While ecos and wind farm proponents tried to blame the blackout on downed powerlines, a detailed report from AEMO shows it was actually wind farms that were the cause.
From the Institute of Public Affairs | Australia’s leading free market think tank
5 October 2016 PRELIMINARY AEMO SOUTH AUSTRALIAN BLACKOUT REPORT: WIND RESPONSIBLE
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, according to free market think tank the Institute of Public Affairs.
“The Preliminary Report makes it clear that while the weather was responsible for multiple transmission system faults, the blackout did not occur until after the sudden loss of 315 megawatts of wind output at six separate sites over a six second period,”
said Director of Research Brett Hogan.
“The South Australian Government and the renewables industry can no longer credibly argue that the reasons for the fault relied solely on the weather. Images of downed pylons do not tell the whole story.” “In simple terms, the wind increased and some transmission lines went down but electricity generation continued. It was only the as-yet-unexplained reduction in wind farm output which overloaded demand on the interconnector with Victoria, causing the whole network to seize up.”
“Gas generation continued through the storm and the transmission line faults as did supply from the interconnector. Importantly, it was also the Torrens Island gas-fired Power Station that was used to re-start the electricity network later that evening.”
“When you rely on the weather to generate electricity, and the weather turns bad, then you shouldn’t be surprised when your electricity system in turn cannot cope.” “While renewables may very well have a place in our future energy needs, their uncontrolled rollout, powered by federal and state government subsidies is starting to do Australia damage.”
“Demand-limiting kill switches and blackouts are symbols of policy failure. It is not the role of government to favour one energy technology or provider over another. Government should be encouraging competition in a free and open market so that technology and the private sector are free to work out the best energy sources.”
“Generation initially rode through the faults, but at 16:18, following an extensive number of faults in a short period, 315MW of wind generation disconnected (one group at 16:18:09, a second group at 16:18:15), also affecting the region north of Adelaide.” Source: AEMO Preliminary Report – Black System Event in South Australia on 28 September 2016 p.2
A copy of the Preliminary Report is available here.
From that report:
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.
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’
Had trouble posting that copy so I’ll comment here. SA had come under Emergency Service legislation (according to a notice yesterday which has dropped off) and that meant SA was exempt from despatch pricing but notice now they’ve told the 10 wind farms to limit any output so they won’t feed any power back east, presumably because they need all the transmission capacity free to sustain reliability to SA under the circumstances. In other words keep your stinking wind, SA needs real power now.
Nick Stokes seems to have repeated his previous pretzeling habits, first noted here:
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/03/03/monday-mirthiness-the-stokes-defense/
And this sort of unwavering pretzel defense that Nick practices, is why I still think he’s a paid commenter, rather than an honest one.
‘he’s a paid commenter, rather than an honest one.’
He certainly seems to have a lot of time on his hands, doesn’t he? Not encumbered by a pesky day-job… unless of course, this is it.
[SNIP your insults are not welcome here /mod]
Anthony,
My original contention was that the report says nothing that justifies your headline:
“Australian Energy Market Operator report says wind farms were the ultimate cause of blackout, network withstood pylon downings”
No-one else has quoted anything. The simple fact is that the report does not say that.
As far as wind turbines is concerned, the pretzelling has been in the endless lines of attack mounted here. First they were mechanically unreliable. No-one could build that many and keep them working. Then they were intermittent and the system would fail for lack of power. But in fact they stood up when pylons were failing, and they provided power right until the grid became unstable.
Now the complaint is that they disconnected when faced with an unstable grid where they could not supply in phase. That seems to be true. It is also likely to be fixable. The AEMO is trying to manage that. But an unstable grid with loss of multiple pylons is not a common occurrence. The interconnector also disconnects in those circumstances.
I see three hands. Is Nick alone in there?
@Nick I appreciate that you come and comment. (Seldom your tone or demeanor but…)
@the_rest Very few on ‘Nick’s side’ bother to come and attempt to converse, and yes even though he appears to be wearing horse blinker’s at all times he actually contributes. If this place was ‘only preaching to the choir’ I would not remain long. If you have seen the original ghostbusters, I view him as Louis Tully at the party before he gets cornered and becomes “the Keymaster”.
i too consider this site all the better for the likes of Nick, and I consider that.generally Nick’s demeanour is very good especially as he is sometimes the butt of some outrageous ad homs. Consider the recent snipes of CoB that Nick is ‘mathematically challenged’. Given the amount of maths that most of us have forgotten, I am sure that Nick’s grasp of maths is far better than most who comment on this site.
Whilst one should take things with a large dollop of tounge in cheek, I cannot see the need to post the above carton with its caption.
