Total Blackout in all of SA

[glend]

Gee the South Australians are having a shocker weather wise. Apparently the entire grid is down due to the storms, and having to lock down all the wind turbines. Hope some have generators but without the Net maybe we won't hear from them until tomorrow.:shrug:

[astronobob]

Been watching that front move east lately; 'black coring' on the radar now, which generally means hail. She's Ramped up a grouse wall-line !
Would have to be some sort a Satellite internet after the system passes areas, ?

Breaking!! Whole of SA is currently without electricity. From 1600 megawatts demand to 22 megawatts. The state grid has collapsed!!!

[michaellxv]

Contrary to much of the talk on the radio the sky has not fallen in.

Power went off just before 4pm so we all packed up and headed home. My normal 45min drive took over 2hours, no surprise there given there were no traffic lights anywhere. But it was not a stressful drive home, everyone gave way took their turn etc, and we all got home.

Listening to the radio on the way home there were lots of "experts" with no one listening to the available info about what actually happened. How could this happen, we should have more redundancy, its the wind turbines fault. None of it relevant to the fact the storm took out some towers supporting high voltage power lines and the system shut down as designed to protect itself.

Got home and sorted out a few things. I was half way through cooking the BBQ and the power came back on.

A few hours without power just breaks up the monotony of 1st world life. Reminds me of Vicar of Dibley. no, no, no, no, twas the big storm of 2016. no, no, no, no, twas the big blackout storm of 2016.

Michael

PS. Just checked the rain gauge. 33mm today which is a lot by Adelaide standards.

[tlgerdes]

So, the last one out did turn off the lights :P

[astronobob]

Very true Michael, Good to hear you had a safe return & a meal.

Tho I still feel for those who may have a tree through their roof, ran out of petrol - no fuel pumping, flooded, bound to be car accidents, ect, ?

Good the hospital & emergency services all have sound back-up-power !
Would be a day/night or both to remember for some, that'd be for sure.

[skysurfer]

In South Africa they call this Load Shedding (http://loadshedding.eskom.co.za), but currently there is no issue. In the summer of 2015 there was 2.5 hours every day a blackout. I noticed that most ATM's and supermarkets worked normally, due to backup diesel generators. So it is much more prepared than here in the EU.

But back to SA, it is completely powered by wind ? I thought that Australia is, like South Africa, addict to coal power stations, despite both countries have much more sunshine than the EU.

[Shiraz]

No SA isn't powered solely by wind, but we have enough capacity to do so under the right conditions. As Michael pointed out, the supercell winds destroyed main HV trunk line pylons in 3 places (I think) and the shock of such a major instantaneous change to the load and capacity forced everything to automatically shut down to protect the remaining infrastructure and keep everyone safe. The interstate connectors were also withdrawn to stop the contagion from spreading.

The system did what it should have done, but of course it will all still be blamed on the wind power generators - even though they did not actually cause the power pylons to fall down.

Interesting effect here in northern Adelaide was that two LED downlights died about a second before the power went off - everything else came back on again at about 3 am. Took the power folks a while to isolate the damaged equipment and get extra thermal generation going, presumably to replace the wind power that was lost when the pylons failed. Was a bit of a mess though to have power go out completely in a biggish city at the end of the working day - no trams, no trains, no lifts, no traffic signals, no service stations, no cash registers, mobile phone towers running out of battery backup power etc..

Makes you realise just how vulnerable our way of life really is.

edit: More on the way Thursday. gale force winds on the west coast and sea swells up to 10m.

[AussieTrooper]

Yes and no.
SA is addicted to coal stations, but they are Victorian ones and there is no direct connection to any other state. Hence when they lose their 275kV interconnector, they are stuffed.

When Victoria lost it's 330kV interconnector to NSW a few years back, a major load shed occurred, but there was no total blackout, and supply was restored soon after. SA is the only mainland state not to have a solid base load capacity.

SA is not self sufficient (not even close), so they are the most susceptible to this kind of event.

[OICURMT]

The family went out yesterday morning on a road trip toe the Riverlands.... long way for lunch, but we had fun.

Didn't know about the problem until we approached the city. But we sailed through back to the house with minimal delay (outskirts of northern Adelaide to Belair via the Gawler bypass, Fullurton Rd to Old Belair Rd).

I will say that I was very impressed with the police and their handling of traffic in some very high usage intersections. The police should be commended for their very organized deployment of officers. It made the trip through the city smooth considering there were no lights.


On a separate note, I don't understand the Australia free-for-all system at intersections with no power... there seems to be no rules on how to proceed.

In the US, it's a round robin system (by law) as intersections without power become 4-way stop be default. The round robin system allows everyone to get through. I've looked for a similar rule in the Australia driving manual, but can't find anything...

OIC!

[sharptrack2]

Yes OIC!, its by law, but like here, laws go out the window when people are stressed. Every intersection becomes mandatory 4 way stop, give way to the right, so in effect a square roundabout, supposedly with out "runners". ;) :lol:

[cfranks]

Power was restored here at 9:45 this morning. :(

Charles

[bugeater]

Give way to the right is the rule.

I found the system in the US particularly confusing the first time I drove there, especially given how many 4 way intersections there are in the burbs. But I felt like a boss on the very rare occasion I came across a roundabout.

[glend]

SA will continue to pay a price for a lack of Base load capacity, and a clear vision on power infrastructure. Surely there has to be some political fall out from yesterday's event, and recent decisions that increase dependence of connections to Victoria.
There is all that uranium sitting under the ground in SA, so they could be self sufficient in nuclear power. Expensive to build yes, but might be cheaper in the long run than paying peak premium megawatt prices to Vic generators. Crowing about the use of renewable energy is not going to do much for the state's economy if baseload cannot be maintained through those expensive initiatives.:screwy:

[Shiraz]

this is part of what went wrong - probably would also have had a slight effect on electricity from a coal fired power station :lol:

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-09-29/transmission-tower-down-in-sa's-mid-north/7887976

Agree though Glen - we need to have a better plan for the future. Relying on ancient distribution networks, buying excess power from the Eastern States when the wind does not blow and having no local power storage seems like a recipe for further issues. The NEM was supposed to use the market mechanism to give us the best possible network - looks to me like the market has taken us down a cul-de-sac.

