Quote:
Originally Posted by skysurfer
In South Africa they call this Load Shedding, 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. |
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 The interstate connectors were also withdrawn to stop the contagion from spreading.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.