Millmerran Power Station
We provide reliable power
Millmerran Power Station is located 230km south-west of Brisbane, near the town of Millmerran. It’s within driving distance to Toowoomba and other key regional centres.
With a 24/7 generating capacity of 850-megawatts across two units, Millmerran is a significant base load power supplier to homes and businesses in Queensland.
It reliably generates enough electricity to power the equivalent of 1.3 million homes, meeting around 10 per cent of Queensland’s energy needs.
We invest in the best technology
Millmerran Power Station is one of the newest and most efficient black coal plants in Australia, and one of the lowest greenhouse gas emitters out of any coal plant in the country.
We are also the first coal plant in the world, and one of only two in Queensland, to use a combination of super-critical boiler technology and air-cooled condensers to significantly reduce emissions and water consumption. This combination of technology lowers our emissions by up to 10 per cent, and reduces water use by 90 per cent compared to most other coal plants in Australia.
Our plant doesn’t use any groundwater, relying on 100 per cent recycled wastewater from Toowoomba’s Wetalla Sewerage Plant for all process water.
We are part of Queensland’s growth story
Our decision to build Millmerran Power Station at a cost of $1.5 billion more than 20 years ago continues to deliver long-term social and economic benefits to Queensland. Last year, Genuity contributed almost $275 million to the state economy through wages, state taxes and royalties, local government rates and locally sourced goods and services.
Along with our subsidiary, Millmerran Operating Company, we employ about 200 people across a range of trade, technical and corporate roles. We have nearly 95 employees at the plant and over 40 people in our Brisbane office. We also have close to 65 regular contractors on-site, which increases to more than 500 during annual maintenance outages.
Our team has spent the past two decades developing meaningful relationships with stakeholders and community members across the Darling Downs. We are long-term supporters of local community organisations, charities and sporting groups and invest in a number of philanthropic partnerships.
We are crucial to the energy transition
As the world moves to decarbonise, reliable base load power generators like Millmerran Power Station are needed more than ever to support the energy transition in Queensland.
The location of Millmerran’s connection to Queensland’s power grid means it’s able to provide the system strength needed to safely facilitate the development and connection of 2,500 megawatts of renewable projects in the Darling Downs region. Without our plant’s firming capacity, this volume of wind and solar connection would not be possible.
We also have capacity at our site to transition to a sustainable energy hub in the future through the addition of renewable energy infrastructure.
Commodore Coal Mine
Working smarter
Millmerran Power Station is a highly efficient ‘mine-mouth’ operation, which means our fuel supply arrives via conveyor belt from an adjacent mine, Commodore Coal Mine.
Commodore is an open-cut, black coal mine owned by Genuity and operated by our contract miner EPSA, which employs about 140 people.
The mine produces up to 3.6 million tonnes of coal each year exclusively for our plant’s use, which is securely delivered via a 1.6-kilometre covered conveyor belt.
Forest Regeneration Project
150,000 trees planted and counting
We are committed to managing our 9,000-hectare Millmerran site in a sustainable and balanced way.
Nearly 4,000 hectares of our land is licensed to local farmers for agricultural use. Another 1,000 hectares is currently dedicated to the largest native forest regeneration project approved by the Carbon Farming Foundation in Australia.
So far, we’ve planted around 150,000 native trees of different varieties to help offset our emissions and support local wildlife. As the forest matures, we will continue to manage risks such as bush fires and pests.
Millmerran Development
Exploring new energy options
Over the past two years, we’ve been researching the potential to build a wind farm and battery energy and storage system on our Millmerran site. This would broaden our capacity to sustainably generate power from a mix of base load and renewable energy sources.
A wind monitoring program using Lidar-based technology and data generated from a meteorological mast has confirmed a wind farm is commercially viable, and our investigations into the feasibility of building energy storage are continuing.
We remain focussed on considering projects that align with existing land uses, and local stakeholder engagement will be a key factor in any final investment decision.
