Lake Margaret Power Station - Closure

Closure

The power plant itself produced 8.4 megawatts of peak power from seven Pelton turbines, with an average output of 5.5 megawatts (limited by rainfall into the catchment) 4 of which were in service from when the building opened in 1914, 2 since 1919 and the 7th since 1930.

Throughout 2005 the old plant was still in full-time use, but became the subject of debate. The Lake Margaret Precinct and Power Station have been nominated to be included in the state Heritage register, due to the unique nature of being an integral part of West Coast history that has not been closed down or destroyed, which is the fate of many of the man made structures on the west coast that no longer serve purposes for the mining or other industries.

On 30 June 2006 the Lake Margaret Power Station closed, due to the cost and increasing difficulty of maintaining the decrepit King Billy Pine pipeline. In the days immediately before closure, 5 machines were operating at full output, one was idle due to insufficient water pressure and another out of service due to requiring replacement turbine buckets.

At the time of closure the pipeline was estimated to be losing 10% of the water it carried due to leakage. During early 2007 the extent of leakage was sufficient of itself to draw down the level in Lake Margaret by around 10% during a period of very low rainfall. At this time the pipeline was still under pressure although the power station remained closed.

The Hydro had proposed refurbishment of the scheme with a return to operation around 2009-10. Community consultation found a strong preference for refurbishment using the existing machines plus a new woodstave pipeline rather than the use of new machines or a steel pipe.

Any reuse of the existing machinery would likely involve the installation of automatic shutdown capability to avoid the need for 24 hour manning of the power station in order to improve the economics of refurbishment. All of Tasmania's other major hydro-electric power stations were either originally built to operate unmanned (standard procedure for new power stations in Tasmania since the 1950s) or have been refurbished in recent years to enable unmanned operation.