[marc4darkskies]

In the US, when the lights go out the intersection becomes a 4-way stop. A 4-way stop in the US means that when arriving at the intersection, a person must yield to the cars that were there before them. I.e. first in best dressed. It works well because everyone knows the rule. If arriving simultaneously a give way to the right rule comes into play. The only 4-way I've come across in AUS is in Artarmon in Sydney. No-one knows what to do (except me :D). Can be a case of automotive roulette! :scared:



Couldn't agree more! Lack of base load can be a big problem with being "addicted" to renewable power sources (which at best can only be supplemental at this stage). And I agree we should go Nuclear!! Except for a bit of muck you have to bury from time to time - all other problems are minor (with modern Nuke plants that are not built on fault lines or sitting on the coast :eyepop:)

[pgc hunter]

Exactly right. I am all for nuclear power, however, I wouldn't trust the current mob of defects in the SA parliament with constructing a nuclear plant, one Chernobyl is enough.

Had one of the most epic lightning displays ever come through last night. After seeing a few thunderstorms in my time up here, when it storms here, it storms properly!

I did get to enjoy some good dark skies with an old pair of 12x50's lying around. M31 was nice and the LMC took on another whole dimension with the naked eye. Meanwhile, lightning was still flickering, now nearly 300km away! I was seeing flashes at the time when this radar screencap. I was even seeing the odd flash from that cluster north of Broken Hill!

Memorable evening for sure.

[Shiraz]

just for interest, this is the level of planning for the future - it looks like Governments in the NEM have handed off the planning function to this incorporated body.
https://www.aemo.com.au/Media-Centre/-/media/25994EA30184400098F82B8BA0E85BFA.as hx

[el_draco]

Two causes
1/ I just picked up the OTA for a bucket...
2/ Someone else in Tassie just about set up a new scope...

Caused a MAJOR disturbance in the force!

Whoops...:P

Proof: Two centres of disruption and they are headed our way!

[Exfso]

To really put it in a nutshell, South Australia is Broke and the bunch of dweebs running the place have either shut down or sold off all their assets to try and pay for their mis-management. We are the most expensive state by a long shot for power in Australia and it is getting worse.
You bet there will be questions asked, but the idiot in charge of SA has about as much backbone as a wet sponge. To be totally reliant on other states for power if wind fails is ridiculous.
He will just blame everything else to cover his butt.:mad2:
I spoke to a mate in Victoria this morning and asked what he is paying for power, and it works out with discounts, at least half of what we are hit here in SA. How can the greedy suppliers justify this?? The same company I am with gives him over 30% discount for pay on time, compared to 9% in SA, go figure:shrug:
So not only are we being shafted big time for power, it is as reliable as a wire netting waterbag:rolleyes: Since the main debacle yesterday, we have lost power twice. WTF is happening. I know we have had winds, but it is becoming the norm to lose power, hell it is worse than living in Darwin in the wet season.
If I could afford it, I would go battery and tell all the power wackers to go stuff themselves. Roll on cheaper batteries.
My rant ends:P

[AndrewJ]

I wonder how much can be tied back to the longer term effects of privatisation, where profit trumps product, and maintenance by failure is assumed to be cheaper overall???
Ie This privatising process essentially broke apart the core groups of engineers ( mainly ) who planned and maintained the grid as an integrated grid. They were responsible for the lot, not just the bits they bought and profits went back into the maintenance. ( Not to mention the training of apprentices to keep it all going )
Now we appear to have hundreds of semi disconnected companies, all having to feed their own CEOs, managements, boards, advertising depts and shareholders first. Each one gets to blame someone else and collect a bonus if they avoid being blamed.

Andrew

[Exfso]

Andrew, like most things, it is most definitely Profit ahead of the consumer. Not sure what it is like in Victoria, but it is a nightmare here in SA. Average power bills are ridiculous, I really do not know how single income and or pensioners can pay their bills. I believe that in a lot of cases they cannot. I know if I did not have solar, based on my daily consumption I would be getting $800+ quarterly power bills. I use around 23kwh per day and that is pared right back to what I used to use. and at around 0.36c/kwh over 90 days plus supply charge of around 83c/day I reckon I am pretty close to that mark. I looked at one of my power bills around 8 years ago and the kwh rate was around 15c/kwh, the supply charge has increased by around 120% in that time as well.
It does not paint a pretty picture.:screwy:

[clive milne]

What in God's name are you trying to imply?

The fact of the matter is that the supply failed due to a collapse of the transmission lines as a result of extreme weather conditions... it had little to do with generating capacity (or type)

Somewhat ironic in as much as this super cell event (that destroyed the high-voltage transmission lines) is a direct consequence of a globally irresponsible, base load, fossil-fool energy dependency. ie) coal fired power stations if it needs to be spelt out any further.

You know, like the consequence of buying in to the false economy of climate change denial for the purpose of short term comfort.

So how's that working out for you?

[AndrewJ]

Gday Clive


Partly agree, but a system that loses some lines up north shouldnt be allowed to get to the point where it can take out the whole of the state. You would have thought that after the similar collapse in New York State 13 years or so ago, smart people would have been analysing that and putting in place mechanisms to allow an orderly load shed, vs a total collapse. I dont have the details on that, but assume it would be expensive :P

ie if the problem was truly the downed pylons, they wouldnt have been able to get most of it back up as quickly as they did. There is something else going on.

Andrew

[clive milne]

Hi Andrew,

I accept your correction... the issues were grid related.
But you understand my point, the insinuation that partial dependence on renewable energy (technology) could be submitted as 'casus belli' is specious at best.

[AndrewJ]

Gday Clive
Absolutely agree it would appear to have very little to do with where/how the electricity was being generated ( or not ).
Its not as if they werent expecting the worst storm in ages, so must have known the wind turbines would be offline ?????
The fact that the turbines couldnt run simply means a controlled load shed should have been planned for and implemented, no different to a hot day.
( I always remember seeing a documentary in great britain showing how the power grid engineers always knew when the ads were on in a very favourite soap, and knew ( planned for ) the fact that everyone would be out boiling a kettle at the same time.
Edit Ahh here it is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TV_pickup )

Andrew

[AndrewJ]

Gday Peter

I have bills back to 1991:P
At around 2003 it started a rapid climb

std peak supply
1991 11.8 4.46 31 pre GST
2003 12.76 7.10 51 no GST so add 10%
2014 25.82 17.24 104
2016 22.50 14.97 103

I think the drop at the end is removing extras for
carbon taxes and our new smart meters.

