AGL Energy is the largest Australia

Australia

Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...

n gas and electricity retailer, with over six million customers. It has large investments in the supply of gas and electricity, and has recently invested in sustainable energy

Sustainable energy

Sustainable energy is the provision of energy that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs. Sustainable energy sources include all renewable energy sources, such as hydroelectricity, solar energy, wind energy, wave power, geothermal...

 businesses such as wind farm

Wind farm

A wind farm is a group of wind turbines in the same location used to produce electric power. A large wind farm may consist of several hundred individual wind turbines, and cover an extended area of hundreds of square miles, but the land between the turbines may be used for agricultural or other...

s and a hydroelectric power station in Victoria’s High Country.
Listed on the Australian Securities Exchange (ASX code: AGK), AGL is an S&P/ASX 50 company with a market capitalisation of about A$4.8 billion.

On 6 October 2006, Australian Gas Light Company

Australian Gas Light Company

The Australian Gas Light Company was an Australian gas and electricity retailer. It was formed in Sydney in 1837, and supplied town gas for the first public lighting of a street lamp in Sydney in 1841 AGL was the second company to list on the Australian Stock Exchange. The company gradually...

 and Alinta

Alinta

Alinta is an Australian energy infrastructure company. It has grown from a small, Western Australia based gas distributor and retailer to the largest energy infrastructure company in Australia. It was bought in 2007 by a consortium including Singapore Power and various now defunct Babcock & Brown...

 Limited shareholders approved the merger of AGL’s infrastructure assets with Alinta and the subsequent separation of AGL Energy.

Operations

AGL has become one of the largest providers of electricity in Australia and is well known for being one of the largest employers nationally. AGL seeks to take cornerstone positions in four areas – upstream electricity and gas supply, and the downstream retail of electricity and gas.

Electricity generation

AGL’s 1700MW electricity generation portfolio includes:

• 32.5% stake in coal-fired Loy Yang Power Station (Vic)
• Gas-fired peaking plant at Somerton
• Torrens Island Power Station (TIPS)
• AGL Hydro’s 11 generating schemes
• Wattle Point Wind Farm
• Small-scale biomass, landfill and cogeneration projects

Source	Capacity
Loy Yang A Loy Yang Power Station, Victoria Loy Yang Power Station is a brown coal fired power station located on the outskirts of the city of Traralgon, in south eastern Victoria, Australia. Loy Yang is a base load supply station, and produces about one third of Victoria's electricity requirements...  (32.5% equity)	2120MW
Somerton	150MW
Pinjarra 1&2 (33% equity)	280MW
Victoria Hydro	592MW
NSW Hydro	52.5MW
Torrens Island Power Station	1280MW

Projects under way include:

• Bogong hydro peaking station (Vic)
• Hallett Wind Farm (SA)
• Hallett Hill Wind Farm (SA)
• Macarthur Wind Farm
  Macarthur Wind Farm
  The Macarthur Wind Farm is a wind farm under construction in Victoria, Australia, being built by a joint venture formed by AGL Energy and Meridian Energy. The project is located in Macarthur, Victoria on a 5,500 ha site and it has been permitted to generate up to 420 MW. The wind farm will...
  
   (Vic)
• Base-load power station in Townsville (QLD)
• Leafs Gully Power Station (NSW)

Gas generation

AGL’s wholesale gas portfolio includes more than 4000 petajoules of equity and contracted gas reserves, with long-term contracts sourced from the Cooper, Surat and Gippsland basins. Other investments include a 50 per cent stake in Moranbah Gas Project, one of Australia’s largest coal-seam methane projects. Moranbah’s output represents about 12 per cent of the Queensland gas market. A 27.5 per cent stake in the Queensland Gas Company

Source	Amount of gas
Cooper Basin	605PJ
Surat Basin	1222PJ
Gippsland Basin	1250PJ
Sydney CSM (50% equity)	145PJ
Moranbah (50% equity)	16PJ

Gas usage: 1 million gigajoules (GJ) = 1 petajoule (PJ) An all-gas household, with gas used for cooking, heating and hot water, will use about 30GJ of gas a year.

Downstream electricity retail

1.6 million electricity customers – more than 25 per cent of South Eastern Australia’s residential and small commercial energy users.

Energy investments

AGL has a diversified range of investments in generation, transmission, distribution, retail and energy related businesses:

• ActewAGL (50%), Elgas (50%), H C Extractions (HCE) (100%), and the owner of Loy Yang Power, GEAC (32.5%).

AGL Energy (AGL) has entered into conditional arrangements for the construction of Macarthur wind farm in south-west Victoria.

External links

• Energy giant backs 20% renewables The Sydney Morning Herald, 30 August 2007.