Another widespread power outage in SA

[crawf]

I honestly want to bash my head against the laptop reading some of the comments on social media. SA Power Networks is being thrashed with complaints and idiotic comments, yet in this circumstance they can not be blamed for yesterday. It's completely rubbish that load shedding doesn't occur in other states and territories. It does, and it could very well happen tomorrow in NSW where some parts of Sydney will reach 45 degrees. When I previously lived in regional Victoria, we lost power numerous times during a heatwave due to high demand.

I can understand the frustration, hell I lost power for 30 hours during the Xmas storm and again 9 hours in the last major storm. Though there has been a range of completely different scenarios that has affected SA's energy supply in the last 12 months. For one, I have never witnessed such a violent storm season ever living in this part of Australia, multiple tornados smashing high voltage towers causing a state wide blackout. Now we are being hit with a heatwave, which is not unusual for this time of year and neither is short blackouts due to high power demand.

There are definitely issues with SA's energy network that need to be addressed, and I hope Premiers tough words today translate into action and not another talk feast / blame game. It's however so clear where the Fed Libs stance is on energy...... dirty rotten coal.

JAKJ is spot on.

[mshagg]

The blatant politisiation of the the power outages by the Fed Libs is a complete and utter disgrace and the definition of "fake news". These blackouts have been caused by a variety of factors include 1) weather events 2) predatory price fixing behaviour by generators 3) The infamous operational interconnect to Victoria being wholly inadequate to operate SA as part of the NEM 4) some instances of mild incompetence on SA power networks behalf. What clearly has not been a root cause of the black outs is SA's renewable energy mix which is a source of innovation and technological/ operational expertise we should be proud of. Yes there are teething issues, as with any transition of this magnitude but it has largely been a success. Shame on the Federal liberal party for trying to undermine it.

If, as expected, NSW has a shortfall tomorrow afternoon it's going to hard for the usual suspects to pin it on labor/renewables. They have two black coal burners which could each power SA on their own.

Federal politicians laugh at us when we have interruptions in South Australia; I think they'll sing a different tune if it happens to NSW.

I cant help but feel there's some minor tweaks that can be done to the operation of the NEM to get a paltry additional 100MW into SA at knock off time in the middle of a heatwave. This talk of building additional generators is ridiculous.

[rev]

I have mates living in the Blue Mountains who lost power this afternoon.

We had capacity spare, we knew we were headed into a heat wave, so why wasn't that extra capacity turned on?

We're paying the highest power bills on the country, for what?
For spare power capacity to sit idle until after mass black outs?

[bits]

Maybe SA government will buy Pelican Point from Engie.
Clearly Engie do not have much interest in the plant generating electricity at its full capacity.
If it got Pelican Point and Torrens Island back under government control we would have a lot of control over output and price.

[mshagg]

Probably dont even have to buy it from them, they shut down the second plant because it's not economical for them to run, so they just need to make it worth their while to keep the second turbine spinning. The state govt had a tender request recently for a generator to supply 75% of their energy requirement, although I think they were looking for new entrants. There was also some talk of incentivising gas production as this obviously plays into engie and AGL's economic equation.

I have mates living in the Blue Mountains who lost power this afternoon.

We had capacity spare, we knew we were headed into a heat wave, so why wasn't that extra capacity turned on?

We're paying the highest power bills on the country, for what?
For spare power capacity to sit idle until after mass black outs?

As I understand it, from watching the market notices and NEM stats from by AEMO, demand ended up being higher than forecasted (or perhaps the wind output was less than expected - the wind farms were collectively generating next to nothing at the time) and AEMO got caught short. By the time they realised there was a lack of reserve it was too late to instruct Engie to fire up the second generator at pelican point. Thursday was a different story and they directed engie to bring that capacity online.

[rev]

Well just saw on the news that Sydney will have rolling blackouts today.
Jeff Kennet was on the news saying it's not just an SA problem but a national problem and what's happening in SA will happen across the country within 5 years.
Mark Latham was advocating nuclear power.


And how is it not economical to run a power plant in this state? We get raped with our electricity bills and these bastards say it's not profitable?

Btw what happened to those Americans who wanted to build a solar plant near Whyalla or Port Augusta?

[mshagg]

And how is it not economical to run a power plant in this state? We get raped with our electricity bills and these bastards say it's not profitable?

Would you run a gas generator permanently so you could bid into the market for a 45 minute period of near record-breaking energy demand a few times a year? Keeping in mind that for the rest of the time you'll be under cut by cheap power from wind farms and brown coal power from the Latrobe valley, so no one will be buying your expensive gas-fuelled power? This is the exact scenario faced by the operators of these facilities in south Australia. Heck even Hazelwood, basically the filthiest nastiest power plant in the entire world, cant get the numbers to stack up.

[Goodsy]

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-02-10/d ... er/8257308

Premier Jay Weatherill said the plans were well advanced, and all options remained on the table.

"One option is to completely nationalise the system," Mr Weatherill said.
"That's an extraordinary option. It would involve breaking contracts and exposing us to sovereign risk and the South Australian taxpayers to extraordinary sums of money.
"It's not a preferred option but we're ruling nothing out at this point."

