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Power and Water Corporation are responsible for the supply of electricity to Alice Springs homes and business
The main power station is located close to the heart of Alice Springs and a second station is being built at Owen Springs.
The town currently has around 65 megawatts of total generation capacity. These generators are use natural gas and diesel as fuel sources. In addition, a large solar farm is being proposed for installation at Ilparpa – this will feed into the towns electricity supply.
The natural gas comes to Alice Springs via a pipeline that links Darwin with the Merennie gas fields (which are 100km West of Alice Springs).
Diesel is brought to Alice Springs via road train.
Electricity demand in Alice Springs is highest in summer months. This is mainly due to the high use of air conditioners in homes and businesses.
The more power that is consumed, the more fuel is consumed by the generators Power and Water uses –and the more emissions that are produced.
There are things that we can do as a community to ensure our energy supply systems is as efficient as possible.
Firstly, we can be more energy efficiency and install solar hot water and/or a solar PV system.
Secondly, we can be smarter about when we use certain appliances. By avoiding using appliances (like pool pumps, washing machines etc) during the day, we can help reduce the peak demand on the local electricity system. This is called load shifting and can help reduce emissions and the need for cost upgrades to electricity infrastructure.
Because our main fuel source is natural gas, the Alice Springs power station has lower emissions than power stations that rely on burning coal.
Producing 1 mega watt hours of electricity in Alice Springs produces about 700kg of CO2 emissions; the typical coal fired power station emits around 1 tonne of CO2 emissions.
Whilst the emissions from our power station are less than that Australian average, it is important to remember that the amount of electricity consumed by the average Alice Springs household is higher than the Australian household. So it’s up to all of us to try to reduce our electricity consumption – the less we consume, the less emissions from the power station.