I’m slowly going through my archives once again and I came across two industrial images of the Dry Creek Power Station in Adelaide’s north-western suburb of Dry Creek that is owned by Engie, the giant French electricity company. It looks like a relic from the industrial past.

The Dry Creek power plant was commissioned in 1973–1974. It has three gas turbines with the gas coming from the Moomba-Adelaide gas pipeline system, which extends from Adelaide to Moomba in the Cooper Basin. This pipeline was constructed in 1969 to service South Australia’s industrial and domestic gas market.

In the late 1990s the generation, transmission, distribution and retail responsibilities of the former SA Government-owned Electricity Trust of South Australia were split up, with South Australia’s electricity assets privatised in 1999.

The ageing coal, gas and diesel plants across the National Electricity Market are coming under financial pressure from an influx of cheaper renewables onto the grid reducing wholesale power prices for traditional generators. Dry Creek is a peaking plant — it is sometimes still needed to keep supply reliable when there is a gap between peak demand and low supply in electricity consumption.