Andrew

[glend]

Look storms have happened since the earth's atmosphere was formed. To suggest that a particular storm was a result of global warming, at this point in time, is just Green propaganda. It may, or may not, be related or causal, but there is no evidence that supports the notion that it would not have happened if humans had never evolved or developed fossil fuels. What is fact is that SA cannot provide Baseload power to its population, regardless of other factors. I was amazed to see the Greens of TV today saying that the event would only be avoided in the future by more renewables, thus on the assumption it could be global warming caused, only five or six generations from now might notice some improvement in the reduction of probabilities of such storms - in the mean time people living now suffer for generations to maybe buy a reduced probability. Politicians and propogandists will exploit any event for their own agenda.
If some nutter had blown up the legs on a couple of those pylons the result would have been the same. There is a single point of failure designed into the system, that is the Victorian baseload feed. SA needs to duplicate the supply feed at the very least and that will cost $$$. If they want to build ships, or submarines, they are going to need reliable power.


The question for businesses in SA is do we want to continue to be based in a state where the power system is unreliable, or do we relocate to where the supply baseload is adequately provided.

[Nath2099]

To be fair, it wasn't the current Labor government who sold the network. And even coal generated power can't be transmitted through thin air. This has nothing to do with renewables.

All for nuclear though. Modern reactors, stable geography, and NOT controlled by corporates for profit.

There is also plenty of evidence to suggest that extreme weather events are becoming more frequent, and climate change is the prime suspect.

On the subject of why it was back up so quick even with downed lines, load distribution is complicated. It's safer to shut it down, figure out what's going on, then engineer ways around the issue.

[AndrewJ]

I agree its not simple, hence why i suggested they probably need to get smart people involved instead of beancounters.
If we take the shut down everything for safety philosophy to its end point, then Victoria should also have gone down, as its generators would suddenly have been hit with a massive drop when the interconnect cut????
The SA grid should as a minimum have multiple internal sections that can be dropped as required, to protect the rest of the grid.

Andrew

[Paul Haese]

Back briefly; but read through this thread and want to clarify some things here since I actually live here.

The lines that went down are primarily servicing the north and west of the state now that Pt Augusta has been shut down. The wind turbines in this area are only a small portion wind farms we have here and mainly service the west coast and mid north.

How this happened was that when the lines were destroy by two tornados this caused grounding and an overload to the existing system. Now without any mechanism to isolate the fault via detection of a drop in power/frequency and shut down that part of the circuit the only place where that could occur on a very old grid was at the Victorian interconnectors. So essentially the problem is with the infrastructure not being able to isolate the fault.

BTW we have had three of these lows this year and it is BS that this is a once in 50 year storm. The one that passed through here in July was just as savage and produced tornados. It knocked over 200 year old trees like they were tooth picks in sand. This storm is being used as the excuse for not updating the infrastructure and the state government is monitoring to see if those upgrades are occurring as it should.

It is also nothing to do with the way the power is generated. It would not matter if we had coal, nuclear, wind or solar. We have several sites in this state where wind power is being generated, thermal power is being generated and even solar power is being generated. The whole system failed, that essentially means there is an infrastructure problem not a generation problem.

Anyway it will happen again whilst this antiquated system is in place. I find it amusing that we live in a first world country and yet we were plunged back into the 18 century because greed is ruling the bottom line. Next time I doubt the Premier will be able to try to spin his way out of the problem.

[Nath2099]

Sorry, I don't see how you come to that conclusion. It's not a sudden drop that trips breakers, it's a sudden surge*. I'm no electrical engineer, mind you, so could well be wrong.

I think Paul above has pretty much nailed it.

*Sudden unexpected surge.

[Nath2099]

It probably used to be a once in 50 year event...

[el_draco]

I think its completely pathetic that the idiots in charge of government should just jump on the anti-renewable bandwagon. Its as if they think we are all morons. Shows just how ignorant and stupid they are.

I'd also question the concept of a national distribution network if the failure of one part of it cant be compensated by the rest of the grid.

Stupid politicians and incompetent network managers rule along with short sighted dogma driven philosophy, and the inevitable corporate greed.

[Exfso]

Andrew, your numbers show the disparity of Victorian and SA rates, the base here is around 36c/kwh for the first 10kwh and then up to around 40c/kwh for the remainder, there maybe a difference of a cent or so between providers, but they are all approximately the same.

[skysurfer]

Interesting discussion.

The idea of central generation of electricity creates more dependency. A 'smart grid' with consumers and businesses generating electricity for each other would make less dependency.
Solar panels on your roof (even here in the EU with far less sunshine tha AU it is getting more commonplace), heat pumps for heating or aircon and using the grid for using the surplus to other users.
Of course this will not make high voltage grids unnecessary, but it at least helps for more indepenency.

I saw in South Africa that they are hardly using solar panels, despite much sunshine (like most parts of AU other than Tas or Vic). They are heavily dependant on coal fired power stations, but also on very poor management of Eskom which is the state operator of the entire grid and the only electricity supplier to customers. Far worse than Australia.

[Nath2099]

It's Turnbull trying not to get rolled by the hard right. I think you're right, this is gonna blow up in his face big time. The next poll numbers will be quite interesting.

[glend]

Now this goes to the heart of the matter of global warming. No amount of hand wringing Green politics in Australia is going to stop the rest of the world ignoring the problem and going flat chat making it worse. The developing world get to point the finger at first world nations as the cause while getting away with horrible environmental practices. China, India, Africa, South East Asia, are pumping out greenhouse gases like mad, and their local environments are rapidly becoming toxic.
Australia cannot stop global warming, our output is insignificant when viewed in the context of the global problem. China is adding more to the problem each year than we could save in ten years.
That's not to say we should not do our bit to meet targets, but our effort, even on target, is pretty meaningless. Come the dry season Indonesia will be burning off more old forests to clear land for farming, adding mega tonnes of locked up CO2 to the atmosphere, with no sense of responsibility. Not everyone is on the same page. I can forsee an environment like that portrayed in Blade Runner in the not so distant future. An incentive to leave the polluted hive that is earth for a new world. At present the Earth is infested, and people are the problem.
:shrug:

[xelasnave]

Is whale oil for lamps a renewable resource?
Alex

[glend]

Only to the Japanese.

[xelasnave]

Their scientific whale research has paid off it seems.
Alex

[clive milne]

Actually... no it doesn't.

