CS Energy chair Adam Aspinall sees an opportunity to ‘make things right’ as the government-owned generator reveals outcomes from reports into two major failures at its Callide power plant.

CS Energy has released the Brady Heywood Report into the 2021 explosion of the Callide Unit C4 turbine and the investigation report into the 2022 Callide Unit C3 partial cooling tower collapse.

At the same time it has unveiled an action plan to bolster the safety, reliability and resilience of its operations.

“As the current chair of CS Energy, I apologise to our employees, the government and the people of Queensland for CS Energy not having maintained the world-class performance which they have rightly come to expect from their government-owned assets,” Mr Aspinall said. 

“In releasing these reports, I acknowledge there are lessons for both CS Energy and the broader energy industry, and we are committed to sharing these lessons so that we can help the whole industry maintain best practice.”

Mr Aspinall said there was a need for frank and accurate briefings by companies like CS Energy to government.

“I have reviewed the written briefing given to the government at the time of the C4 incident. I acknowledge that the information which CS Energy used to brief the government was ambiguous and did not include any commentary on the maturity of CS Energy’s process safety management systems or details of the maintenance backlog,” he said.

While the State Government has come under fire for cost-cutting, Mr Aspinall said he could confirm that all funding requests for maintenance and capital expenditure on CS Energy’s generation assets had been approved unadjusted by shareholding ministers.

The Brady Heywood Report into the C4 incident found CS Energy’s process safety management systems were not where they needed to be, he said.

And he pointed to the constraints of the Callide C joint venture (JV) as complicating CS Energy’s operations.

The ownership of the Callide C Power Station is a 50/50 JV structure between CS Energy’s subsidiary Callide Energy and IG Power, with CS Energy operating Callide C station on their behalf.

CS Energy chief executive officer Darren Busine, who was appointed in July 2023, said the business had continued to take action since the two incidents to progressively improve safety for its people and plant at Callide and its other assets across the state.

“The action plan we are releasing today summarises our actions to date, as well as those underway, to build a safer, better CS Energy,” he said.

“Brady Heywood’s technical findings are consistent with CS Energy’s technical report released in February this year. 

“Whilst on our reading of the Brady Heywood Report, a lack of maintenance did not cause the incident, we clearly have areas of improvement to ensure we operate and maintain our assets to world class standards.

“The Brady Heywood Report found that more effective process safety practices could have assisted CS Energy in identifying and managing the risks associated with bringing the C4 battery charger into service.

“The investigation into the C3 incident concluded that the root cause of the partial collapse was unfavourable water chemistry, with other contributing factors being the original design and construction.”

Mr Busine said Cs Energy’s action plan set out how it would improve its capability to assess, mitigate and control the process safety risks inherent in owning and operating power generation assets.

“In addition, an independent advisory group, chaired by Adjunct Associate Professor Trevor Love and comprising leading experts in process safety and organisational design, has been established to oversee and support us in executing and updating the plan,” he said.

“We are committed to learning from these events and giving our people better systems and tools so that they can do their jobs safely.”