Horizon Power has boosted its fuel storage in the North West to better cope with wet season inundation in the wake of this year’s Fitzroy River floods.
Horizon Power has boosted its fuel storage in the North West to better cope with wet season inundation in the wake of this year’s devastating Martuwarra (Fitzroy River) floods.
The move comes after Fitzroy Crossing, Halls Creek and Derby were cut off during the January floods when the Fitzroy bridge collapsed, leaving their gas generators and diesel back-up at risk of running out of fuel.
The energy provider has in response procured a temporary diesel generation fleet and fuel storage to enable rapid deployment to flood-impacted areas.
The generators will be deployed to key areas ahead of the wet season to enable an immediate response when power is knocked out by extreme weather.
A Horizon Power spokesperson said increasing frequency of extreme weather placed fuel security at front-of-mind.
“In the context of the current climate crisis, the importance of climate resilience—and having energy networks and systems that can cope with, and manage the impacts of, climate change—is something which is increasingly of priority for Horizon Power,” they said.
“We operate over a footprint of 2.3 million square kilometres and are responsible for delivering power to some of the most isolated communities in the country – and because of the vastness of our footprint and the remoteness of our customer base, our networks are particularly susceptible to the impacts of extreme weather events.
“In the past five years, we have experienced, and have had to respond to, two one-in-a-hundred-year type weather events – with January’s unprecedented flooding in the Kimberley the most recent example, following the Carnarvon floods of 2021.”
During the Fitzroy floods Horizon Power’s contractor EDL had to barge in temporary generators to towns cut off by the bridge collapse.
That move was critical to keeping the lights on but was costly and proved a logistical nightmare.
“Moving forward, it is clear to us that we need to move to a model which is better equipped to withstand and respond to these types of weather events such that fuel security is not put at risk or left exposed when supporting infrastructure goes down,” Horizon Power said.
“As part of this, we have commenced a piece of work to further bolster our system resilience, identifying likely constraints and challenges associated with flooding and access issues to our regional towns.
“We have also installed additional generation at our current power stations to enable diversification and extended operating hours when roads are cut off.”
Horizon Power is installing battery storage in Kalumburu, Yungngora, Halls Creek, Fitzroy Crossing and Broome to enable renewables to plug in and boost operating time for existing fuel sources.
Fuel security in the North West was a concern put forward by several organisations to the federal government’s probe into the national freight network’s disaster resilience.
