Mrs BALCH - 1999-02-24
I was interested to see last month, the Power and Water Authority advertising for expressions of interest in the generation of 30mW of additional power in Darwin. In fact you made some comments about this on radio this morning. Considering that the expressions of interest closed last week, can the minister inform this House whether any interest has been expressed?
ANSWER
Mr Speaker, I thank the honourable member for his question. Indeed there has been quite a lot of interest in supplying 30mW capacity to the Northern Territory either under a design and construct process, or a build, own and operate process such as the BOOT program that we are trying to work on with the railway. In fact, 70 corporations, both nationally and internationally, picked up the documentation from the Power and Water Authority and of those 70 which took the documentation, 30 of them put in expressions of interest. Those expressions of interest will now be gone through by technical and financial staff within the Power and Water Authority to preselect those we believe have the capacity and the financial commitment to deliver what they are saying they can deliver. From that, a decision will be made to go to tender.
NT Power was one of the 30 companies which lodged expressions of interest, of course, and we really do look forward to progressing this. As honourable members know, we got very close to reaching our maximum capacity output in the last month of November and first week of December last year, where we had a new all-time peak of 218 mW being generated at Channel Island.
Whether or not the genset is actually placed out on Channel Island or somewhere else, or whether we take advantage of a genset that is in situ at the moment, these are matters that have to be decided by the engineers and financial people within the Power and Water Authority. But it is very heartening, and I think is an indication of the interest that is out there in private power generation throughout the world and throughout Australia, and we will keep honourable members informed of progress in this area over the next couple of weeks.
ANSWER
Mr Speaker, I thank the honourable member for his question. Indeed there has been quite a lot of interest in supplying 30mW capacity to the Northern Territory either under a design and construct process, or a build, own and operate process such as the BOOT program that we are trying to work on with the railway. In fact, 70 corporations, both nationally and internationally, picked up the documentation from the Power and Water Authority and of those 70 which took the documentation, 30 of them put in expressions of interest. Those expressions of interest will now be gone through by technical and financial staff within the Power and Water Authority to preselect those we believe have the capacity and the financial commitment to deliver what they are saying they can deliver. From that, a decision will be made to go to tender.
NT Power was one of the 30 companies which lodged expressions of interest, of course, and we really do look forward to progressing this. As honourable members know, we got very close to reaching our maximum capacity output in the last month of November and first week of December last year, where we had a new all-time peak of 218 mW being generated at Channel Island.
Whether or not the genset is actually placed out on Channel Island or somewhere else, or whether we take advantage of a genset that is in situ at the moment, these are matters that have to be decided by the engineers and financial people within the Power and Water Authority. But it is very heartening, and I think is an indication of the interest that is out there in private power generation throughout the world and throughout Australia, and we will keep honourable members informed of progress in this area over the next couple of weeks.
Last updated: 09 Aug 2016