Labor’s Climate Change Minister Chris Bowen has been dubbed ‘blackout Bowen’ after heatwave power outages struck Australia’s most populous state. 

Parts of Sydney experienced a blackout on Tuesday afternoon as temperatures soared to the mid to high 30s, while regions in southern NSW were also hit with outages early on Wednesday morning, leaving 6,000 homes without electricity.

The Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO) said it is working with industry to ‘manage electricity reliability during high-demand, heatwave conditions in NSW with major power stations unavailable due to forced and planned outages’. 

Energy market analyst Saul Kavonic claimed the Albanese government’s ‘meddling’ in the market had ‘come home to roost’.

Mr Kavonic pointed at Labor’s gas deals, Minister Bowen’s Capacity Investment Scheme, and government interference in the market as three areas where the electricity shortage could be addressed.

Fed-up Aussies questioned whether green energy projects would be able to replace coal rapidly enough to fill demand as it was phased out. 

‘Nobody is building any coal fire power stations because it’s government policy to shut them down. Cheers Blackout Bowen,’ one wrote on X. 

‘And the NSW Labor energy minister is now telling Sydneysiders to use less power during the heat… Welcome to Blackout Bowen’s Australia,’ another said.

‘Let me get this right. We are getting rid of our coal fired power stations in Australia because of the climate crisis but are exporting our coal to China and Co. so they can use all their coal fired power stations?’ a third wrote. 

Mr Kavonic said the winding down of coal-fired electricity plants as they reach their expiry dates has failed to be met with adequate replacement. 

‘The government and regulator has been asleep at the wheel and have only addressed this once it got to crisis mode,’ the analyst told 2GB. 

‘The multi-pronged approach the Labor government has had since it has been in charge has left us with no redundancy in our energy sector… and this will also be felt in manufacturing, leading to job losses.’ 

Mr Kavonic said Labor’s Capacity Investment Scheme encourages investment in solar, wind and battery storage but does not apply to LNG or coal projects, making the economically unviable.

He added that if the government issued a statement advising they would step back from directing the type of new electricity projects developed, it would allow the market to naturally fill the gap through private investment.

Inquiries for portable generators have soared by as much as 60 per cent in NSW in recent days as the state’s Energy and Environment Minister Penny Sharpe told residents they should be rationing their electricity. 

‘On really hot days do you really need to have every single light on in the house?’ she said during a press conference on Tuesday afternoon.

‘Do you need to have your air conditioning down at 19 degrees? You don’t. But, you know, I’m not giving official advice at this point.’

The energy market operator has warned of more blackouts across the state after residents in southern NSW were impacted on Wednesday morning. 

Parts of Wagga Wagga, Culcairn, Henty, Uranquinty, Holbrook and surrounding areas are currently experiencing the power outage.

A spokesperson for Essential Energy said the power had been temporarily restored through a back feeder line.

It said the outage was ’caused by fault on the Transgrid transmission line between Wagga Wagga and Albury and is not related to load shedding’. 

The spokesperson said it was ‘temporarily’ resolved by 9am and confirmed residents impacted were notified of the power outage via SMS on Wednesday.

Residents have also been encouraged to stay ‘at least eight metres away from fallen powerlines or damaged electricity equipment’.

The outage comes as a heatwave sweeps the state, sending temperatures soaring to 40C in densely-populated areas of Sydney’s western suburbs. 

AEMO confirmed it intends to use some of its emergency powers to continue electricity supply across NSW as reserve capacity remains on short supply.

In order to enable stable supplies of electricity across the state, AEMO said it intends to launch negotiations with companies to help reduce the demand, known as the Reliability and Emergency Reserve Trader (RERT) scheme.

The RERT scheme is a rarely-used system that ‘(protects) the reliability of the national electricity market’ due to an increased demand for electricity during a heatwave. 

On Tuesday, AEMO warned that energy supplies may be at ‘risk’ as the sweltering heat continues into Wednesday.

‘We are experiencing some quite unseasonably hot weather… and effectively that is a summer heatwave while we are in spring,’ AEMO CEO Daniel Westerman said. 

Combined with scheduled maintenance works on three of the state’s four coal-fired power stations in Bayswater, Vales Point and Eraring, the AEMO warned residents of a ‘tightness in electricity supply’.

‘It is pretty normal both generation and transmission to use periods in autumn and spring to undertake maintenance activities that do need to happen,’ he added.