Eraring Power Station Ash Dam

Integrated geotechnical, structural and environmental monitoring ensuring embankment stability and compliance at NSW’s largest power station ash dam.

The Eraring Ash Dam Project

The Eraring Power Plant in New South Wales, Australia is a notable electricity generation facility that plays a crucial role in the country’s energy supply. It includes a tailing dam specifically designed to securely retain the ash by-product generated on-site. During the evaluation of the dam’s southern embankment stability, it was determined that the required factor of safety, as per ANCOLD guidelines, was not met for potential rare but significant earthquakes. To ensure long-term sustainability, Origin Energy enlisted the services of Menard to carry out stabilization works on the Southern Embankment Foundation.

The Challenges

Menard contracted Sixense to implement instrumentation and monitoring solutions for soil improvement works at the Eraring Ash dam. The objective was to establish a comprehensive monitoring system for critical areas. To achieve this, the monitoring data would be automatically fed back to a centralized data hosting platform, enhancing the resolution and frequency of accessible data for on-site decision makers and eliminating the need for manual readings. However, ensuring reliable data access in a remote location presented a significant challenge that needed to be overcome.

What We’ve Delivered

During the dam reinforcement phase, Sixense focused on achieving real-time and precise monitoring of soil behaviour. The focus was on tracking horizontal and vertical soil movements, embankment settlement, and water pressures across multiple soil layers. Robust equipment and resilient solar power ensured consistent and accurate data collection.
In addition to ground monitoring, Sixense Oceania assumed responsibility for monitoring environmental data throughout the construction phase, aiming to minimize the project’s impact on the local community and biodiversity in the area.
Live access to collected data enabled effective analysis and reporting. The Beyond Monitoring platform presented information accurately using views and graphs. To prevent data loss, a redundancy system was implemented with programmed alarms for instant notifications of on-site behavioural changes.