Widespread blackout in South Australia

[classical_hero]

http://www.adelaidenow.com.au/news/south-australia/widespread-power-blackout-hits-adelaide/story-fni6uo1m-1227590229395?utm_content=SocialFlow&utm_campaign=EditorialSF&utm_source=AdelaideAdvertiser&utm_medium=Twitter%27

POWER has been restored to most South Australian homes after a widespread blackout put thousands into darkness, when the state lost electricity supply from Victoria.

A spokesman for SA Power Networks said the state lost supply from “upstream” when the interconnector shut down, triggering an automatic loss of power — load shedding — in SA, resulting widespread outages.

Why is this important? Because of this.

“Renewables now account for 39 per cent of our electricity generation which is way ahead of the original target we set of 20 per cent. We now have the highest rate of solar penetration per capita of any country in the world and we have the second highest rate of wind farm penetration per capita than any country in the world."

But without the back up of evil fossil fuel generation, more such blackouts will happen. This a glimpse of a carbon neutral power generation. High costs and low reliablity.

 

[Kaitzilla]

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/new...uld-happen-again/story-e6frg6n6-1227590769713

A MAJOR blackout across the state because of a fault at a substation in the South-East could happen again, the energy regulator has warned.

More than 110,000 homes lost power after the substation shut down on Sunday night, causing a cut to the power supply from Victoria through a major interconnector.

Exactly what triggered the shutdown remains unclear. The substation’s owner, ElectraNet, said a cause would not be known for several days or even weeks, amid concerns over the state’s power supply security.

Responding to concerns that the outage was related to the use of wind power, Energy Minister Tom Koutsantonis declared: “This outage ... wasn’t caused because there was too much wind or not enough wind — it was a once-in-a-thousand year event”.

A 1 in 1000 year event!
That according to the energy regulator, could happen again.

 

[Arwon]

Yeah let's just knock this one on the head.

It was the instantaneous inability to import due to Murraylink going down that caused the blackout. It was such a sudden shift it was beyond the capacity of what's called "Frequency Controlled Anciliary Services" (emergency ramp-up or ramp-down that occurs with sudden shifts in load or supply, which also cause extreme price periods that fall on some big players) to cope. Effectively the market couldn't respond quixotic enough to a sudden shock. The result was therefore load shedding, ie the controlled switching off of parts of the grid to restore the right frequency of AC power in the rest of it.

The thing is, South Australia imported electricity from Victoria before it had widespread wind penetration, so was just as exposed to the sudden loss of the interconnect with Victoria as it is now. In fact it was more reliant on it than it is currently:



This event would have panned out exactly the same no matter what South Australia's generation mix (ie, back when it was coal and gas exclusively), because the issue is South Australia has precisely one interconnector to participate in a broader electricity market. As a truly isolated system SA would not be exposed to sudden interconnect loss but would have to maintain and use increased generation options and would have more expensive power and no ability to sell its own excess, but it hasn't had to have since joining the NEM as it can access a bigger market. It imports power on the assumption that it won't suddenly disappear, which is nearly always a good assumption worth the risk. The instantaneous loss of power simply overwhelmed the ability of the local market to respond instantly to the gap in generation (and exploit the extreme prices on offer).

SA does have coal plants, but they're not operating and are in the process of going out of business as stranded assets (read: they are uncompetitive) and the national electricity regulator itself says that isn't going to impact on reliability standards.

This is a dumb OP, but you all already knew that from the name and topic combination.

 

[Silurian]

As has been pointed out above this was nothing to do with renewable power.

Most renewable energy sources that have been built to date have been smaller than conventional power plants so there is actually less risk because you do not have all your eggs in one basket. Also the loss of a smaller generating source is less likely to trip out the whole grid and so will be easier to recover from.

Back in the winter South Australia’s only baseload coal plant went off line, and the renewable and gas saved the day.

RE NewEconomy

South Australia’s electricity system was put the test over the long weekend when the state’s only baseload power contributor, the brown coal Northern power station near Augusta, suddenly tripped and stopped providing power.

http://reneweconomy.com.au/2015/how-south-australia-coped-without-any-baseload-power-65138

Gas is now starting to be produced from wind power so we will soon be able to store it for when the wind is not blowing.

From Bloomberg

An Audi AG plant that converts surplus wind power into natural gas can help stabilize the German electricity grid, according to TenneT TSO GmbH.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/artic...that-turns-wind-power-to-gas-can-balance-grid

 

[Zelig]

It's the Australian civilization collapsing because of teh gays.

 

[gay_Aleks]

I'll try and resist to make a joke about wind turbines and gays blowing but..

...here we are.

 

[JollyRoger]

It's probably a warning shot from God.

 

[Glassfan]

A similar situation occurred in California in 2000 and 2001. Blackouts and rolling brownouts caused by over-dependence on renewable energy. The political fallout was that Ray Davis was fired and Arnold Schwarzenegger became governor.

 

[JollyRoger]

I think the California blackouts were due to an overreliance on Texas.

