Australian electrical system operator orders wind farms to cut back production in wake of blackout

Ten South Australian wind farms told to limit generation after statewide electricity blackout 

australia-vs-north-korea

http://cartoonsbyjosh.com

TEN South Australian wind farms have been ordered to limit generation in the wake of the disastrous statewide power blackout because the national electricity market operator has declared they have not performed properly.

The state’s biggest wind farm, at Snowtown, is among those which the Australian Energy Market Operator has targeted in its “management and analysis” of last Wednesday’s unprecedented power outage as it gradually restores the power network. The move will prompt further questions over whether renewable energy jeopardised electricity grid stability and triggered the cascading blackout, which started when fierce winds damaged 23 Mid North transmission towers and severed three high-voltage lines. –Paul Starick, The Advertiser, 4 October 2016

This comes on the heels of a damning report that says that the power instability of wind farms dropping out caused the grid to collapse. The report, by the AEMO, said:

Event

The predicted weather front moved through SA on the afternoon of Wednesday 28 September 2016, including high winds, thunderstorms, lightning strikes, hail, and heavy rainfall.

The weather resulted in multiple transmission system faults. In the short time between 16:16 and 16:18, system faults included the loss of three major 275 kV transmission lines north of Adelaide. Generation initially rode through the faults, but at 16:18, following an extensive number of faults in a short period, 315 MW of wind generation disconnected (one group at 16:18:09, a second group at 16:18:15), also affecting the region north of Adelaide.

The uncontrolled reduction in generation resulted in increased flow on the main Victorian interconnector (Heywood) to make up the deficit. This resulted in the Heywood Interconnector overloading. To avoid damage to the interconnector, the automatic-protection mechanism activated, tripping the interconnector. In this event, this resulted in the remaining customer load and electricity generation in SA being lost (referred to as a Black System). This automatic-protection operated in less than half a second at 16:18. The event resulted in the SA regional electricity market being suspended.

Source: https://www.aemo.com.au/Media-Centre/-/media/BE174B1732CB4B3ABB74BD507664B270.ashx

For those having trouble reading ASHX files, a local copy f the report is here as a PDF file aemo-sa-preliminary-report-at-900am-3-october

Here is the notice (h/t to WUWT reader observa):

From the AEMO ‘Market Notices’ site-

‘55242

05 Oct 2016 19:52

Heywood interconnector dynamic constraint

AEMO ELECTRICITY MARKET NOTICE

Heywood interconnector dynamic constraint

Under the market suspension in South Australia, AEMO will limit the flow from South Australia to Victoria to prevent the accumulation of negative residues, which cannot be accommodated under the suspension pricing regime.

The following constraint set has been invoked at 20:00 hrs to manage the above outcome.

Constraint set: I-SV_000_DYN which includes constraint equation: S_V_000_HY_DYN.

Spot prices and ancillary services prices in South Australia continue to be determined by the relevant market suspension pricing schedule developed and published in accordance with clause 3.24.5(l) of the NER.

The schedule is available on AEMO’s website at

https://www.aemo.com.au/Electricity/National-Electricity-Market-NEM/Data/Market-Management-System-MMS/Market-Suspension-Default-Pricing-Schedule

and summarised for South Australia at https://www.aemo.com.au/Media-Centre/Prices-in-South-Australia

Manager NEM Real Time Operations’

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October 5, 2016 3:27 pm

Nice pic but where’s the lights in Sydney and Melbourne? Fakes like this only destroy your story.

JPeden
Reply to  Tony
October 5, 2016 9:14 pm

Thanks, but no thanks. Wind and Solar aren’t fit for purpose, right?

Greg Cavanagh
Reply to  Tony
October 5, 2016 10:14 pm

It’s a cartoon…

richard verney
October 5, 2016 3:32 pm

Latitude October 5, 2016 at 8:53 am opines:
What kind of idiots would set up a system like this….
The same kind of idiots who are bringing in regulations to prohibit the sale of 3kW kettles and to restrict their power to 1700 watts (or perhaps 2200 watts). I kid you not. This is a current EU directive doing the rounds.
These people think that less CO2 will be produced if households do not have a 3000 watt kettle. They do not appreciate that the energy required to boil the water is dependent upon the amount of water in the kettle, its start temperature and the ambient temperature of the room, and has nothing whatsoever to do with whether the kettle is 3000 watts or 1500 watts or 1000 watts.
When law makers/politicians/focus groups can make that sort of error, is it any wonder that they mess up the grid because they do not understand the problems associated with intermittent and non despatchable energy.
Unfortunately the ruling class are, at least as far as science and engineering matters are concerned, idiots and have no comprehension of basic fundamentals.

