Australia: From Coal Mines to Mountain Streams
I grew up in Eastern Victoria in the high country and on the Gippsland coast. Without knowing it my nerdy interest in energy as well as the hobbies I have and the environment I interacted with was built and shaped by the State Electricity Commission of Victoria (SECV). Two towns, both built by and for the SEC, best exemplify the dual history of electricity generation and how it shaped their respective regions. Yallourn the heart of the Latrobe Valley was built on and around brown coal, the powerhouse of electricity in Victoria, housed thousands of SEC workers and was eventually subsumed into the mine itself. Mount Beauty, at the foot of the high country, was also built by the SEC as a company town to house the workers for the Kiewa Valley Hydro System and would grow to be the gateway to Falls Creek, the wider high country. The history and future of these two towns parallel the trajectory of the power plants they were built for with the rise and (frustratingly slow) fall of coal power and the growing value of hydro as a battery to unlock renewable generation going forward. [1]
Building Victoria’s state power grid
In the early 20th century Victorias demand for electricity was rising through increased electric lighting, trams and railways. As was standard for the time this demand was supplied by a number of small local power stations that, as the years went on, were less and less fit for the job.
Victoria looked to the development of large scale brown coal power stations in the west of Germany and saw an opportunity to utilise brown coal reserves in the Latrobe Valley, around 130km from Melbourne. In 1918 a State Electricity Commission of Victoria (SECV) was established, headed by John Monash (I guess we really only had one engineer in Victoria at the time), to build and manage the generation and distribution of the new state grid.
Map of Victoria’s thermal (coal and gas) and hydro power stations, with circle size representing each station’s generation capacity. The vast majority of Victoria’s pre-renewables power generation infrastructure was developed by the SECV.
Over the next 70 years the SECV would grow and grow. The vast majority of the generation came from brown coal in the Latrobe valley beginning with Yallourn Power Station commencing transmission to Melbourne in 1924. This was expanded along with the construction additional large scale facilities at Loy Yang and Hazelwood. The SEC also invested in hydro power facilities both as part of the Snowy. Hydro Scheme and Kiewa Valley Hydro.
Yallourn: Coal Power and a Town Lost to the Mine
The SECV built Yallourn, not just as a power station but a planned integrated community with a footy field, schools, shops and of course an adjacent and continually expanding power station and open cut mine. John Monash mandated the houses in this model community should have “sufficient land to permit the tenant to keep a horse and a garden”. [2]
Yallourn town prior to relocation and demolition to make way for a larger coal mine
From 1920 to 1950 it grew to over 5,000 residents, the vast majority SECV employees but by 1980 more power was needed and the it was decided to move the residents and any building of value to nearby towns and allow the footprint to be swallowed by the open cut mine. [3]
Yallourn Power station is now also nearing its end with decommissioning announced for 2028. As renewable energy and storage reshape the market, inflexible coal plants now struggle to compete. Once running flat-out around the clock, is increasingly asked to ramp up and down, something it was never designed to do.
Mount Beauty: Hydro Power and a Town in the High Country
Like Yallourn, Mount Beauty was built as a company town by the SECV but this scheme aimed to harness the snowmelt and rainfall of the Bogong High Plains. The Kiewa Hydro-Electric Scheme commenced development in 1938 but was initially delayed by World War II and was eventually completed in 1961. Mount Beauty and nearby Bogong were built to house the hundreds of workers needed to construct dams, aqueducts, tunnels, and multiple power stations including West Kiewa and Clover. [4]
The first buildings and lifts at Falls Creek were built by SECV employees
The construction opened up more reliable access to the high plains and land previously only used for summer grazing around the new Rocky Valley Reservoir built for the project. A ski lodge was built, following by a rope tow and then in 1957 Australia’s first chairlift. [5]
Unlike Yallourn, Mount Beauty thrived after construction ended, becoming a hub for tourism, hiking, and skiing and helped to open up the high country to a wider range of people. Today, the Kiewa Hydro system plays a different but increasingly valuable role by providing rapid-response power to complement solar and wind. When the sun stops or the wind drops it’s able to start generating within minutes and in doing so smooth out the grid in a way coal can not. [6]
Changing Roles for Coal and Hydro
For decades, coal provided Victoria’s baseload power and hydro filled in the gaps.
This chart shows February 2010 dispatch, with each day’s output stacked. Darker shading indicates more frequent operation, and the average output is shown as a dark line. Yallourn runs near 24/7 as baseload, while Bogong provides peaking support during high-demand periods.
But the rise of large-scale wind, rooftop solar, and grid-scale batteries has changed this. Coal plants like Yallourn, designed for constant output, now face declining market share and increasing ramping demands, which shorten their operating life and profitability. Hydro, meanwhile, is more valuable than ever, acting as a “battery” that can be dispatched quickly and repeatedly throughout the day.
Where Yallourn once represented the future of endless, cheap electricity, its days are now numbered, with closure set for 2028. The Kiewa Hydro system, on the other hand, has found new relevance in a renewable-heavy grid. [7]
Jump forward to 2021: Yallourn begins reducing output during the day as high solar generation lowers power prices and reduces profitability. Bogong sees high utilisation during morning and evening peaks, when demand is high and solar generation is low.
By 2024, operational changes are even more pronounced. Yallourn consistently reduces output from 10 am to 3 pm each day, while Bogong experiences much higher evening utilisation.
The Lasting Legacy of the SECV in Victoria
The SECV’s role in shaping Victoria’s energy system is seen through two very different projects, Yallourn’s coal power in the Latrobe Valley and the Kiewa Hydro Scheme in the high country. Both were once seen as pillars of long-term, reliable, and cheap electricity but while coal’s role has faded under the pressure of renewable competition hydro’s flexibility has made it more valuable than ever. The towns of Yallourn and Mount Beauty remain living reminders of these legacies. One swallowed by the mine it served, the other transformed into a thriving alpine community. [8]
Data Sources & References
Charts created using archive data from AEMO
[1] Author’s note: Series introduction on Orbost–Orbost journey (forthcoming cross-post)
[2] Meredith Fletcher report on Yallourn (Hazelwood Inquiry archive)
[3] Virtual Yallourn project: history and images
[4] Mount Beauty & District Historical Society: Museum and history
[5] Australian Alpine Club: Growth of skiing in Victoria (1930s–50s)
[6] Victorian Collections: Kiewa Hydro-Electric Scheme records
[7] Australian Energy Council: End of an era with Yallourn closure
[8] Yallourn community history site