[rev]

An aluminium smelter in the Hunter Valley, which uses 12% of NSW power supply and is the biggest electricity user in the country has been told to shut down this afternoon.

Wonder how Turnbull will spin that..

[Llessur2002]

Although by far from a Liberal voter, I (and I think many others) used to have a bit of respect for Turnbull.

But now I genuinely don't know how he can sleep at night. How little self-respect must the man have to turn so completely and irrationally against his principles? Wouldn't most people with an ounce of decency either step down or fight (however much in vain) for their beliefs?

Pathetic turncoat.

[Norman]

NSW's own power supply is under extreme stress and the government is telling people to go out to the movies or the shopping centre.

Where is Mal telling the people of NSW that they are "living in a third world country"?

On the other hand, love reading those comments. Reminds me that not all misinformed people live in SA.

http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/n ... ce48ddcf79

[rev]

NSW's own power supply is under extreme stress and the government is telling people to go out to the movies or the shopping centre.

Where is Mal telling the people of NSW that they are "living in a third world country"?

On the other hand, love reading those comments. Reminds me that not all misinformed people live in SA.

http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/n ... ce48ddcf79

For me it's further proof the federal Libs despise our state, and even the federal Libs from SA alike Christopher (s)Pyne(less) couldn't care less for our state. Except of course when it's election time and there's a major issue this state cares about, like last years election with the submarine deal.
Any federal gov mp going to suggest NSW businesses and homes invest in generators to keep their lights on? Come on I thought NSW was supposed to be super duper perfect? Even AdelaideNow ran an article saying look NSW had a storm and they still had power.
Lots of egg on lots of people's faces.

If I was Steven Marshall at the 2018 state election I would ask the federal Libs to stay in Canberra.

If this crap is still a major issue and focal point in 2019, you can be sure you'll hear plenty from the SA fed Libs, and plenty of appearances around the state by them and the PM. The cheap pot shots at our state will cease and instead be aimed at Labor. They'll be hoping you don't remember what they said.

[JAKJ]

The irony in all this is that a shift to greater than 50% renewables will end up being market driven anyway (baring interference from vested political and economic interests). The cost of grid/ user level storage is at a point where the rollout of significant amounts of storage capacity is inevitable (trials are already starting nationally including SA). The benefits of grid level and distributed storage apart from smoothing the energy supply/ demand gap is that its also a great way of managing voltage across the grid requiring potentially less investment in hi-cost grid level infrastructure previously required to achieve the level of grid stability and allowing renewables to provide base load via storage. Being globally at the bleeding edge of this transition in SA we have an opportunity to be technological and operational leaders creating high-value expertise that is supposedly coveted by our "innovation PM". Even completely ignoring any aspect of climate change it is an economic no-brainer.

We are no doubt in the most significant transition period since the invention of base load power more than 100 years ago and there are a lot of 'experiments' going on in how best to transition/ what the optimal solutions are. E.g. do utilities subsidise the installation of batteries strategically in homes in exchange for the ability to control a portion of the stored capacity? Do we price electricity at the consumer level in real-time and charge a higher fixed component fee for connecting to the grid and having the benefit of selling power to the grid to prevent current free-loading by power users? Do we facilitate the creation of private 'virtual power stations' by groups of 'user-generators'? With the implementation of smartgrid technology universally (has only happened on the NWIS in North West WA so far) do we roll out opt-in programs where utilities can change the thermostat, turn off non-critical appliances during peak demand or incentivise users to turn-off by offering discounts on their power bill given the 80:20 role on cost of generation and distribution of electricity? Is the transmission and distribution network as currently setup even viable in an era of distributed generation and storage? etc. etc. etc.

The individuals and companies who solve these problems will become globally significant players and we have the opportunity to incubate them in SA. It makes me incensed that the Federal Liberal party is trying to undermine this for cheap political shots.

[mshagg]

We are no doubt in the most significant transition period since the invention of base load power more than 100 years ago and there are a lot of 'experiments' going on in how best to transition/ what the optimal solutions are.

This is certainly the lens through which I've viewed many of the recent challenges we've faced here in SA. No one said it was going to be easy, or cheap. I guess this is also symptomatic of what happens when any market response to address carbon intensity is abandoned for political expediency. If QLD, NSW and Vic werent free to generate CO2 as if it were going out of fashion, I think they'd have an energy mix that looks a lot different than how it does currently.

Perhaps there is some criticism warranted of leaders in SA, for moving forward at such a pace in a market structure that is clearly skewed towards burning coal, although when we inevitably move away from burning brown sludge to spin turbines I think history will look favourably upon them - from an environmental perspective at least. If someone is willing to trash the atmosphere to save 50 bucks a quarter on their power bill then there's probably no appeasing them anyway.

[claybro]

You all keep blaming " the market" and Malcolm Turnbull, or some eastern states conspiracy to shut off SA power. This is not how it is being reported interstate, and actually is tarting to sound a bit unhinged. The fact is that in a region that derives almost half of its power from wind turbines, and those turbines stopped working during both events, last one because it was too windy, and this time no wind, then it comes down to thermal power stations to produce the power. There is not enough thermal power in SA to go it alone, so now Jay wants to build one. You can't absolve the unreliability of wind generation in either of these events, and it was the state government that encouraged and promoted wind over every other technology.