Another widespread power outage in SA

[PD2/20]

I find it interesting how easily people are sidetracked.
Nsw had load shedding last week, they shut down a large smelter to reduce load.
https://au.news.yahoo.com/nsw/a/3438605 ... ion/#page1

That accounts for 10% of nsw power usage. SA shed 5%.

Was Port Pirie cut off or Olympic Dam or any other large power users in SA?
Why was cutting off jobs and growth in nsw perfectly ok?
Why wasn't that the market answer in SA if it is so widely accepted as a perfectly ok outcome?

SA industrial users have had their share of outages in the September 28 and December 1 events last year. The effect on BHP in Septemberwas widely reported and Olympic Dam suffered load shedding in December.

[mshagg]

NSW had knowledge of the shortfall about 48 hours before it happened. The minister was out on the news the day before asking people to try and conserve energy - and I assume was probably in discussions with AGL and the smelter about cutting it off. SA was always going to be tight but the LOR3 wasnt identified by AEMO until just before it happened. I understand it takes 4 hours to bring that second generator at pelican point online.

So it's not like AEMO/Engie cant/wont spin the thing up, they did exactly that on Friday.

Also i dont believe there actually was any load shedding in NSW as directed by AEMO, although you'd have to say technically telling the smelter to shut down is a form of it. There were localised failures of the network in some suburbs.

[monotonehell]

NSW had knowledge of the shortfall about 48 hours before it happened. The minister was out on the news the day before asking people to try and conserve energy - and I assume was probably in discussions with AGL and the smelter about cutting it off. SA was always going to be tight but the LOR3 wasnt identified by AEMO until just before it happened. I understand it takes 4 hours to bring that second generator at pelican point online.

So it's not like AEMO/Engie cant/wont spin the thing up, they did exactly that on Friday.

Also i dont believe there actually was any load shedding in NSW as directed by AEMO, although you'd have to say technically telling the smelter to shut down is a form of it. There were localised failures of the network in some suburbs.

Pelican Point was running at full capacity on the day.

BUT

Back in 2015 the operator mothballed around half of its capacity (120MW) due to them not liking the market prices. The AEMO on Thursday afternoon quietly requested that they enable that extra capacity. Everything was going to near capacity (they were even running Murraylink about 100MW above the "safety limit".) We had around 3000MW available but were demanding 3100MW.

So if! we had Pelican Point running with the extra capacity we would have squeaked through with no need for load shedding (maybe).

BUT2

The bottom line was this demand event was a surprise to everyone. AEMO's half-hourly forecasted demand was constantly behind actual demand on the day, peaking at a 400MW shortfall. The hour's load shedding had to happen under the conditions or we would have had massive failure of the system.

Out of interest, this event was classed as a P10 (once in ten years). We have had four P10s in the past nine years (2009, 2011, 2014).

[claybro]

A clear and to the point description of what went wrong on the day. Now the question has to be where to from here. It would appear a combination of a large mix of intermittent renewable generated power, and the current market rules is broken, and will only get worse next summer with the closure of Hazelwood in vic. Can the SA government become a player in the market by constructing its own gas fired station, pre purchase enough gas for emergencies, and sell excess power to Vic/ NSW when the heatwaves move over the Eastern States? Out weather, moving as it does Wedt to East would allow the wind turbines to start up with the cool change 24-48 hours before the east. The excess gas generated power from SA can then be sold to the east as no longer required in SA. the gas plants apparently can fire up within hours of being required ie same day if needed.

[Vee]

As the fallout continues from the recent blackout, load shedding, blame game in SA .... AEMO makes admissions and apologies come out from Power Networks. Below is an excerpt from a comprehensive article by Editor, Giles Parkinson in Renew Economy.

SA blackouts, dud forecasts, lousy software and failing gas plants.

The report by the Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO) into the rolling blackouts or load shedding in SA last week reveal a sorry tale of bad management, lousy forecasts, dud software and failing fossil fuel plants.

The System Event Report for February 8 ... reveals that wind energy was not the culprit, despite the efforts of the Coalition and certain vested interests to make it so. This was a case bad management, and failing technology.

AEMO’s forecasts for temperatures and wind energy in SA on the afternoon of February 8 were hopelessly wrong. And when the crunch came after the operator realised its mistake, key fossil fuel infrastructure failed or melted in the heat.

And then, to make matters worse, the local network operator completely stuffed up the management of the load shedding due to “software” issues – meaning that three times more people lost power than needed.

