No power!!!

[Merlin66 (Ken)]

Here in the Bellarine, Vic, PowerCor have advised we will have no power until after midnight!!!!
We’ve been out since teatime and it’s stinking hot.......
Bet we don’t get a refund from them....

[Atmos (Colin)]

This is why I’m planning on going off-grid when I build later this year

[xelasnave]

Originally Posted by Atmos

This is why I’m planning on going off-grid when I build later this year

Good idea but you will find just as clouds upset astronomy they dont help an off grid situation.
Be prepared to use a lot more petrol than you expect.

Alex

[xelasnave]

Originally Posted by Merlin66

Here in the Bellarine, Vic, PowerCor have advised we will have no power until after midnight!!!!
We’ve been out since teatime and it’s stinking hot.......
Bet we don’t get a refund from them....

Try hosing the house and the land surrounding it helps a little.
Alex

[Hans Tucker (Hans)]

Ridiculous in a resource rich country that this happens. Shame that Australians are so apathetic that they don't hold politicians accountable for this crap.

[mynameiscd (Andy)]

Especially when you here false statements about "base load" and how solar wind can never achieve this "base load" (start up and holding voltage coal fired need to run at).

Elon Musk just proved how quick a large battery bank can help take the pressure off SA..
Link up 3,000,000 homes with batteries in each and the need for base load drops dramatically.
A bit in the future but not that far if we have a committed federal government.

Ive only been back on the grid for about a year now and here we get power outages all the time and only when we have hot nights like this so I know how you feel.
Our last house ( off grid ) we had 7 years of no outages but plenty of dim nights and generators running which you sort of get used to.
There has to be somewhere in between
Keep cool

[Merlin66 (Ken)]

Finally came back on around 4am.......
What a night - hottest night of the year (so far) and no power!!! Bumma.

[AndrewJ]

I hear this morning that a Govt minister is blaming the 4 major power retailers, as base load was available, but their ( non maintained ) infrastructure broke down in localised areas.
Be interesting to see what the real truth is.
Either way, the Govt selling these assets to people who only want to make money ( and proper maintenace costs ) has to come into the mix.
It wasnt even as hot as expected, yet the system still died.

Andrew

[glend (Glen)]

Originally Posted by AndrewJ

I hear this morning that a Govt minister is blaming the 4 major power retailers, as base load was available, but their ( non maintained ) infrastructure broke down in localised areas.
Be interesting to see what the real truth is.
Either way, the Govt selling these assets to people who only want to make money ( and proper maintenace costs ) has to come into the mix.
It wasnt even as hot as expected, yet the system still died.

Andrew

Governments will always blame the suppliers for their own poor planning. Look at the situation in South Australia, where everyone except the state government was blamed. Privatisation of public utilities is brought on by several 'opportunities' for the governments:

It gives them someone to blame.
It offloads a heavily unionised workforce into a private sector problem.
It may provide a quick source of cash for their fearher-bedding projects designed to get re-elected.

[speach (Simon)]

Originally Posted by Hans Tucker

Ridiculous in a resource rich country that this happens. Shame that Australians are so apathetic that they don't hold politicians accountable for this crap.

How can we hold politicians responsible? The polies have no power over these companies, they can only try and persuade them to do the right thing and if the 'right thing' doesn't help there 'bottom line' it's [I]get stuffed polies[I]. The polies are the ones 'in our better interest' that sold of OUR assets to overseas mega companies. Then how are we to complain to those companies? We can't say to the likes of SPAust net we'll take our account to another supplier as they have a monopoly!!

[casstony]

Originally Posted by AndrewJ

I hear this morning that a Govt minister is blaming the 4 major power retailers, as base load was available, but their ( non maintained ) infrastructure broke down in localised areas.
Be interesting to see what the real truth is.
Andrew

Demand was low as expected at that time of day: https://www.aemo.com.au/Electricity/...d#price-demand
So it makes sense that failing local infrastructure caused the blackouts.

[PS19.1 (Greg)]

I recall the government privatization propaganda "more competition in the market will lower prices"our parents and grandparents generation were able to build these nation building assets roads, power, water,communication ect ect and I repeat "nation building assets"they never really needed to generate huge profits but simply provide a framework for the wealth of our nation.Now our generation can barely maintain them they seem to be used to simply gouge money out of us while the infrastructure in many places crumbles

[el_draco (Rom)]

Originally Posted by Merlin66

Here in the Bellarine, Vic, PowerCor have advised we will have no power until after midnight!!!!
We’ve been out since teatime and it’s stinking hot.......
Bet we don’t get a refund from them....

I reckon its those damn "renewables"! Spreading like a plague and screwing with Turncoats world view...

