Collaboration with customers delivers outcomes on the Midlands Irrigation Scheme

A focus on the greater good, collaboration and quick action helped avert a major three-week outage on the Midlands Irrigation Scheme mini hydro – right at the peak of irrigation water demand.

A failure of the excitor winding in late November caused the unscheduled disruption, prompting asset engineers, electricians and Tasmanian Irrigation management to develop an innovative repair and recovery plan to minimise customer impact.

Specialists from New Zealand, who had previously installed, serviced and repaired the machine, were flown to the State and Tasmanian Irrigation’s team worked through the weekend, resulting in the mini hydro scheme being operational within 16 days.

Tasmanian Irrigation Chief Operating Officer David Skipper said it was a fantastic result to ensure that much-needed irrigation water could be delivered to farmers as efficiently and cost effectively as possible.

“One of the greatest challenges we faced was that Floods Creek Dam had 200 megalitres of available water, and daily usage had hit 40 megalitres,” David said. “There was only enough water to cover irrigator needs for a short period of time. Our only back-up option was to purchase water from Hydro Tasmania and electricity from Aurora, which would have been a significant cost to farmers.”

To help manage this situation, some of the larger irrigators with their own on-farm storage made the decision to temporarily stop taking water from Tasmanian Irrigation and instead draw from their own storages. This proactive step reduced daily demand on Floods Creek Dam and eased pressure on the system, allowing irrigators without storage to continue accessing water from the dam, albeit at reduced take rates.

“It was quite the juggling act to ensure irrigators without sufficient on-farm storage were able to access water to keep their crops and pastures on track, and negotiating additional water and power in case needed, while working with contractors to remove, repair and replace the excitor winding,” David said.

David sincerely thanked all irrigators for restricting water usage during the outage, as well as all individuals and companies involved in the quick turnaround repairs.

“I am incredibly proud of our team and all who assisted in the fast-track solution to ensure we could minimise the impact of the unplanned asset fail,” he said.

“A three-week outage at this time of year when farmers are so busy and so reliant on irrigation water could have been a very disruptive and costly problem.

“It was a great relief to be able to communicate to irrigators that the generator was back running at full capacity and exporting to the grid earlier than expected, enabling normal operations to resume and hydro pricing on irrigation water to be offset as planned.”