Wind did not fail – as even The Guardian and the AFR described it – AEMO just botched the forecasts, in the same way it did for temperature.

This is not about renewables. This is about having good management and the best technology. South Australians, and most of Australia, are paying huge prices for an ageing and dumb grid.

It’s time to move on and embrace renewables, smart software, battery storage, demand management and energy efficiency - the very things fiercely resisted by incumbents and policy makers in recent years. 

If interested, you can read the article (plus charts) in full at Renew Economy:
http://reneweconomy.com.au/s-a-blackout ... nts-46047/

[mshagg]

I think it's important to keep in mind that Renew Economy has its own spin to put on things - just as the Advertiser or the liberal party does. Clearly they want to paint a picture that "everything BUT renewables was at fault". I'd encourage people to read the report itself, which isn't terribly long and is not terribly technical in nature, for an objective view:

https://www.aemo.com.au/-/media/Files/E ... y-2017.pdf

A few interesting observations:

- Solar PV peaked at 500MW during the day. Amazing. Of course by the time the event occurred it had dwindled to 150MW. There's a lot of people advocate that "storage is the solution", whereas I'm not so sure. That generation didn't go to waste. It was used. There was nothing to store for when the sun went down.
- Yes there was plenty of gas generators offline or at slightly reduced output due to the heat, but nothing major was absent. It was always going to fall on Pelican Point to pick up the slack.
- A burner at Torrens Island could have picked up the slack, but it has been out of action for a while. This was known.
- AEMO was banking on 200MW of wind to be available, it was producing less than half of that.
- Demand was consistently 100MW higher than expected throughout the evening.
- AEMO did not aske Engie about bringing the second gas generator online until 5:39PM. Engie responded 20 minutes later with the widely reported advice that they need 4 hours to bring the second gas turbine online.
- 2 minutes later the lights started going out.

The key event, for my 2c, was as I've said all along - SA using more power than AEMO (who seemingly run things very tight?!?) expected and they didn't have time to bring thermal back online.

There's a million ways you could avoid this from happening, even as simple as building more fat in to your forecasts. You don't have to turn the grid and its generators on its head.

[monotonehell]

I think it's important to keep in mind that Renew Economy has its own spin to put on things - just as the Advertiser or the liberal party does. Clearly they want to paint a picture that "everything BUT renewables was at fault". I'd encourage people to read the report itself, which isn't terribly long and is not terribly technical in nature, for an objective view:

https://www.aemo.com.au/-/media/Files/E ... y-2017.pdf

I was going to say the same thing.

- Solar PV peaked at 500MW during the day. Amazing. Of course by the time the event occurred it had dwindled to 150MW. There's a lot of people advocate that "storage is the solution", whereas I'm not so sure. That generation didn't go to waste. It was used. There was nothing to store for when the sun went down.

In order to store some for later demand, you need to generate more than current demand. So your uncertainty seems to be because you haven't worked out that part of storage being the answer is that we also need more generating capacity.

- AEMO was banking on 200MW of wind to be available, it was producing less than half of that.

AEMO's forecasts are based on wind supplying 9.4% of their available maximum capacity (not sure where they get that working percentage, it seems very specific.) When the P10 event occurred, wind was producing 84MW of its capacity of 1482MW. AEMO were forecasting 139MW. That's only a 55MW shortfall.

The key event, for my 2c, was as I've said all along - SA using more power than AEMO (who seemingly run things very tight?!?) expected and they didn't have time to bring thermal back online.

There's a million ways you could avoid this from happening, even as simple as building more fat in to your forecasts. You don't have to turn the grid and its generators on its head.

The fundamental problem is, AMEO are in charge of a market, not a supply service. They do what they can to fill generation shortfalls by tendering for suppliers. If people want stability and consistency, then we have to dismantle the entire thing and return it to state control. Until people wake up to this fact, we will see shortfalls in supply and an artificial maintenance of demand in order to keep prices high.

[mshagg]

AEMO's forecasts are based on wind supplying 9.4% of their available maximum capacity (not sure where they get that working percentage, it seems very specific.) When the P10 event occurred, wind was producing 84MW of its capacity of 1482MW. AEMO were forecasting 139MW. That's only a 55MW shortfall.

Im not sure on AEMO's methodology for forecasting the wind supply, they dont deal with it in the report, but if this (a fixed % of installed capacity) was the case the various forecasts in Figure 3 on page 11 would be flat. But they are not. Indeed AEMO show their various forecasts from throughout the day, mapped to actual, and compared to the previous day's forecast. Installed wind capacity is 1595MW (table 3, page 6).