sciguy54
Reply to  richard verney
October 5, 2016 5:15 pm

Richard
Yes, most politicians are idiots when it comes to technical issues, but the solar crowd has a stealth reason to limit the wattage of common appliances. Remember that a Tesla Powerwall can supply only 2.2kw continuously or 3kw peak. Regular use of either draw will likely will lead to a shortened battery life.
Now consider the typical morning in your household. Does anyone take a hot shower? Most electric tank water heaters require 2 elements of 1.5 to 4.5 kw each and tankless heaters draw even more, so forget having your water heater on a single Powerwall. Count on 1.2 kw for a hair dryer or microwave or toaster oven, and likely 3 kw for a range and say 2.5 kw for that tea kettle, so if you live in a solar home prepare yourself and breakfast with caution. Of course you will likely need lights, ventilation, and heat or air conditioning in addition. The reality is that a true solar-powered home will need not one Powerwall, but 4 or 5 of its equivalent, or else many of the larger loads will have to be wired so as to circumvent battery storage.
Welcome to life “off the grid”. As a life-choice it might be a fun adventure, but it can be an expensive inconvenience when we are forced to live that way due to a whim of the ruling class.

The Pompous Git
Reply to  sciguy54
October 5, 2016 6:27 pm

Welcome to life “off the grid”. As a life-choice it might be a fun adventure, but it can be an expensive inconvenience when we are forced to live that way due to a whim of the ruling class.

Had a prolonged (~12 hr) outage here in southern Tasmania this last winter. The only thing I missed was being able to play music on my hi-fi. We use firewood for space-heating, cooking and hot water, mainly because it’s cheaper than electrickery. And I much prefer cooking with a combustion stove.
Happily, the electricity supplier compensated us for the downtime with a much bigger cheque than we would have needed to pay for the minuscule amount of electrickery we might have used. Who knows, maybe if the usually reliable power supply goes down more often we might be given thousands, rather than hundreds of dollars. “Expensive inconveniences” like that I can live with 🙂

Allan
Reply to  richard verney
October 5, 2016 6:18 pm

I am new to this forum and would like to add some information to the comment above. While as stated you still require the same amount energy to boil the same amount of water with a 3KW or 2KW kettle there is a reasoable difference in the transmission losses involved in doing so. Assuming a purely resistive load the loss = Current squared x resistance. Result is the transmission losses are around 2.25 times higher at 3KW than at 2KW. As to the size of the losses. The contribution is really only from the kettle to the transformer. The generator and main distribution lines are not likely to see any differance once a significant number of kettles are operating as the 3KW ones would run for less time and the end result is the same amount of kettles boild over the same peak periods. The question? Is there a worthwhile saving in local transmission loss to justify waiting longer for the kettle to boil.

The Pompous Git
October 5, 2016 4:57 pm

They do not appreciate that the energy required to boil the water is dependent upon the amount of water in the kettle, its start temperature and the ambient temperature of the room, and has nothing whatsoever to do with whether the kettle is 3000 watts or 1500 watts or 1000 watts.

While I do not disagree, you forgot a couple of factors. The material from which the kettle is fabricated makes a difference. Heat transfer across stainless steel, aluminium, ceramic and plastic differs. Atmospheric pressure makes a difference, too. The kettle will boil quicker when placed near the ceiling, or slower when placed on the floor. It will boil quickest if placed in the centre of a one cubic metre box made of styrofoam.
Sorry if that’s given the legislators a few more idiotic regulations they can enact…

CWinNY
October 5, 2016 5:10 pm

One question I always ask a wind turbine enthusiast is: Which has killed more bald eagles, DDT or wind turbines?
The answer is wind turbines. Although to be correct, DDT was never suspected of outright eagle deaths, but of thinning the egg shells. Then again, wind turbines don’t always kill, sometimes they maim the birds so that they cannot successfully hunt and starve, or cannot fly and are prey to land predators.
DDT was banned for less environmental reasons than wind turbines exhibit (killing or causing the deaths of not just eagles, but other birds as well as bats). At some point environmentalists will realize this and the turbines will lose popularity with that crowd.

