Morwell Power Station and Briquette Works were built by the State Electricity Commission of Victoria (SECV) in 1949. This was marked by the commencement of fieldwork for the Morwell open cut mine.
Equipment for the production of briquettes was ordered from Germany in the early 1950s. Initially, it was intended for the site to consist of four briquette factories. In 1951, the recession impacted the project, with work grinding to a halt in 1952.
With equipment for the first two briquette factories having already been ordered and delivered to the site, construction was unable to commence due to...Read More
Morwell Power Station and Briquette Works were built by the State Electricity Commission of Victoria (SECV) in 1949. This was marked by the commencement of fieldwork for the Morwell open cut mine.
Equipment for the production of briquettes was ordered from Germany in the early 1950s. Initially, it was intended for the site to consist of four briquette factories. In 1951, the recession impacted the project, with work grinding to a halt in 1952.
With equipment for the first two briquette factories having already been ordered and delivered to the site, construction was unable to commence due to the dismissal of half the workforce.
Eventually, SECV decided to cancel the order of the third and fourth briquette factories. In 1955, the construction of briquette factories 1 and 2 recommenced, although now with a reprioritisation of power generation over briquette production at the site, with production commencing from 1956.
The Morwell Power Station and Briquette manufacturing plant were constructed as an integrated facility, essentially a large cogeneration power plant design with the industrial process steam used for drying the briquetting coal.
In an apparent oversight, it was later realised that the brown coal from the Morwell open cut mine was unsuitable for the production of briquettes due to its high alkali and sulphur content. This resulted in a requirement to transport brown coal from Yallourn, meaning there were two separate supplies of coal, with Morwell coal going to the Power Station, and Yallourn coal to the Briquette Factory.
Morwell Power Station consisted of one 20MW, three 30MW Metropolitan Vickers turbo generators and one 60MW Stal Laval turbo generator. In addition, the turbines were fed by eight 8.7MPa 490 Celsius Super Heated High-Pressure Steam boilers.
At its peak, Morwell Power Station could produce up to 180MW and produce more than 1,000,000 tons of briquettes for the Victorian solid fuel market in its associated facility.
Over the years, demand for briquettes waned, and on the 26th of December 2003, a fire destroyed the conveyor that fed coal from briquette plant A to the remaining B, C and D plants. The conveyor was never repaired, and only plant A continued to produce briquettes from then until the end of its production life in August 2014.
On the 8th of September 2014, the last boiler exhausted its fuel and was taken offline along with the final operating turbine.
In its prime, the “Morwell Briquette and Power” as it was then known, employed around 1,000 people. Read less
