Western Australia's largest coal-fired power station is back in operation to help boost the state's flagging power supplies.
The WA government says today's re-opening of the Collie power station will add about 330 megawatts to the state's power grid following the devastating Varanus Island gas plant explosion on June 3.
The state lost 350 terajoules of gas a day, or 30 per cent of its domestic supplies, when a pipeline at the Varanus plant exploded, leading to the crippling of many WA businesses.
Energy Minister spokesman Fran Logan said the new power source would immediately free up about 25 terajoules a day under the gas trading scheme established since the explosion.
He said that within a week, it was hoped to ramp up enough power from the Collie plant to free up another 50 terajoules of gas.
Several power stations, including the Collie and the Muja A/B plants, were closed for winter maintenance at the time of the June 3 explosion.
Since then, available stocks of diesel and gas have been diverted away from businesses to maintain state energy supplies.
Mr Logan said the firing up of the Collie station would reduce the state's reliance on expensive diesel-based power.
It would allow the immediate release of some gas onto the market at current market levels "and further quantities of gas at distillate prices", he said.
"This should add to the quite significant volumes of gas that have been made available on the Gas Bulletin Board (trading scheme) in recent days," he said.
More coal-fired stations are expected to come back online in the coming months.
However, coal-fired stations only account for about half of the state's energy production and the state will remain heavily reliant on gas supplies.
Apache Energy expects to have the Varanus gas plant running at half capacity by next month and be back to full production by December.