JPeden
Reply to  CWinNY
October 5, 2016 10:47 pm

Good points, but real environmentalists have known about the Bird Shredding problem for quite a while, and at least this potential problem should be obvious. Meanwhile Big Environmental Groups like Green Peace, The Worldwide Wildlife Fund, the Sierra Club, and The Union of Concerned Scientists – the last 3 of which I used to be a member – have converted to activism behind the CO2-Climate Change Hoax & Scam. It’s much more profitable in the “green” they like most; and also in either their need to control people, or their own need to be controlled by a Totalitarian State in order to get along against life’s challenges and threats. Their respective flocks don’t seem to care which one, because now they’re “saving the Planet” from Man’s “Destruction of Creation”, dontchaknow.
Did you convert any alleged environmentalist “wind turbine enthusiast” back to grounded reason, with your question? If so, I doubt it would be lasting. Example:
I had one such person completely stymied in regard to CO2-Climate Change in general. She had to claim it didn’t make Predictions, then finally ~”All I know is we’re polluting the world.” I assured her that it wasn’t from CO2. But months later, by applying the concept of increasing Word Drought to our own small spring water supply system, she brought it up again. I let it pass because we both had a bigger fish to fry sitting right in front of us. And a day earlier when I saw her for the first time that year, she had asked me if the level of the biggest lake around here was dropping. I said no, mostly only after tourist season as usual and referred her to my son in law #3 who is intimately connected to the lake’s level because he and his fellow rancher-farmers are in on controlling it for irrigation by a small dam. At the time, I really didn’t get exactly why she was asking. But by now I know I’d made no headway against her apparently energizing, meaning-giving belief in the CO2-Climate Change Apocalypse.

JPeden
Reply to  JPeden
October 6, 2016 7:14 am

Word World Drought”.
Although it seems a “Catastrophic Word Drought Finger Printing Event by 2020 is also predicted to be caused by CO2” in the Dreams of our wannabe Totalitarian Mother and her “right hand persons”. Miraculously, it would be one of the only “good” kind of Catastrophe CO2 ever “causes” in the eternal PC word game also Modeled by our betters in Agenda 21 as The Science’s Utopia. After all, our Benevolent Mother Mistress would also be “The World’s First Elected Person Evah!”…”Help green her up The Real People by your charitable contribution stat, before it’s too late for all you deplorable proles. So many Windmills and Solar Panels can’t be wrong!”

Nigel S
Reply to  CWinNY
October 5, 2016 11:30 pm

That point may be some time after they have reduced the earth’s population to less than a billion (sevenfold).

gregK
October 5, 2016 5:42 pm

This provides link to the preliminary report….
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-10-06/uhlmann-on-power-blackout-in-south-australia/7906844
Coal generation in SA had shut down because it couldn’t compete with subsidised wind power
Can’t turn on wind turbines without external power.
Still not enough power in SA to turn on the Olympic Dam mine site.
The Whyalla smelters have had power turned on after a week

Analitik
Reply to  gregK
October 5, 2016 7:04 pm

Thanks for that. It’s quite an eye opener that the South Australian generators couldn’t be restarted with the local support services and that they had to wait for the Heywood Interconnector to provide the power to restart the local power plants.
Thank goodness for the Victorian brown coal power plants.

Philip Schaeffer
October 5, 2016 7:12 pm

Lol, Josh should have had a look at a picture of Australia at night before drawing that cartoon. SA doesn’t look that much different with the lights out, because most of it is desert, and nearly all of its 1.6 million people live in the south east corner of the state.