The real problem here is the subversion of the Bretton Woods agreement and the faustian deal the US did with the Saudi's in the 70's.. ie) offering legitimacy and protection to the brutal and illegitimate Wahibi thugs in exchange for the Opec/Petro-dollar scheme. <--- Giving the US treasury a licence to print fiat money until the came cows home. (currently moo-ing at the front gate)
The US economy is insolvent by any perverse interpretation of the definition, and will basically collapse to third world status should the world wean itself off oil, or more accurately, stop trading oil in exchange for US dollars. Hence this BS proxy war against Russia (in Syria and the Ukraine)
The US is engaged in a fight to the death and renewable energy is basically one of the termites eating away at its last remaining crutches.
There is of course a bit more going on here (such as the Yinon agenda), but that's pretty much the nub of it.
~c

[xelasnave]

It sure is a mess Clive how would you fix it...
I know tax wind and Sun.
Seriously what can be done to ensure USA remains on top if they fall it will be like Rome falling.
And the plumbing will be gone again.
Alex

[drylander]

I'm Sorry Clive but I think you need a tinfoil hat. Renewables will never replace base load power and in first world countries that is what is needed. Just look how many building are all electric. Also manufacturing needs high amounts of steady base power for steel production etc. The problem with wind generation is it only generates power in a limited wind band and as they are alternators they need power to excite them to produce power. They do however make really exciting roman candles when they catch fire. Alternative sources are fine in 3rd world countries however once they attempt to improve themselves to 1st world then the problems occur and base load is needed. Coal, gas or nuclear power are for now our only options.
Pete
(leaves soapbox for next person)

[glend]

The ABC was reporting that the Whyalla smelter was probably a lost cause due to the loss of power to the blast furnace and control systems and steel works hot handling system was having to be shutdown and recovery would take a long time. Just what a struggling business needs. Sourced from the Whyalla News website as well.

[clive milne]

Peter... you are skilled in the art of ad-hominem.. that point aside
Can you point to anything I said that isn't factually correct?
I'm guessing you are just another Hasbara troll?... say it ain't so!

[Stonius]

The biggest tragedy of the SA blackout was the fact that it was cloudy. Moonless night, stargazing from urban Adelaide? What could be better? :-)

[clive milne]

Alex... the problem is of a cultural nature.
The technology and resources are there when we are (collectively) ready to stop being a$$holes... I'm not holding my breath.

[multiweb]

Can't argue with that. Pretty much nailed it. Nothing will change because people either don't remember or don't want to. We're too far in now. Can't wind back the clock. Mistakes on top of mistakes. It was a one way trip. Now we're heading for it. That's the only certainty in all of this.

[skysurfer]

The difference however that per person the carbon footprint is far worse in the developed world than in e.g. India, China, etc.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_dioxide _emissions_per_capita

Even Australia is one of the worst. Because of the low population of only 40 million Australians living on the same space as 1.6 billion Chinese, Australia makes of course seemingly far less pollution.
The reason that the 3rd world countries are so polluting is that we in the western world let produce our stuff like every-2-years-a-new-cellphone in these countries as in these countries the environemtal laws are far less strict than in AU, US, EU or whatever Western country. Western companies are (ab)using space in Indonesia for e.g. palm oil plantations and pay the farmers for burning off forests billowing soot and CO2 into the atmosphere resulting in respiratory problems in Sumatra, Singapore ans Malaysia. Luckily for Darwin inhabitants, the smoke blows to the west.

[el_draco]

Bingo! Been saying the same thing for years. Those who whine about the pollution in the third world need to suck it up and acknowledge that a big chunk of that pollution is generated from the manufacture of the mindless crap demanded by the western world. Until WE take responsibility for it and change our highly polluting lifestyles, we can hardly stand on the proverbial high horse and preach. :thumbsup:

[xelasnave]

How can mindless consumption be controlled when all we are fed is you should have bigger better etc.
Look at the shows on house renovation.
Rip up functional kitchens and bathrooms.
Who needs two ovens in a kitchen but that is now the fashion.
Cars who needs a car that does 200 mph plus.
A closet with hundreds of shoes.
Gluttony is the norm and our hero's perpetuate the notion of over the top disgusting consumption.
I live very simply well below the standard I can afford and use as little as possible.
I waste not one morsel of food wear my clothes until thread bear.
And of course I am the nutter but its a pity folk don't live conservatively and attend need not greed.
The market economy encourages greed and glutony and yet the alternative a controlled market fails because even it can't get rid of greed.
And so there is no hope and finally nature may decide our species must go.
We need a world government and me running it that is the only hope for half the human race ...don't ask about what happens to the other half but put it this way consumption with reduce by 50% over night.
Alex

[Nath2099]

Messed up world dude. You sound like a realist... not a nutter.

[el_draco]

The interesting thing I am seeing at the moment is an increasing number of people walking away from the consumer world, me included. We've eliminated 50% of what our family owned in 12 months and its been liberating. I guess it's going to come down to the personal "wake up" moment for each of us. Just hope enough wake up in time.

[skysurfer]

This graph also shows that western nations are the worst per-capita CO2 emitters.

http://www.wri.org/blog/2014/11/6-graphs-explain-world’s-top-10-emitters

[Exfso]

Looks like the thread has gone off at a tangent:question:

[xelasnave]

Don't you love it when that happens.
Alex

[clive milne]

Incidentally... more on the way.

Weather here in Perth at the moment is pretty intense.
Not a huge amount of rain but certainly one of those days where commercial pilots question their career choice.

[Ric]

I was just looking at some of the footage of the aftermath and the flooding.

I cannot help but be amazed at the stupidity of people, we have footage of a flooding bridge and "Road Closed" barriers across the road and what do I see, people driving around the sign and driving over the bridge.

There is no explaining the logic of some people, I feel sorry for the emergency services workers that have to go in and rescue them when they get washed off or the poor police that have to go and tell the family that their loved one is dead.

[xelasnave]

I knew a guy, dead now, who got caught three times on the same creek, on his way to band practice each time and each time lost his car and music gear.
First timers sortta understandable but this guy knew the creek yet still had a go.
Alex

[Peter Ward]

A layover in Dubai when it's 52 C degrees outside (but "officially" a nippy 47 C ) is enough to do that ;)

[Shiraz]

I suspect that there may be some misunderstanding of what this weather event has been like in some parts of SA.

Apparently 23 major power pylons were blown down by winds that were gusting up to 140kmh (around US hurricane category1?), there were at least 2 tornado-like local wind storms, there were possibly 80,000 lightning strikes in the early stages, there has been some coastal flooding due to ~1m extra tides and excess river flows, many houses and large areas of farmland (including vineyards) are under water and significant areas of the state are still without power as the wires to get it there are fixed - and there is more wind and rain on the way. All of which has nothing to do with renewable energy.