You can also see on figure 3 that AEMO had forecast 200MW to be available at 18:30 based on their 4pm forecast (green line). The actual output (red line) was below 100MW. This is described quite clearly in section 2.2.2

[Vee]

Software glitch to blame for blackout of extra 60,000 SA homes in heatwave

The South Australian network operator says a software problem led to load shedding of 300MW instead of the 100MW requested by national market.

SA Power Networks has said it knew a software glitch caused an additional 60,000 houses in South Australia to be out of power during load shedding this month.

Yet the state’s network operator stayed quiet for a week and a half while the Turnbull government continued to criticise the South Australian government’s use of renewables.


Senate select committee

A Senate select committee held a public hearing on Monday to investigate Australia’s ageing energy infrastructure, less than three weeks after SA suffered yet another blackout – the result of a severe heatwave.

The Australian Energy Market Operator (Aemo) issued a report last week detailing the sequence of events that led to the recent blackout, saying load shedding was the only option available when it became clear a gas plant at Pelican Point was not available to respond to the surge in demand as local temperatures in SA soared.

100MW becomes 300MW

It said it had directed load shedding of 100MW to preserve the security of the electricity grid but, for reasons it could not explain, the local network operator shed three times that amount – 300MW.

Officials from SA Power Networks admitted last week that a problem with their automated load shedding system put an extra 60,000 premises in the dark unnecessarily.

But on Monday, company officials also admitted they knew their IT system had been responsible for the extra load-shedding within minutes of the event, though they did not tell the public for a week and a half.

Greens senator Sarah Hanson-Young said: “So not until the Aemo report was released last week did South Australians know at all that more people went without power than necessary?”

Hanson-Young said: “So while there was a massive political storm brewing in Canberra and blame shifting from South Australia back to Canberra and everybody pointing fingers, SA Power sat silent knowing that you had shed three times as many households from accessing power on that day.”

And no compensation offered!
"Customers should speak to their insurers."

The Guardian:
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-n ... n-heatwave

[monotonehell]

And late yesterday the operators of Pelican Point admitted that half their capacity has not been "viable for years." They had no intention to bring it to an available at call state. Even though AMEO list it as available capacity - but offline for maintenance.

All the evidence points to profit seeking corporations allowing the infrastructure to degrade to a level where there is no backup, market failures because there is no real market, and successive State and Federal governments allowing things to fester.

[rev]

And late yesterday the operators of Pelican Point admitted that half their capacity has not been "viable for years." They had no intention to bring it to an available at call state. Even though AMEO list it as available capacity - but offline for maintenance.

All the evidence points to profit seeking corporations allowing the infrastructure to degrade to a level where there is no backup, market failures because there is no real market, and successive State and Federal governments allowing things to fester.

So they are all to blame, and we the people get bent over again and again.
So when we do grab our pitch forks and march on parliament for some old fashion ass kicking?

[bits]

Pelican Point stated they could not bring their second unit online due to no gas for it.
Engie have committed most all their gas for export. It isn't that the power station isn't able to effectively compete in power generation, it is that they find it more profitable to use their gas elsewhere.

We should change the rules to preallocate gas resources for local use.

[monotonehell]

Pelican Point stated they could not bring their second unit online due to no gas for it.
Engie have committed most all their gas for export. It isn't that the power station isn't able to effectively compete in power generation, it is that they find it more profitable to use their gas elsewhere.

We should change the rules to preallocate gas resources for local use.

That's what was 'said' after the fact. At the senate hearing they admitted that it was broken and has been since 2013.

[PD2/20]

Pelican Point stated they could not bring their second unit online due to no gas for it.
Engie have committed most all their gas for export. It isn't that the power station isn't able to effectively compete in power generation, it is that they find it more profitable to use their gas elsewhere.

We should change the rules to preallocate gas resources for local use.

That's what was 'said' after the fact. At the senate hearing they admitted that it was broken and has been since 2013.

But Pelican Point was outputting 330MW on Thursday 9th once instructed, so the second unit was able to produce at least 100MW.

[bits]

But Pelican Point was outputting 330MW on Thursday 9th once instructed, so the second unit was able to produce at least 100MW.

That's the output on one gas turbine and the steam output turbine of the gas turbine. That is the combined cycle function that makes it the cheapest gas generator in the country.
The second gas turbine adds another 160mw.