Originally Posted by
UnderneathTheRadar
Megan, unfortunately what the AEMO media release says contradicts what the report actually says.
The 'failure' of the wind turbines to 'ride through' faults has nothing to do with the fact that they were wind turbines - the issue is that their protection settings ...
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Underneath the radar summarised it well. It takes a certain obtuseness to read the report and not understand what it says.
Originally Posted by
UnderneathTheRadar
So whatever AEMO are saying, an alternate story might be:
1. It's not clear what caused the massive frequency variation - was it the farms going off line or the towers going down (i bet it was the towers) that took out Heywood
In fact it is pretty clear the faults preceded the farms going off, so it couldn't have been the farms causing the voltage fluctuations (what the ride through protection detected).
The report actually make the distinction that the farms went off in two lots. Those that had their settings detecting two line faults and those with settings for 6 faults. Even after the loss of the first group the system was still hanging together. The farms that were set to ride through more than 2 line faults did hang on for a short time. It was the fact there were so many faults in such a short time that bought the whole system down. UnderneathTR also gets it that the overlooking of the ride through protection constitutes a big failure by AEMO too.
One final thing. Something in the second report that people seem to be studiously ignoring. Table 4 shows the five occasions in SA where system disturbances caused a trip of the Haywood interconnector. Lots of finger pointing about the most recent one being "caused" by wind turbines. Total silence that three of the five were "caused" by the one and only coal power station in SA. Including one blackout about 60% of the size of the recent one. Weird, hey.
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