By ALENA HIGGINS
LOCAL landholders can rest easy after Ergon Energy gave assurances that further infrastructure projects are off the table for Stanthorpe in the foreseeable future. An Ergon spokesman said a number of strategies were available if required to meet the load growth of Stanthorpe in the “medium to long term”, including “installing capacitor banks at the Pozieres and Stanthorpe substations to further increase the capacity of the 33kV line”.
“Emerging solutions such as demand management, distributed generation, including solar PV systems and battery storage, rather than further infrastructure projects, are likely to be part of any longer term solution,” he said.
The spokesman said now that the voltage regulator had been installed, up keep could be done without power supply interruptions to customers.
“Maintenance of the 110kV line that requires it to be taken out of service will be scheduled for two months each in autumn and spring when the load is lower than at other times of the year,” he said.
“Now the voltage regulator has been installed, the 33kV line can meet the full demand from the Stanthorpe region at these times.”
Ergon was asked how much money had been spent to come to the conclusion to scrap the second high votage power line, but a response was not provided by the time of print.
