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