Australia: Can the power grid survive another heatwave?

On Sunday, Australia became the hottest place on earth, stretching the east coast’s energy grid as it attempted to supply the increased demand.

However, Saturday was the first real test of the National Electricity Market's reliability in 2018 after its failures in the summer of 2016-17, and whether the Australian Energy Market Operator’s new summer power plans are strong enough to prevent massive blackouts as the grid comes under pressure during heatwaves.

Late last year, AEMO announced it was adding almost 2000 megawatts of additional power for the summer ahead, which it said would more than replace the 1600 megawatts taken offline after Victoria's Hazelwood brown coal-fired power station closed in March.

[...]