"...The Australian Energy Market Operator’s preliminary report into the recent South Australian blackout reveals that the primary reason for the total loss of power was a sudden reduction in wind power being fed into the electricity network..."


https://wattsupwiththat.com/2016/10/...ylon-downings/





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From The Institute of Public Affairs - the bastion of the right wing think tanks with no barrow to push.

AEMO are a bunch of dills - certifs has it right, three transmission lines went down - that happened to all lead from wind farms. No generation source would have coped with the sudden, massive impacts to the lines and maintained supply in tolerance.

Page 22 of the AEMO report is also enlightening.

(SRAS are apparently "System Restart Ancillary Services".)

"AEMO has two contracted SRAS services in South Australia. For confidentiality reasons under the contracts, AEMO is unable to identify the providers of these service [sic] but will refer to them as "SRAS provider 1" and "SRAS provider 2."

Of course, both providers failed on the day. :ugh:

I note that the Heywood interconnector was operating at 525 MW prior to the failure. It has a maximum capacity of 600MW. What a great design!

The supply of electricity in S.A. appears to be more about running a market than an essential service. :(

The wind farms had been shut down in any case as the winds were above limits, not that they could have helped with the lines down.

No.
This is a zombie argument. It is not true, yet it keeps being touted as "fact".

It is true that windturbines can (and will) shut down in high winds.
In the case of this event the report clearly shows the windturbines shutdown 1 or 2 seconds _after_ their respective lines went down.

Certifs

Glad someone bothered to read the actual document, to base their opinions on. :)
Yes, _most_ "enlightening" eh. (I didn't mention it in the earlier post as it would have muddied the issue. It still will)
Note that neither of the SRAS providers in SA are renewable energy, in fact one was built to be the black start backup in the old ETSA system. It failed to live up to expectations in the 1980 black start as well, for those interested in history repeating.
Also, if anyone wants to think about this issue a bit more, I'll add one of the (many) things which annoys me about this whole renewables debate;
When you hear a statement that windturbines are "parasitic" and need the system to be operating before they can synchronise. This is true, but it is a twisted truth. None of the big base load stations in SA can start without a connection to a live grid either, so they are just as "parasitic".
And to cap it nicely, the only two generators who said they could do a black start (and took payments on that basis), when came time to do it, couldn't.


Yes. Interesting isn't it.
I recall a discussion I had in 1997 with a senior federal government policy wonk regarding the introduction of the, then new, electricity market. Basically they compared the supply of electricity to the supply of milk, if you can't get enough through your normal supplier, someone would step in and provide the supply you do want. I, and others, pointed out the lead time of a new power station was about a decade.

Certifs

I agree with you certifs. As I said way back in post #7 this will be good pilots telling us how to fix our distrubution problems.It was. We have had all kinds of claims as to how wind farms are the problem etc,which has nothing to do with it. Could have been 1000 chinese pedalling a generator the same would have happened. To put it real simple. Just as a faulty toaster may trip your power circuit in your home it should not take out your lights,stove,hot water,shed etc. Unless you cut corners and say installed your RCD (safety switch) as your main switch which is pretty stupid but happens. Likewise when the trunk main failed at Melrose it should not have taken out Adelaide and the south east.
Problem is we now have a privatised carved up supply network,each with there own protection systems only protecting themselves,not allowing a fault to isolate elsewhere first before shutting down.

Hmmm... Here's me thinkin it were the surge from Victoria that did the black out. How many wind power facility's in S.A. 12, 15, 20. ?


Ten years eh..:hmm: Somebody better tell the Chinese. They open up a new coal fired power station every other week. Obviously they didn't get the memo. ...Or perhaps they just get the advise of competent people..:)

I would reckon, un-edumecaited fellow that i is, that if we asked the Chinese to build us a few coal fired power stations, they'd have them turn key ready in under three years and they'd cost far, far, far less then the unreliable wind generators. Just think, good cheap and reliable power for a clean living result and an attractive business investment state..:)




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Any statements from SHY.

Binghi you forgot to include 'dirty' in your coal power description. Perhaps this year you can keep warm burning your coal share portfolio and next year follow the UKs example.

TODAY IN THE MACKAY MERCURY
SOLAR panels generated more electricity than coal in the past six months in a historic year for getting energy from the sun in the UK, according to a new analysis. Research by the Carbon Brief website found that solar generated nearly 7,000 gigawatt hours of electricity between April and September, about 10 per cent more than the 6,300GwH produced by coal during the same period.
The figures represent a dramatic turnaround in the UK's electricity supplies.
, solar is one of the cheapest forms of power.

If they can produce cheap solar power in cold cloudy UK it should be a piece of cake over here.:ok:

certifs, from todays reports it seems the zombie argument might, in fact, be fact. It is being reported that the software control systems for the wind farms had been set at too conservative a level in their ability to handle faults. They don't specify the faults which occurred, making mention only of lightning strikes, so wind as I mentioned may, or may not, have have been one of the faults. The interconnector dropped out due to its inability to handle the load after the wind farm dropped out. The wind farm has now had control systems set to a more realistic level of fault toleration, and operator is now wondering about about liability claims as a result of its too conservative an approach with regard to faults. The towers apparently came down after the wind farm isolation.

A couple of days ago... picking a few weeds out of a veggie garden, it occurred to me just how 'dirty' and muddy it all were to get them filthy veggies to the table. Though not to worry, thanks to them 'dirty' coal fired power stations i could go and wash the veggies under a tap and then cook em up and put em on a plate with the roast lamb... While we is with roast lamb, 'dirty' things sheep, dirt and crap all over them all the time and they eat straight off the 'dirty' ground. Though not to worry, by the time that sheep gets chopped up and is on the shelf at Coles it's all clean thanks again to 'dirty' coal.
Good thing dirt. That 'Dirty' earth gives me them veggies and that roast lamb and that 'dirty' earth gives me good cheap power so i can live the clean life..:)

Try again rutan around..:hmm:




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Good luck in washing the PM10 and PM2.5 particles out of your lungs Binghi. Suck on a VW diesel exhaust for extra effect.