It was amazing that the power authorities managed to get the grid back up from black in such a short time and in such bad conditions - kudos. Would have been nice if the pollies could have waited until the experts put together an explanation of what happened and why, but I guess that agendas do not depend on facts. Much better to tell us now how stupid we are for wanting to take any responsibility for the world our grandchildren will live in.

[The_bluester]

And on the other hand you have Victoria while I am sure there is some degree of it for it's own sake but instead of a completely antiquated network, people (the public) complain about power prices because of "Gold plating" of the networks, however the same people will scream blue bloody murder if there is load shedding in the summer months and their 5+KW, "Whole of 30 square McMansion" air conditioning system stops working for an hour or so, which is pretty much the alternative. Load shedding is actually fairly unusual in Victoria in this day and age, I don't recall the last time we found ourselves off supply for other than planned outages for work or storms, fires equipment failure or similar reasons.

[phomer]

In what year did the Australian population reach 40 million and China 1.6 billion?

Regards

Paul

[AussieTrooper]

Victoria or NSW could withstand that many tower collapses and more without blacking out the state.
Whilst to completely blame it on renewable power is not completely true, when you put so much generation into a form that requires interconnectors to be in service to work, and that places generators in the windiest parts of the state, you are asking for trouble.
That's not to say that you shouldn't aim for more renewables, far from it. But if we do choose to go this way (and I believe we should) then we either need to have plenty of embedded gas generators ready to fire up (like Victoria does), or just accept that occasional blackouts are the price we pay.

[clive milne]

Well... if we all drove electric vehicles, the combined battery storage capacity (when parked) would make the grid bullet proof from a redundancy perspective.

[raymo]

I'm not familiar with the percentages of the different forms of power
generation in S.A. but with 40+ years of firstly working in, and then
running, power stations, I can fairly safely say that the statewide failure
had little directly to do with the wind generators. If pylons carrying current from the wind generators were toppled or badly damaged, the relevant
wind turbines would trip out, and load shedding would automatically occur
and continue until the base load generators, and any other running generators could handle the remaining demand. Being as the wind was very strong at the time of the total outage, I would imagine that the wind turbines in the very windy areas would have already been shut down to avoid damage.
I can only surmise that the total failure was caused by infrastructure
failures and/or some human error. If the toppled pylons had been carrying
current from a base load generator the outcome would probably have been
the same. It is in fact quite odd that no power at all was able to be
restored fairly quickly; maybe a number of major transformers were
destroyed. It will be interesting to see if the public are ever informed
of what went wrong.
raymo

[Exfso]

I reckon you are spot on Raymo. The duck shoving has already started. Someone or something stuffed up big time, it just should not have happened. Apparently insurance claims have gone ballistic, and I thing the excreta is going to hit the air circulating device big time.:rolleyes:

[drylander]

exactly right Raymo. The problem was that baseload comes from Vic via a interconnector and once it was shut off it shut off SA. When we had our power stations running they were able to minimise blackouts but unfortunately the powers that be aren't that smart. Prior to our stations being shut down due to greed of the private owners blackouts were a rarity and quickly restored. Power stations unlike alternative sources don't give a fig if its windy or overcast and continue to run.
Pete

[raymo]

How and why was the interconnection with Victoria disrupted? I assume that the power is transmitted above ground, so were some of the toppled pylons
carrying current from Victoria? Has S.A. no base load capacity of its
own at all? If so, that's madness. Curiouser and curiouser.
raymo

[Greenswale]

Interconnect info: https://library.e.abb.com/public/1456d376d330bbeac1256f4100489126/PT_MurrayLink.pdf

Apparently South Aust is looking at a second interconnect with NSW

[AussieTrooper]

S.A. is dependant on a 275kV tower line from Heywood in Victoria. That is where it connects into Victoria's 500kV backbone, which goes all the way to the Latrobe valley, and connects to the 330kV system to the Snowy mountains.
That tower line suffered collapses.
There is a short small cable interconnector to Redcliffs (near Mildura) but it has towers on each end, so isn't really any more secure.
If SA still had a proper base load, there still would have been major power outages, but no total black out, and a much faster restoration time.
The major problem is that the politicians are completely blaming it on renewables, and that is a gross misrepresentation of what actually caused this. It's fine to have a large amount of renewables, as long as you back it up with something more secure.

[Exfso]

We used to have Port Augusta and Torrens Island, to the best of my knowledge these have both been shut down, which makes SA totally reliant on other states. Utter madness, typical of the crap decisions made by the current SA Government.5:mad2:

[Shiraz]

I don't think that it is a political decision Peter. It is just cheaper to buy baseload power from outside of the state, so it is a commercial decision by the suppliers. Looks like we still have some big generators that could do the job, but they are gas - now that the energy miners have sold most of Australia's natural gas to China et al, they cost a lot to run compared to excess subsidised interstate coal power and local subsidised wind. As the restart seems to have proved, we could do OK on local baseload power - if we were prepared to pay more. My understanding is that an additional complication is that the owners of the gas powered generators may be holding out for some form of government subsidy before they will bid aggressively in the market. It all comes down to the bottom line and it is possibly only government pressure that is forcing the suppliers to seriously consider security of supply.

Be interesting to see who gets the blame when the music stops - maybe nobody will. We seem to have got what we paid for - the cheapest reasonably effective solution, but it had insufficient in reserve to cope with a 1:50 year extreme weather event and an (untested?) automatic shutdown system. Doubt that will change much.

[el_draco]

Looks like the "renewables" took out a big chunk of the W.A. network as well! Thank gog, Barnaby is on to it, he'll solve the problem before those pesky renewables take out Bass Link again... :rolleyes:

[Shano592]

Yeah, you've gotta watch those renewables. They are always around.

Who says nothing fun happens in SA?

Erm, it wasn't me!

[el_draco]

Renewables just blacked out 10,000 in Brisbane.... GOG HELP US! THEY ARE SPREADING!! :rofl::rofl::rofl:

[Shiraz]

An initial report into what actually happened. https://www.aemo.com.au/Media-Centre/-/media/BE174B1732CB4B3ABB74BD507664B270.as hx

found it most interesting that, even in the worst of the storm, the wind generators were able to keep working - until the backbone of the distribution system was broken.

