Northern Augusta power station is a 520 MW coal power station in South Australia, Australia. It is operated by Alinta Energy Pty Ltd. Based on its capacity (estimated), it can supply roughly 651k homes (estimated). It ranks #39 of 536 Australia power plants by installed capacity. Commissioned in 1984, it is around 42 years old — long-established. In context, coal supplies about 42.7% of Australia's electricity; the national grid averages 525 gCO₂/kWh (38.6% low-carbon) (2025).
Plant data: WRI Global Power Plant Database (CC BY 4.0), id CT-6196.
Known, modelled and calculated values are kept separate. Missing fields are shown as unavailable.
The capacity and/or fuel fields on this page include a source-backed provenance label from GEM, an official registry, Wikidata, OSM, or a cross-source match.
capacity: GEM wiki unit-level table, historical/all-units fallback when no operating units, fetched 2026-07-05; fuel: Climate TRACE source-record fuel
At 520 MW, Northern Augusta power station is below the median coal plant in Australia (700 MW). Technically it is described as subcritical. Coal plants burn pulverised coal to raise high-pressure steam for a turbine; they run as baseload but are the most carbon-intensive mainstream source and the first targeted for retirement or efficiency retrofits.
Capacity comparison computed from the WRI Global Power Plant Database; fuel-type context is general engineering background.
Installed capacity (MW), WRI Global Power Plant Database (CC BY 4.0).
Operated by Alinta Energy Pty Ltd. All plants by this company →
This coal plant burns coal to raise high-pressure steam that spins a turbine-generator. It sits in a hot semi-arid steppe climate (Köppen BSh) — Southern Hemisphere, latitude 32.5°S — which shapes how much energy it can produce and how its output varies through the year.
Monthly mean temperature
Heating degree-days here run 70% below the median power plant in this dataset — a proxy for how much extra energy heated equipment must replace through its surfaces in winter.
Climate heat-demand index: 24/100 — this site sits in the bottom third of the power plants we cover by heating degree-days.
Climate normals: WorldClim 2.1 (1970–2000 monthly normals, 10 arc-min, CC BY 4.0); zone: Köppen-Geiger world climate classification (Kottek et al. 2006, 0.5° grid). Degree-days & heat-demand index computed by PowerAtlas — a modelled heat-demand proxy, not a measured site figure.
For a plant’s outdoor hardware — heat-recovery steam generators (HRSG), expansion joints, valves, flanges and their insulation — the local climate sets how fast unprotected steel and coatings degrade. This site sits in a benign, low-corrosion environment (estimated ISO 9223 class C1 — Very low), with dust abrasion the leading environmental stress.
Higher environmental severity is exactly where protective removable insulation pays back most: a sheltered micro-climate slows corrosion, UV and thermal-cycling damage and extends outdoor hardware service life. This is an indicative site-climate context — not a condition assessment of any specific plant or operator.
Indicative estimate via the ISO 9223:2012 informative method (atmospheric corrosivity from temperature, time-of-wetness and airborne salinity), using WorldClim climate normals, the Köppen-Geiger class and coast distance. Indicative, not a measured corrosion rate.
The #21 largest coal power plant of 38 in Australia by capacity.
Australia has 38 coal power plants in this dataset, together about 32,918 MW of capacity.
Coordinates -32.5425, 137.7878 from WRI Global Power Plant Database (CC BY 4.0). View on OpenStreetMap.
Northern Augusta power station is a 520 MW source-record coal power plant in South Australia, Australia, commissioned in 1984.
Its output is enough to supply roughly 650,742 homes (estimated).
Northern Augusta power station is operated by Alinta Energy Pty Ltd.
