The Swanbank Power Stations are located in Swanbank within South East Queensland, Australia. The original power station was coal fired, but the site has since moved to gas. By 2007 the site had consisted of the highly efficient gas-fired Swanbank E Power Station and the smaller gas-fired Swanbank C Power Station.
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Swanbank A was commissioned in 1967 and decommissioned in August 2005. It had six steam turbines, and was powered by coal. The three high, concrete smoke stacks were collapsed on 20 August 2006. All three were collapsed at the same time with a 10 second delay between each stack. The deconstruction and demolition project, undertaken by Trio Industries, was scheduled to be completed in February 2007. Swanbank B was commissioned in 1971 with four steam turbines, powered by coal. Four units of Swanbank B were decommissioned in April 2010, June 2010, 2011, and May 2012, due to the plant reaching the end of its operational life. The coal for Swanbank B came from coalfields in South-East Queensland, including New Acland Mine, by road. Water is supplied from Lake Moogerah and the Western Corridor Recycled Water Scheme began to supply the power station with water in August 2007. Swanbank C was a small gas turbinegenerating plant, rated at. It had two Rolls-Royce Avon gas generators discharging into a power turbine which drove the generator. Middle Ridge Power Station was a similar design, with four gas generators discharging into two power turbines, one on each end of the electrical generator. It was commissioned in 1969. Swanbank D was a small open cycle gas turbine. Delivering only, it was commissioned in 2000 but only ran for a few years. The much larger and more efficient Swanbank E was commissioned in 2002 with a single combined cycle gas turbine. The gas turbine of Swanbank E was the largest of its type at the time of its commissioning.
On 11 July 2008, four activists from Greenpeace Australia Pacific occupied the top of a 140-metre high Swanbank B smokestack for 33 hours. They descended over two hours on the next day, leaving a message for Australia's leaders – "Go Solar"- painted on the side of the smoke stack.