[AussieTrooper]

Interesting that even with the north already out of action, that all it took was 300MW of wind generation lost to overload the Heywood interconnector and black the state.
The 275kV towers lost were north of Adelaide, not actually affecting the interconnector.

[The_bluester]

The other interesting thing in there with all the hot air about "Synchronous" generation to keep the system stable.

By my understanding, wind generation can not be considered synchronous because of a lack of mass. Pretty much a matter of thermal power having large enough flywheel masses in the form of massive turbines and generators to mean that they simply do not respond speed wise to transient loads in the same way that a smaller generator would. OK, fair point, if you suddenly whack a stupid load on a wind turbine it is going to slow down more quickly than thousands of kilograms of steam turbine and generator.

All the real action in that initial report happens in the last couple of seconds. All of it is over in well under ten seconds but the real action is in the last 0.9 seconds after a small amount of capacity was lost (16% roughly) The report is not very clear there, one part seems to indicate that Heywood tripped due to the frequency sag (Which at the time of the trip seems to be within design limits) and another point seems to indicated it tripped because of the current demand being outside design limits.

Either way, it increased momentarily to become almost 50% of SA's supply before tripping. What generation system would ANYONE expect to stand up to the sudden loss of 50% capacity?

[raymo]

Wind turbines are often not as affected by transient load events as one
might imagine, firstly because the transient load is shared by all the
wind turbines in the affected circuit, and secondly because a large
wind turbine also has several 1000 kg of kinetic energy stored in the generator's rotor and 50-60metre diameter blades.
raymo

[The_bluester]

I would be inclined to believe that, individually they would fall over but taken as a large group they would be much more resilient. Don't tell the government that though. I might get labelled a renewables "Zealot" like they name anyone who thinks the NBN is now a far bigger mess than before a "Fibre zealot"

In all seriousness, what kind of system would have a snowballs chance in hell of standing up when it suddenly lost around 50% of it's generation capacity (I won't hear any guff about there being "Generation" in SA versus the "Interconnector" what do people think is on the other end of the interconnector?)

With SA line frequency tracked in that document, it would be interesting to know what the line frequency in Vic did at the time.

[AussieTrooper]

Probably very little. The SA 275kV line connects to the Vic 500kV system. It is only capable of drawing about 20% of what the 500kV lines can deliver.
The protection disconnected SA prior to any trouble spreading.

[The_bluester]

It still looks mostly like the SA grid was simply sailing a bit too close to the wind between supply and demand.

I am wondering if the frequency mismatch is the reason behind the "Load" change on Heywood. Obviously with a frequency and therefore phase difference between Vic and SA the currents could be immense as a result.

If you replaced 40% supply from wind farms with distributed thermal generation, would SA still have stayed in sync with Vic when 16% of supply suddenly went offline? If the answer is no, what then? It would still likely have tripped the Heywood prot which would still have disconnected 40% to 50% of supply abruptly, hard to see any system holding on in that situation.

Just imagine tripping Loy Yang A and B at the same time, would Vic really stay lit up?

[Greenswale]

Good info here, particularly the 'Connection to the Grid' section: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_turbine_design

[Kevnool]

Oh my we are so dependant on power that when the power goes out we are thrown into the stone age.
It will happen again sorry folks you cant stop ole mother nature she wins every time.

Cheers

[Exfso]

Here is an article about this in todays Sunday Mail, I cut it out and took a snap, not the clearest image, but a good summation of State of SA's power mess.

[Shiraz]

Looks pretty biased to me Peter - am always a bit suspicious of articles that use dog whistle phrases like " mission from Gaia, idealogical crusade, Greenie-left crowd, etc." Could have been written by the coal industry maybe? - I guess they have many such truthish articles in the filing cabinet to put out whenever something goes wrong with renewables. Whatever, Chris Kenny does not seem to have read the same report that I did - "the network failed because the power lines fell down" is the message I got.

Oh, and I don't think that the SA government controls the local power industry - it was privatised years ago, so private industry now controls it - and they use wind power because it is cheap. Chris Kenny would know that, but he would not have had a story if he went after the energy companies. Stuff goes right, lets praise private enterprise - stuff goes wrong, let's blame the gummint.

[raymo]

Spot on Ray, it wasn't the generation of power that failed, it was the
transmission and distribution system that failed. If you have 22 pylons
damaged the whole system is in big trouble. If you read the initial report
you can see that the wind farms were working just fine, and were not the
first generation/distribution circuits to trip out.
The anti renewables group definitely have their thoughts stamped all
over that article.
raymo

[Pharian]

Quoted for truth. This is the end result of privatisation. That and HIGHER prices. There have been many studies on how public entities are more efficient than private companies in things like power, health, law enforcement and prisons, roads, and many other areas. Plus they provide many more jobs, job security, and train their staff long term. The notion that private companies do it better is a complete and utter lie that is backed by NO reputable data sets.

If you won't take it from me (BA and Masters in Economics and Political Economy) then just look it up in the relevant journals, or even google scholar. Privatisation is one big con on the general public, much like trickle down economics. All economists know this, but there are no jobs and scant research funding if you don't sell out and spin the lies.

On a side note though, no comments on how no power = dark skies for anywhere in the state where it wasn't raining? ��

Glad everyone was OK though, so we can make jokes. :)

Plus I am heartened that at least here there is the intelligence to realise that the power went out simply because the power lines blew over... pretty simple really. I weep for the future.

[The_bluester]

Referring to the clipping above I am afraid I got as far as "Mission from Gaia" before deciding it was an ideological rant and read no further.

EDIT: I had a moment and read it, my opinion has not changed.

[AussieTrooper]

The report was quite clear that the towers that fell were north of Adelaide, not the ones that connect to Victoria. The blackout was caused when the Victorian interconnector overloaded, caused by a generation shortfall from the wind turbines shutting down.
If anything, the load shed that their collapse caused actually helped the situation, by delaying the overload on the interconnector.
The problem is that the wind turbines shutting down did actually set off this chain of events. The sensible thing to do is to either add another interconnector, or another gas turbine backup generator.
But the hysterical (and wrong) thing to do would be to stop investing in renewables entirely, and that's probably the most likely outcome here.:(

[The_bluester]

Unfortunately I agree with your last point. In this great age of the knee jerk reaction it is hard to see anything except a big push against renewables as a result as it is easy to blame them.

Question, with things like the diesel fuel subsidy. To what extent is coal fired power already "Subsidised"? We hear much wailing and gnashing of teeth that coal and gas thermal is now unable to compete in SA due to subsidies for renewables while coal and gas indirect subsidies are effectively pushed under the carpet in the discussion. How do the competing "Subsidies" actually compare?