[AndrewJ]

I just listened to a spin doctor from United trying to explain why Jemena had problems ( which were all fixed quickly ), but United still had over 10,000 people without power.
She tried ( badly ) to explain that there were lots of fuses in the substations and a lot of these tripped, so they had to go and fix them.
Welll duuuuuuuuuuhhhhhhhhh.
I may be a dumb Mechanical engineer, but i do know that if you jam more and more Multi storey dogboxes onto large blocks in the inner east, they are all going to require full AirCon, as they have no ventilation, no trees for shade, black tile roofs and no eaves.
The old demolished house probably was designed to not even need aircon.
If these twerps running the supply system havent twigged that more load in the same area means bigger fuses at the substations then we are just going to suffer more.
I suspect its more likely the substations themselves are now getting close to their absolute design limits on hot days ( vs their absolute working limits ), and no one wants to stump up the cash to improve them.

Andrew

[Shiraz (Ray)]

John Clarke summed it up. Privatisation gave us a "Market"... it isn't a plan and it isn't based on consumer needs - it is a market to maximise profits for it's creators and that ain't us.

Under the current system, decisions are being made to benefit shareholders in Hong Kong or Paris or whatever - the decision makers probably have no understanding of where the Bellarine is, let alone have the slightest concern for the people who live there.

We got sold down the river with the many privatisation messes - apart from the partial freeing up of telecommunications, I can't think of one that actually turned out to be better for consumers.

[Tropo-Bob (Bob)]

Originally Posted by AndrewJ

I just listened to a spin doctor from United trying to explain why Jemena had problems ( which were all fixed quickly ), but United still had over 10,000 people without power.
She tried ( badly ) to explain that there were lots of fuses in the substations and a lot of these tripped, so they had to go and fix them.
Welll duuuuuuuuuuhhhhhhhhh.
I may be a dumb Mechanical engineer, but i do know that if you jam more and more Multi storey dogboxes onto large blocks in the inner east, they are all going to require full AirCon, as they have no ventilation, no trees for shade, black tile roofs and no eaves.
The old demolished house probably was designed to not even need aircon.
If these twerps running the supply system havent twigged that more load in the same area means bigger fuses at the substations then we are just going to suffer more.
I suspect its more likely the substations themselves are now getting close to their absolute design limits on hot days ( vs their absolute working limits ), and no one wants to stump up the cash to improve them.

Andrew

Interesting comment Andrew.

I worked in Telstra in the pre-optical fiber days and they had the same issue. Houses would be knocked down and replaced by multi-unit apartments, and presto; suddenly there was not enough cable to provide phone services for everybody.

When I think about it, the situation is a bit like roads. There were generally adequate in the days of the one-car family, but have never been adequate since.

[AndrewJ]

Gday Bob
Another one that people dont think about ( cos they were designed to just work ) are the sewers.
Many in some areas are apparently getting close to limits at times.
But one more interesting thing i heard on the radio this morning is that the average age of local linesmen is now getting into the mid 50s.
Since privatisation, the qty of apprentices being trained in all the required areas has dropped through the floorboards.
The old SECV had the commercial mass and social obligation to take on and fully train thousands of apprentices each year.
Very few companies working for profit these days want to take on even one apprentice and cant train them in all aspects of the system.
I guess thats why we have 457 visas

Andrew

[Paul Haese]

No power cuts this year in SA so far I am very happy to report. And; I read that we have been exporting quite a bit over the last couple of weeks to Victoria. Another couple of batteries, a solar thermal unit or three and we should be looking good and remove the last remaining diesel and gas units. Yes SA had a bad year in 2016 but the state government got on with trying to sort the problem (I am not a fan of this government but I give them credit for getting on with doing something about stabilising the system in SA). It's not going be the same model every where in Australia but there needs to be more work on stabilising the entire system. Renewables is the way of the future and Australia has to get on with the task. Coal and gas have to go. Why is it that humans will not budge until the very last moment before catastrophe occurs? I would say this is a win for renewables and some alternative thinking, I imagine Weatherill would be doing the odd fist pump this morning when he got up. A little vindicated.

[pjphilli (Peter)]

Good point Andrew. High rise are popping up like weeds in my area. Nothing done to improve infrastructure such as roads, parks, schools (oh sorry they recently dumped a demountable in the school teachers car park).
I too wonder when the sewers will become overloaded as surely they were not designed many years ago to take such a boost in users. Water reticulation too?

[traveller (Bo)]

Originally Posted by Paul Haese

No power cuts this year in SA so far I am very happy to report. And; I read that we have been exporting quite a bit over the last couple of weeks to Victoria. Another couple of batteries, a solar thermal unit or three and we should be looking good and remove the last remaining diesel and gas units. Yes SA had a bad year in 2016 but the state government got on with trying to sort the problem (I am not a fan of this government but I give them credit for getting on with doing something about stabilising the system in SA). It's not going be the same model every where in Australia but there needs to be more work on stabilising the entire system. Renewables is the way of the future and Australia has to get on with the task. Coal and gas have to go. Why is it that humans will not budge until the very last moment before catastrophe occurs? I would say this is a win for renewables and some alternative thinking, I imagine Weatherill would be doing the odd fist pump this morning when he got up. A little vindicated.

Agree with Phil.
This proposal was put out in 2010, with modelling done by Uni of Melbourne
http://bze.org.au/stationary-energy-plan/
What we lack is the political will.
In the meantime, (unrelated) we want to be a major arms exporter to the world...