australian Government has announced the introduction of a

Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme The Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme (or CPRS) was a cap-and-trade emissions trading scheme for anthropogenic greenhouse gases proposed by the Rudd government, as part of its climate change policy, which had been due to commence in Australia i ...

commencing in 2010 to help

combat climate change Climate change mitigation (or decarbonisation) is action to limit the greenhouse gases in the atmosphere that cause climate change. Climate change mitigation actions include conserving energy and replacing fossil fuels with clean energy sour ...

. It is expected to impact on emissions from power stations. Th
National Pollutant Inventory
provides details of other pollutant emissions, but, as at 23 November 2008, not CO₂.

References

{{EnergyQueensland Coal-fired power stations in Queensland Toowoomba Region 2002 establishments in Australia Energy infrastructure completed in 2002

See also

References