 

[warpus]

lol at OP and Kaitzilla's post just minutes after

 

[Arwon]

A similar situation occurred in California in 2000 and 2001. Blackouts and rolling brownouts caused by over-dependence on renewable energy. The political fallout was that Ray Davis was fired and Arnold Schwarzenegger became governor.

California didn't have much wind or solar back then and hydroelectricity isn't an intermittent renewable, it's identical to fossil fuels in that it's controlled dispatch.



The causes were complex but basically California had enough installed capacity to meet demand but the market was broken. That can be put down to spot market manipulation by generators, a mismatch between deregulated wholesale and regulated retail prices, weak transmission lines creating choke points for imports and summer pushing dernand to the point where these factors created market (but not actually physical) shortages.

In case anyone is curious this is how California is experiencing its wind and solar generation at different times. Load is total demand which supply must match. Net load is total load minus the share meet by zero margin intermittent renewables and represents the share which is met by dispatch of controllable sources (gas, hydro, imports - as determined by the market):

 

[SS-18 ICBM]

Even if it was due to the renewables (which, as has repeatedly been stated, is not the case), I'm not sure I like the OP's attitude here. Imagine where humanity would be if we didn't decide to stick with and work on improving newer technologies that have teething pains but are better in the long run.

 

[Leonel]

A spokesman for SA Power Networks said the state lost supply from “upstream” when the interconnector shut down, triggering an automatic loss of power — load shedding — in SA, resulting widespread outages.

There's your problem, the interconnector shut down.

 

[Arwon]

Even if it was due to the renewables (which, as has repeatedly been stated, is not the case), I'm not sure I like the OP's attitude here. Imagine where humanity would be if we didn't decide to stick with and work on improving newer technologies that have teething pains but are better in the long run.

The other bit of the attitude is anything less than absolute reliability is unacceptable.

That attitude applied to policy gets incredibly expensive - the difference between a reliability standard of say 6 hours a year power outage and of 3 or 1 or zero hours is really really high. A probabilistic reliability says "x could fail but only will rarely so we'll just eat the risk".

A more certain reliability standard would build two or three of everything that can fail. That would cover some more tiny risks of occasional blackout, but increase your costs twofold or threefold because suddenly you're building extra substations and transmission lines and DC interconnects and unused power generation.

 

[Commodore]

But without the back up of evil fossil fuel generation, more such blackouts will happen. This a glimpse of a carbon neutral power generation. High costs and low reliablity.

Oh come off it. The technology is still relatively new and will get more reliable and cheaper over time just like every other technology.

I mean, imagine if we adopted your mindset with, say, automobiles. The early cars were expensive and unreliable too. Does that mean we should have abandoned the whole endeavor and gone back to the horse and carriage? Same with computing. Early computers were expensive, unreliable, and had extremely limited uses. Under your mindset, we should have abandoned computing and all the other developments that spawned from it as well.

 

[Ajidica]

California didn't have much wind or solar back then and hydroelectricity isn't an intermittent renewable, it's identical to fossil fuels in that it's controlled dispatch.

Spoiler graph :

I assume that graph only tracks renewable energy?
Either way, I had no idea California got that much energy from geothermal.

Thank God for Arwon, seriously.

When the topic of renewable energy came up in a Model United Nations simulation, I broke out Arwon's post in IALS on the electrical grid and more or less dominated the simulation because nobody else knew anything about peak and baseline electrical generation or the grid.
90% of what I know about electrical generation probably comes from Arwon.

 

[Tee Kay]

Thank God for Arwon, seriously.

Oh come off it. The technology is still relatively new and will get more reliable and cheaper over time just like every other technology.

And the technology is already quite reliable and cheap as has been demonstrated.

 

[Arwon]

I assume that graph only tracks renewable energy?
Either way, I had no idea California got that much energy from geothermal.


When the topic of renewable energy came up in a Model United Nations simulation, I broke out Arwon's post in IALS on the electrical grid and more or less dominated the simulation because nobody else knew anything about peak and baseline electrical generation or the grid.
90% of what I know about electrical generation probably comes from Arwon.

Yeah it is just renewables. It actually is a bit misleading in hindsight - I hadn't noticed it excludes conventional large dispatch-controlled hydro and therefore by "small" it probably just means run-of-the river stuff.

Here's a fuller picture from the US Energy Information Agency:



(Bear in mind household solar probably wouldn't show up here as under most metering arrangements the grid sees it as foregone demand)

 

[Glassfan]

The causes were complex but...

Completely agree, but the regulatory problems were an effect, not a cause.

My point, however, was that while yes, unbridled industrial progress had negative consequences as well as positive, so will rampant environmentalism. We saw that play out in California in the 90's, and it may be happening again in Australia.

 

[Hygro]

A similar situation occurred in California in 2000 and 2001. Blackouts and rolling brownouts caused by over-dependence on renewable energy. The political fallout was that Ray Davis was fired and Arnold Schwarzenegger became governor.

That's completely false and you should change your media sources.