[Shiraz]

We have plenty of gas generator capacity Ben - but they were just sitting idle because the wind was doing the job - it is cheaper to use wind or buy coal fired power from interstate. My understanding is that the wind generators shut down when they sensed major disruption to the network - which was when the power lines fell down. The trigger was not the wind generators, it was the power line failures that forced the wind generators off the network. The one remaining question is how sensitive the wind generators are to load fluctuations - I would guess that the owners of the turbines have the shutdown threshold set low to protect their investment, but maybe it is possible to allow them to temporarily go into overload to ensure grid stability - that might be an area to investigate further.

[The_bluester]

And there is every chance that the protection settings are stipulated by the transmission owner to protect their assets, rather than by the wind farm operators.

[Exfso]

Yeah I see the point chaps, but the end result is that the SA power system is in chaos. Once it went private the whole system was most definitely going to cost the voters, one has to pay the shareholders do they not. It does not alter the fact that SA is broke, and has been selling its assets to try and stay afloat. We need more power stations in SA, not none. These clowns cannot see past the end of their nose. It is ridiculous to rely on other states to receive power. Green energy is ok, but it will never fully satisfy the state, so why shut down the so called coal and gas generators to become reliant on other states, it makes no sense to me at all. I think it has been pretty well shown that what we had at Pt Augusta and Torrens island, whilst old, still supplied enough electricity, but the powers decided that Green was the way to go, not necessarily a bad thing, but not able to 100% satisfy SA power requirements. Why shut down the stations that are in SA that can fulfil the difference, at least in the short term.
Personally I believe that they have to bite the bullet and go Nuclear, but I will surely get howled down for that.:D
At the present rate of increase of power cost, the users will be working only to satisfy their power bills in 10 years time. But that is another story.:screwy:

[raymo]

Ray is spot on again, the generators beyond the towers North of Adelaide just happened to be wind powered. They could just as well have been gas, coal,
thermal, solar, or any other type you can dream up; they would still have
ceased contributing power to the grid when the towers failed.
As I stated earlier, large wind turbines have a lot of rotating mass [1000s of kg], and when operating with numerous others in the same circuit, are capable of absorbing considerable transient loads. The ideal, but expensive solution is to have the distribution system below ground, although even then you are still left with occasional generator failures, and the larger the failed generator, the harder it becomes for the remainder of the system to cope
with the failure. If the base load station went off line, then obviously the rest of the system would fail.
raymo

[Greenswale]

Wind turbines are generally shut down at wind speed over 25m/s: http://www.ewea.org/wind-energy-basics/faq/. Look under 'How efficient a wind turbines' tab.

How did this limit relate to the wind in SA?

[raymo]

I don't know what the wind speed was at the time, but the report states that
the wind turbines were still functioning when the tower damage caused them
to trip out, so the wind speed would seem to have little direct relevance
to the wind turbines themselves in this instance.
raymo

[bugeater]

Can't say I know anything about the SA part of the grid - but is it in "chaos"? All I know is a rare and extreme weather event messed things up a couple of weeks ago. Are there blackouts and brownouts normally?

Why does the SA part of the grid need to have to have more power stations? Arguably it might need more interconnections with the rest of the grid with redundancy. But it failing in a 1 in 50 year storm is hardly proof of such a need. Plus it will cost.

I get the impression everyone wants something that works 100% of the time, but costs nothing. Real life doesn't work like that. Even if your electricity bill was less before privatisation, it was getting paid for somewhere else.

[Pharian]

Everyone just needs some solar panels and a tesla box, backup power problem solved. The govt should subsidise that rather than pump public money into coal mining companies.

[Exfso]

Marty, I am basically referring to the ridiculous costs that are put on the SA consumers, we are well and truly the most expensive state in Australia for power by some margin and it is only going to get much worse, hence my statement about people in 10yrs time working only to pay their power bills. In my suburb we experience power outages several times a month and these are not just maintenance outages. It is one thing to be shafted for costs but when an unreliable power supply is added, it is no wonder South Australians are p1ssed off to the max. I am one of the luckier ones as I got solar 4 years ago, and have the higher feed in tariff, but the poor buggers who only recently got solar, (at a much lower price than I paid) have had their feed in tariffs removed but for the measly 6.8c/kwh that the suppliers are bound to offer.
I seriously believe that the excreta is going to hit the air circulating device in SA sooner than later. People cannot be expected to put up with the crud that is being served up. The total power failure is starting to look like the straw that broke the camels back.:rolleyes:

[clive milne]

Excellent point...
Another I would add:
Should we not also factor in to the equation the deferred costs of fossil fool energy?

You know... like the damage bill caused by extreme weather events as a result of AGW... acidification of the oceans... releasing mercury in to the biosphere... reduced crop yields... death of the great barrier reef and other biospheres?

I'm sure Renato would contend that share holder return is the priority, however...

[bugeater]

I think "electricity" is getting more expensive nation-wide. But maybe it is worse in SA. I have electricity in apostrophes, because most of the cost is in transmission and distribution, not electricity generation.

The added expense may simply be because now consumers are actually paying the true cost, rather than subsidised via their taxes. Or because the system is ancient and needs money spent on it. Or because the regulator is demanding more reliability (though it sounds like that's not great). Or .. who knows. It all costs money. Lots of money.

[Exfso]

I believe South Australia has the dubious distinction of being the most expensive electricity in all of the developed countries. I know that it is around double the rate of what is being charged in Qld. If we are all on a common grid, why in hell is it so damn expensive in SA. I know if I did not have Solar I would be up for around $800/quarter and that is being frugal with my useage. I know that this is digressing from the original thread content, but it just irks me to have such unreliable electrical supply and paying absolutely top dollar, something is very wrong.:help:

[The_bluester]

The pity being that rooftop solar systems trip out in the event of an incoming mains failure as a safety precaution. Otherwise they will backfeed into the grid and cause a safety issue for power line workers as lines they expect to be dead will still be live.

It might be possible to design out and have your home system island itself but I bet that the cost would be significant.

[glend]

Not really Paul, just disconnect from the grid entirely, then you will have no trip out issues. Sure you will need some re-engineering of the inverter setup and establish a battery bank but it is all very do-able. The question will always be, "are you prepared for the lifestyle compromises that off-grid living require"?