JPeden
Reply to  Philip Schaeffer
October 6, 2016 3:20 pm

Heh, and I bet it didn’t even feel to those people in SA anywhere near as bad as energy starvation does to the people of North Korea! But after all, it really is only the nearly invisible little people in NoKo who are malnourished in their Desert and getting littler, not their whole freaking Country! Just as Kim Jong ill’s own corpulence definitively proves for all objective people to see, and right smack in the face of Josh’s misleading Cartoon!
Another news flash to you D’Niers: it’s derivatively certain to 97% of Social Science and Psychology Experts that the EU Countries are likewise only over-reacting to D’Nialist Propaganda – the Cartoons and all the rest of your ill-aimed Sophistry paid for by Big Oil – as demonstrated by the EU’s travesty of successively discontinuing new subsidies for their equally misperceived Wind and Solar “Failures”. In effect these Experts know you D’Nialists obviously want to kill off all of us, except for you, by enabling “The Destruction of Creation!” complete with your “coal cars” carrying us off to the Chambers and Incinerators. Now that’s real “intent” if I’ve ever seen it.
Please, someone pass this penetrating insight on stat to NY AG Eric Schneiderman, because the Experts have warned me that I might be dead as soon as I push “Post Comment” here because of the secret automatic WUWT Swat Ray, or perhaps transported to Roswell Area 51! That kind of threat has also certainly damped down our and the Expert News Outlets’ ability to get out the facts.
But otherwise, don’t anybody get worried by China and India’s big push to construct as many coal-fired electricity plants as possible, because it’s only fair that they catch up to the Developed Countries, who have profited off them to get to their unfair opulent Standard of Living which has produced the despicable “obscene inequality of the Rich Nations over the Poor Nations” Fair is Fair. Justice is Justice. Equality is Equality. And Wealth is immutably a Fixed Pie of Wealth. It can never be created or destroyed, only reapportioned, just like Thermodynamic Law indicates. Because I am just like Albert Einstein.
No, no worries at all, my unfairly frightened friends of the Planet, because so many Windmills and Solar Panels can’t go or be wrong! And The Science says we actually need more of them and Bigger Lewandoskies to hammer it even more firmly into the heads of the deplorable D’Niers – don’t forget to see them get humorously “exploded” in our Cartoon – so as to justly be led, herded, and culled to the 97%, nay even 100% level of Consensus that “The right thing is the right thing!”*
Moreover, no alleged “Death Threats” can possibly be implied anywhere by our funniest Cartoons ever and The Science which proves that as well, when they both show instead that in fact we’re the ones who care so much that we’re trying to save the whole Planet! The Real Messiahs are indeed The Real Messiahs!
Lol, the D’Nialists have no real sense of humor at all, especially if they really do think we might want to take over the whole Planet just because we say we want to save it! No, what we have here is only a failure to communicate. [*Goebbels at Nuremburg, ~We must communicate to the common people what they only dimly perceive, that “The right thing is the right thing!” ~1934]
Hahaha, and we often hear the D’Niers even say that CO2-Climate Change is “disproven by its [100%] Prediction Failure”, and that after our very generous green feedings to Wind and Soar Plants, they are “not fit for purpose!” Well, that’s impossible to begin with: more money in = more of the right things out; and they’ve both fed us very well indeed over almost several decades! The Good is The Good, because it can’t be otherwise. And I channel The Truth as well because it’s the same as The Good!
And who doesn’t love the SA Desert and the diversity there which keeps the delicate web of life intact, but which is threatened by the D’Niers? Thus from objective Satellite Images, other Deserts are already threatened with Extinction by CO2 and its Warming!
In other words, contrary to what Josh’s Cartoon tries to fool you prole volk into believing against your unfairly and cynically manipulated common sense, we must actually follow the example of North Korea in Josh’s Cartoon, before it’s too late! And its dark areas are what we all should aspire to create. The Delicate Web of Life is always The Delicate Web of Life.
But we do need to have some preferably Fat Charismatic Spiders around to show you the Right Way to preserve the Right Web. Of course that would be people like me and PhiIip. And I know I am surely Right about this, because I am surely Right! Just try laughing at that irrefutable..er..fact. I don’t know about Philip but I even know I better stop losing weight or I’m not going to look enough like Kim Jong il or Al Gore!
As Mougli of “The Jungle Book” explained it near the time when The Science tells us Fossil Fuel CO2 began its really horrific onslaught against the Planet, ~”The Monkeys know they are the wisest People of the Jungle, because they always say they are”. They achieved a 100% Consensus before we “mainstream” Climate Scientists did, and therefore we must always bow deeply to their Evolutionary Superiority just as much as we struggle valiantly against the D’niers to mimic it.

JPeden
Reply to  JPeden
October 6, 2016 4:48 pm

Important additional warning to all us CO2-Climate Change Experts who have as our sacred charges the common people and the very Planet itself!
Don’t even let our possibly easily-shaken Believers listen to Joe Bastardi’s, ~2:50 pm Pacific Time on Fox Business News, only apparent complete shredding of the deplorable notion that Hurricane Matthew’s Fury will be no different from others historically – or not even as inherently bad, given the “examples,history,and logic” he just conjures up, depending on its Category and tract, etc., and people’s preemptive and subsequent response to it when it hits land…etc. etc. blah blah blah.
It will only pollute your subjects’ minds with “evidence” from a Meteorologist who makes money forecasting the weather! And it really only proves what we’ve been up against ever since Faux News began. I’ve noticed Faux’s more recent trend to have this Ho Bastardi on as an alleged Expert on climate and weather, and it has bothered me most because of its Propaganda Power on the people and against the Planet that we are trying valiantly to save – although I am of course immune to his kind of disinformation myself. But your subjects’ tender heads might explode! It’ll probably even be on You Tube!
In fact, don’t anyone whomever listen to anything unless I tell you to.

