(Published in The Mercury 27th April 2016)
The
big danger in the aftermath of the Basslink debacle is the search for someone
to blame will divert attention from finding the best solution.
At
last week’s Senate hearings in Hobart, Michael Negnevitsky, UTas engineering
professor nailed it when he said “...the failure of the Basslink has to be
viewed not just as a disaster......but.... as a wake-up call..... in 10 years
time we may not recognise our power systems.... (which) in the last five years
have changed much more than in the previous 50 years.”
It’s
not just a wake-up call from an energy security viewpoint but also from the
perspective of the government’s fragile budgetary position as it begins to grapple
with the costs of the outage and the after-effects.
The
roles of participants will give a glimpse of how the State sector works.
The
cash costs of at least $200 million will be borne by Hydro Tasmania. It will
have to find the money from somewhere. It won’t come from the Consolidated Fund
which would directly impact the general government’s budget. But it will come
via the back door, either from TasNetworks or from Tascorp. The impact on the State’s overall position
will be the same. This position will also be affected by the expected massive
write-down in the value of Hydro’s generating assets, reflecting reduced future
income as dam levels are restored. In 2005 Hydro wrote down the value of its
generating assets by $1 billion. A similar write-down would not surprise
