The great energy debate

[Bohdan]

"". Good terms to chuck around by pollies.
SWK

Terms that the pollies are familiar with as they see "Inefficiency" and "deadwood" every time they shave.

[Bushmiller]

In talking numbers I think it is important to realise that Power Stations and probably other energy entities within the system have a number of different budgets. As the budget for the staff was reduced and resulted in a corresponding reduction in workforce (obviously) and sometimes in preparation for sale, the contractor budget increased. There was still a need for similar numbers of workers to be involved in any given enterprise, but they were sourced now from outside the organisation. For example, during outages at our power station we might have a workforce of five times the normal size and working around the clock as well. All supplied by contractors.

The argument, from the owners perspective, is that this workforce is only there when it is needed: Probably true, but it does come at a cost and there is a reduced amount of flexibility. Try getting a crew together for an emergency breakdown over a holiday period such as Xmas. One of our competitor stations experienced this issue this year.

Regards
Paul

[swk]

... All supplied by contractors...

I did note in my previous post that the number of contractors used was not easily discoverable and so when talking about "efficiency" of the workforce, the base numbers of the organisations (and the overall industry) should be taken with a hefty grain of salt.

And to further highlight Pauls point about flexibility and not being able to get contractors during an emergency, an anecdote:

Northern Power Station in Port Augusta went down the "we get contractors for major works when we need them" path in the 1990s. As Paul will confirm each unit of the power station will get a major maintenance done to it every few years (2 in the case of NPS) and being power stations they like to do this when the weather is mild (low loads on the system). So thats spring and autumn usually in SA.
So NPS lined up their maintenance, did all the scheduling with all the other power stations who similarly wanted a slot for their maintenance and lined up a lot of extra critical work which was good to do when the unit was off. Locked everything in. Couple of weeks to go, went to the labour hire companies, "we'll take all those tradesman now". Answer; "Sorry, they're all off working for BHP (Whyalla) and Roxby Downs (Santos)". Who (amazingly) also scheduled their blast furnace and mine outages for the nice weather too!! What a fun month followed there )

There are some more details (I wont go into) which with hindsight, after the number reduction process that lead to this situation, make this an even more obvious shot in the foot outcome, so it's not as if it's a new problem. Sufficient to say, over a few years the NPS management learned of a few unintended consequences to some of the "good" ideas that get touted as efficiencies.

Regards
SWK