observa
October 5, 2016 8:14 pm

From Michael Owen SA Bureau Chief for The Australian (7:40PM October 5, 2016)-
‘The Weatherill government says the debate over renewable energy has forced it to convene an urgent “summit of leading scientists, energy experts, and economists to provide accurate and factual information about the role of renewable energy in Australia”.
The summit will be held tomorrow at state parliament ahead of the COAG Energy Council meeting in Melbourne on Friday.
“It is critical that the importance to Australia’s future energy requirements of renewable energy is recognised, and national leadership is shown on this issue in Canberra,” South Australia’s Environment Minister Ian Hunter said this afternoon.
“It’s important that we have a fact-based discussion around how we make our energy system more secure, cheaper and cleaner. This summit will bring the science behind renewables to the table — and dispel misconceptions — ahead of important, nation-shaping discussions to be held this Friday.”’
Now these watermelons want to know what makes an electricity system really tick?

observa
October 5, 2016 8:22 pm

Translation:
Don’t panic, we’ll have a one day Cook up in Lew of any real science and nip off to Canberra to demand more interconnection to eastern thermal in order to save the planet.

Analitik
October 5, 2016 9:22 pm

And just when you thought the greentards couldn’t get things more wrong, a statement from The Greens senator (and former bank teller), Sarah Hanson-Young

We need to support the renewable energy industry in South Australia and the thousands of jobs that it will bring to our state.
This essential industry was unfairly attacked over the last week and we need to see united support for the sector from Canberra.
I will move a motion in the Parliament, calling on my Senate colleagues to support South Australia’s renewable energy target, helping to restore investor and consumer confidence in the renewable energy industry in our state.
A strong wind and solar sector in South Australia, coupled with an increase of battery storage in homes and small businesses, will pave the way for this state’s clean, green renewable energy future.

Greens to move Senate motion in support of SA renewable energy target
You couldn’t make this stuff up.

Nigel S
Reply to  Analitik
October 5, 2016 11:35 pm

A motion to file in the composting toilet.

Robert from oz
Reply to  Analitik
October 6, 2016 2:25 am

I think one nation might not comply with them at all .

Reply to  Analitik
October 6, 2016 4:39 am

Sarah two fathers for our American friends is a greens senator in our national parliament, commonly referred to as SHY and known as a total dipstick.

observa
Reply to  wayne Job
October 6, 2016 8:07 am

Also called ‘Sarah Sea Patrol’ because she confused the fictional TV show with the real thing in a Senate grilling hearing about stopping the boats (she’s an Angela Merkel clone)
https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=sarah+sea+patrol&view=detail&mid=6EDFA84C3E2A316515E06EDFA84C3E2A316515E0&FORM=VIRE

observa
October 6, 2016 8:53 am
Get Real
October 7, 2016 2:48 am

This is what happens when political ideologues design power systems. Leave it to the engineers and technicians please, they know what they’re doing.

OWEN MARTIN
October 7, 2016 2:18 pm

This shows quite simply how electricity stability is affected during periods of high wind in the Irish grid :
http://irishenergyblog.blogspot.ie/2016/09/over-40-of-wind-energy-shutdown-last.html

October 13, 2016 2:06 pm

As for the fancy term “synthetic inertia” Stokes needs to explain in terms of basic physics.
It appears the concept is to quickly extract more torque from the blades by slowing them, by increasing the generator demand on them. That uses some of the rotational momentum in the blades, _assuming_they_were_not_already_deliberately_slowed as they’d be in icing conditions (yeah, perhaps not much of that in AU but it is a major problem in UK), or stopped to reduce wear on bearings and gears when forecasts of wind and power demand indicate no need for a few days.
Momentum comes from mass and speed, inertia is resistance to change of speed which seems an imprecise term. Feathered blades may or may not keep turning, regardless they may be braked to stop them, so may not have momentum.
Apparently the changes in control function to exploit the concept are not trivial. I also want to know how grids handle frequency drop, that may depend in part on how users react to it (plants depending on synchronous motors may take them offline quickly due to the bad effects of under-frequency power).