[The_bluester]

I did see rumblings about people becoming more likely to start doing that in future, which carries all sorts of other risks as well. Suc as the fact that the grid will still need to be there and be maintained, but paid for by fewer users, so connection fees could skyrocket, unless it ends up like the banks currently are with privatized profits but socialised risk, with tax money subsidising it to keep it going in the face of fewer users.

Wonder how big an inverter I would need to run a welder without issues. Sizeable I suspect, and maybe requiring something like a friend put in once, a motor/generator single to multi phase system (As he wanted to do something requiring 415V when his property was on a SWER line) I suppose that would have the advantage of the rotating mass insulating the house supply from the sudden voltage dips common with welding. he bought that long before inverters started to come down in price but for some applications you could still see advantages in a rotary converter.

[clive milne]

We have a 6000W inverter (12kW peak) fed by 2kW of Panels and ten large deep cycle batteries (up on the farm)

It will run a 130 stick without breaking a sweat.

The 250 amp MIG can be run up to 200 amps.. but the inverter trips quite often... (under full sun)
The batteries aren't what they used to be though. ymmv.


fwiw) We used to have a 5kVA pure sine wave generator... it wouldn't run the MIG on even the lowest setting.
Burnt out the control electronics in about 5 seconds flat.

[The_bluester]

That is where I suspect for applications like that a rotary converter would do better, use the flywheel mass to damp out the load spike of striking an arc.

[AussieTrooper]

We should, but nobody does. Imho, any piece of infrastructure should include the third party environmental costs in its business case.

At a federal level we are constantly being told to reduce carbon emmissions, with various taxes and subsidies, whilst at a state level we keep investing in imported petroleum based transport.
Do these clowns not talk to each other?

[AussieTrooper]

Transmission costs. SA consumers are a very long way from the Victorian power stations that they rely on.

[Shiraz]

and transmission costs within the state - we have roughly 1/4 the population of Victoria, spread out over about 4x the area. Our network has an extended linear structure and inherently limited redundancy if something bad happens on the backbone

[Exfso]

Ben, that really is my point, we are reliant on other states, because the govt decides to shut down our power stations. :confused2:

[cfranks]

Let's propose that a government, state or federal, does away with the current power distribution infrastructure and installs a suitable solar panels/invertor/batteries combo for every house in the state/country. The price, amortised over enough years but not less than your current power bill, would pay for it and more. After it was paid for, a 'maintenance' cost, cheaper than your current power bill but standardised over the country, would be continued providing income to the gov't. The manufacture would be done in-country with start-ups generating lots of jobs. Lots of new 'Steptoe and Sons' starting up to get rid of the current distribution system. Hacksaw blade manufacture goes viral! Etc. etc. Probably wouldn't take more than 20 years or so.

[The_bluester]

Not really the case. The government decided to sell them to private operators who are motivated by profit and those operators decide to shut them down. Absolutely nothing at all stopping them (Largely the same companies) mothballing generation in Victoria as well.

[Exfso]

Paul that may be the case, but as I said SA is flat broke and selling off its assets is a recipe for disaster they basically do not give a toss once they have sold out. To be reliant on the whims of private operators has proved to be a disaster for the consumer, at least here in SA, currently we are stuffed and far from home to coin a phrase. :shrug:
I don't know of anything that did not get worse once privatisation took over, but I suppose that someone here will come up with an example.:rolleyes:

I just checked the oldest electricity account I can find dated end of 2010 and in that time the rates have risen in the order of 110% as well as the supply charges pretty well doubling as well. I think that pretty well fits in with when SA had its Electricity privatised. One does expect prices to increase, it is just a fact of life, but not in this order of magnitude, or am I being unreasonable.

[raymo]

What are the charges in S.A. Peter? My last bill here in W.A. $440, was for 61
days; there is only the two of us, and we get a bit of a reduction for being pensioners.
raymo

[Exfso]

Currently for the 1st 11kwh it is 34.4c/kwh then 38.43 and the daily supply charge is 71.6c/day. these are inclusive of gst. All the suppliers are around the same give or take a cent/kwh. If I did not have the solar feedin, I would be broke. Based on a daily useage of around 20kwh/day over 90 days I would be up for around $650/quarter. To add insult to injury they are talking about more increases. I used to use about 30kwh per day until I got real frugal and changed all the lights over and started turning off appliances that had standby running, like TV's etc. With the Solar I only use around 12 a day in winter months and 8 in summer, so that has been brilliant. I hate to think how a family with 2 adults and 2+ kids would fare.
Your bill is for 61 days so over 90 days it is on par with what we would be paying here, depends on your daily usage though. If you are using around 20kwh per day, well you are similar to here, but if using more than that your rates are obviously lower.
6 years ago here, the rate was around 16.5c/kwh for the first tier and approx. 19c/kwh thereafter. So in effect is has just over doubled.

[raymo]

I was wrong, my bill was for 57 days. Your rates are much higher than ours.
We pay 24.067 c/kwh, and 44.18c/day. I used 30 units per day. My reverse
cycle a/c is not an inverter model, which doesn't help.
raymo

[The_bluester]

Our house is three adults and a child with two of the adults home full time, we have not had a quarter under $1000 in a couple of year. I would have to look our rates up again, I can't recall what they are, but not cheap.

We have looked into rooftop solar a number of times but with the feed in tariffs as they are it only works if we design to cover our daytime consumption when people are at home including moving as much stuff like clothes washing etc into daytime as possible. Not much point selling back into the grid at less than 25% of the retail rate.

I think things like solar PV with battery storage will only become properly viable when the cost of the storage falls significantly, and even then if you can afford a system capable of producing and storing enough to essentially meet all of your needs with virtually nothing going back into the grid. It is a loosing game to sell something for 7c and buy it back again for 30.

[Exfso]

Paul, I know we are slightly off topic, but yeah selling back is not really viable now, as the feed-in is ridiculous. I got in early and my feed-in is locked until 2028. Having said that the system I got cost over $13k for 4.6kw, can now get that for around $3-4k. A lot of people complaining that they got their solar and getting bugger all feed-in, but they have basically only got it in recent times with very cheap cost of getting a system. I got our system in Aug 2011 and one paid through the nose then I can tell you, but the feed-in was/is good in the case of people who got solar before Sept 2011, I think the cut-off point was, at least in SA.

[The_bluester]

And sort of on topic. I think systems with solar PV and a powerwall or other battery bank should be designed to be able to be isolated and cold start run in that condition. In events like the SA blackout how infuriating would it be to know you have power sitting there available but to be unable to use it.