Binghi it must be getting late or you're worn out harvesting and cleaning all those dirty vegetables. I really expected a better response. The thing is every bit of dirt you referred to effected no one other than yourself and whilst probably against your principles you most likely recycled the dirt and unwanted green waste back into your garden.

Burning fossil fuel is a very different matter as you can't keep it in your own back yard.

I also wash vegetables and cook lamb all done with solar power , rainwater tanks and an Onga electric pump.

Your no comment re the UK making more power from solar than from coal was very loud.

I've mentioned this before and I'll mention it again.

Back in 2004 a work colleague suggested they should build a solar panel factory on wheels that operates in the desert and all it does all its life is built and maintain a massive grid of a solar array measured in the hundreds of square kilometres in size.

South Australia would have been an ideal place for such a thing - plenty of silica about.

The SA Government zombies are at it again: "I order you to provide me with stable power!! (thru that brown-coal fired interconnector).

Flow restrictions on SA, Victoria interconnector revoked, AEMO responds to emergency order - ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

I assume you are talking about the article in the Australian. More to say on that further on.

No. It really, really wasnt.
There are things which are plausible and things which aren't.
There are a number of systems on a windturbine that you might loosely call protection. Some for mechanical reasons (eg overspeed, oil temperature etc) and some for electrical problems (eg over current, phase unbalance, earth fault etc). The only fact we know is from the AEMO report which shows that the generators stopped working _after_ the lines stopped working.
For it to be a wind/speed related shut down it must be argued that the turbines shut down (remember there are 10's of them, each individually speed monitored) all coincidentally at the same time, coincidentally a second or two after the lines failed (in whatever way they failed). And that happened twice. At different geographic locations.
OR we could assume it was an electrical protection operation in response to the line fault (ultimately by one or two circuit breakers disconnecting the whole farm at once from the grid). In which case, effect does follow cause, the outcome is what could be expected. And because the are a number of different ways, with different settings, that the electrical protection could operate, that would explain the "we don't know the reason" that is being touted around in the media.

If this is based on the Australian article (otherwise what article was it from?) I will note a couple of things. Their un-named "industry expert" is the one who is talking about liability. I doubt any of the windfarm participants really care too much, there will be some juggling of blame and maybe someone will pay something. This is just cost of doing business. Refer to gerry111's comments on the SRAS. Those people _do_ have something to worry about. Weirdly, no one want to talk about paying millions (yes $50 million over the last few years for all of the NEM, I believe) for a service which wasn't provided.
Anyway, the expert seems to be talking about ride through ability that most power stations should have (I am not sure all power stations do in fact have these performance standards because some older stations had some of the standards waived, at least early on in the transition to the market, but all the new wind farms would/should). There was an interesting report done after a fail to ride through by the now extinct Northern Power Station in 2005. They got fined, some 100's thousands dollars from memory. You should be able to find it on AEMO website.
Anyway back to the Australians expert. He talks about riding through 50 faults in 2 minutes. I am unfamiliar with what part of the National Electricity Code he got that from. There are a number of ride through parameters (how low the voltage can go, for how long etc) in the code. The relevant ride through for windfarms with 100% voltage loss is 430 milliseconds. This seems to line up fairly well with factual data from the AEMO report.
You'll also note from the last couple of paragraphs tucked away at the end of the Australian article, both the AGL chief and an un-named spokesman have fairly carefully worded their responses to indicate they have "read the report" ie they aint sayin' what they have done (if anything) and are pointing the finger at the grid protection settings (which was my first suspicion last week, though I don't hold that view as strongly now, in view of the extent of damage to the transmission system).


Yes, some of them did. Do you think that mean that the ones that came down before the windfarms tripped had no effect?


Certifs

And I'll just add...
 

... when ever an aviation incident appears in the media, on this website there is usually a lot of bitchin' and moanin' and laughing about how inaccurate they are. They cant tell a Cessna from a Jabiru.
And when that same media reports on non aviation topics, we assume they are the fount of all knowledge??

:ugh:

certifs

This is a wonderful thread, surely the thread of the year. I honestly didn;t know it was so complicated. So, some questions from a lay person.

It seems that wind turbines output frequency varies according to the rpm. How do they get a stable 50 Hz output with a constantly varying rpm? Some sort of frequency converter?

Why do power stations require an input voltage to start generating power.

Why do power stations take so long to spool up, if they had steam pressure, wouldn't the generators spool up quite quickly? Do they reduce the steam generation in periods of low demand.

During periods of increasing demand from consumers, does this extra load cause the generator rpm to decay, reducing the frequency, if so why would damage occur if the frequency output of the generators falls below 47 Hz.

How does the system cope with instant demand increases when hundreds of thousands of people put the kettle on at the same time during a commercial break on a popular TV show. I think they call it the East-Enders effect. A TV show in the UK that was massively popular and they could predict the spikes in electricity demand from the Ad breaks.

Lastly, why do we have backup services that are secret (provider 1 and provider 2). This, to my simple mind is unacceptable.

I hope the questions don't sound too dumb, just trying to get my head around it all.

And how long does it take for a wind turbine to repay the energy that went into making the materials that went into it, its fabrication, transport to site, erection and maintenance?

What is considered a normal life for one of these things?

I could ask how many birds and bats one will kill in its lifetime but that may hit a nerve with some.