(Reuters) - Australia's top power producer AGL Energy Ltd said on Friday that a unit outage at its Loy Yang A power station in Victoria will likely extend to seven months and impact its fiscal 2020 earnings.
The company expects the extended outage to result in a potential reduction of A$60 million to A$100 million ($42 million to $70 million) in its 2020 underlying net profit, AGL said in a statement.
Coal-fired plants such as Loy Yang have struggled to keep up with power demand in Australia, especially in the midst of a recent heat wave in the country.
AGL had earlier underlined further costs to keep Loy Yang running, as it also faces governmental pressure to maintain electricity supply and keep spiking energy prices in check.
The company said the shut unit has been out of service since May 18 following an electrical short that damaged the generator. Following a technical assessment, the company now expects it may take until December to return the unit to operation.
AGL said the outage would not affect its earnings for the fiscal year to June 30, reiterating its underlying net profit guidance in a range of A$970 million to A$1.07 billion.
($1 = 1.4351 Australian dollars)
(Reporting by Ambar Warrick in Bengaluru; Editing by Sherry Jacob-Phillips and Tom Hogue)