We are adults and we should be able to have a grown up debate letting the facts and the science do the talking.
I have never understood the case for wind.
Leaving aside the technical issues that flow from the fact that there is little energy in displaced air, and that there is and can be no economy of scale (you know when a technology has run its course, when minaturization no longer occurs), the fact is that wind turbines fail on their primary objective of reducing CO2.
The evidence has been in for at least a decade. Windfarms do not reduce CO2 because wind is non despatchable and intermittent and requires 100% backup by fossil powered generation and given the manner that this backup runs means that there is no overall saving in CO2 emissions.
We all know that windfarms on average produce about 22 to 28% of their nameplate capacity. At first glance one might expect this to result in about a 25% reduction in CO2 emissions, but that is not the case because of the backup required from conventionally powered generation. That has been known for at least a decade (I would say even longer than that)
If windfarms do not result in a meaningful reduction in CO2, what is the point of them? They are unreliable, and expensive. They require huge new infrastructure expenditure coupling them from their remote locations to the grid, and due to the lack of energy in the displacement of air, they require vast tracts of land.
All windfarms achieve is to put up the price of energy and result in a less stable grid and thereby less energy security.
It is difficult to see how politicians continue to fall for this sc@m, because that is what windfarms are given that they do not result in the meaningful reduction of CO2.
Now I understand people having different views on the science of AGW (not least because all but none of the data is fit for purpose and capable of withstanding the rigours of scientific scrutiny), but I find it very difficult to understand how any sentient and rational person could support wind simply because windfarms do not in any meaningful way result in the reduction of CO2 emissions. At that most basic and fundamental level, they fail.. It is more than time that the push for wind was abandoned. A large dose of reality is what is needed.
The comment below was made in response to the publication of the 2010 UK Coalition Government Energy and Climate Change Programme:
philip riley says:
10 June 2010 at 11:01 pm
Kinetic Energy is equal to half the mass times the square of the velocity, one mole of air occupies 22.4 litres at 20 degrees Celsius, mass of one mole of air is equal to, as near as dammit, 14.4g. You now have all the information you need to work out why windmills are a complete WASTE OF FU**ING TIME.
Please, use your head, and think about this….. Nuclear will work, so will ‘fossil fuels’, renewables will not. This really is basic maths.
http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20100919110641/http:/programmeforgovernment.hmg.gov.uk/energy-and-climate-change/comment-page-19/index.html#comment-11184
Unfortunately, the commenter was a genius but the politicians weren’t. They continue to build their monuments to folly.
As children, we quickly learn that there is no worthwhile energy in the displacement of air.
Any kid who has played with a water pistol knows that when it runs out of water it has to be refilled because displacing just air, rather than water, does nothing to hit your opponent.
There is about 1000 times less energy in the displacement of air.
Storms have a lot of force not simply because of the very high wind speeds but because of the moisture content of the air is often very high. We will see that with Matthew,
Wind as a source of energy production is plain silly, but my main gripe is that it does not reduce CO2 emissions to any meaningful extent and is therefore completely and utterly redundant.
PS. I am not one who is concerned by CO2 emissions, if for no other reason that I consider the planet to be way too cold and with far too little CO2, such that if by some happy consequence more CO2 brings about some warming that would be a win win scenario for mankind and bio diversity in general.
As children, we quickly learn that there is worthwhile energy in the displacement of air when we fly a kite.
That’s likely because you’re not involved in organised crime.
http://www.duhaimelaw.com/2013/03/21/europol-issues-organized-crime-threat-assessment-focusing-on-cybercrime-hacking-money-laundering-and-drugs/
“The above two wind farms had an unexpected reduction in output ”
Heh. Unexpected.
In the words of Inigo Montoya, they keep using that word. I don’t think it means what they think it means.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but don’t wind turbines shut down when the wind gets too strong?
Having investigated multiple complex power supply disruptions/outages during my career I would suggest that until the investigation is complete the majority of comments/observations above are speculative, some are clearly more informed than others.
It is essential that the investigation cover not just the timing of the physical events, but extended to the system/process management root causes.
Grids are not just thrown together, the generation/grid/load structure should, and will almost certainly have been, subjected to “stress testing” during the design. There are various “tools” available to do this. The validity of the assumptions going into such modelled stress testing are obviously critical and typically where “root causes” are found.
This is speculative on my part but I would not be surprised if it was found that there was some degree of “political interference”, or simply “ill-informed wishful thinking”, that had been applied to the assumptions on wind power generation integration to the grid. Having said the above, no matter how robust the system design, there is always the probability of a “black swan” event. Total redundancy is impossibly expensive. Balancing risk, probability and consequences, against cost is a difficult equation to solve. (From the world of hard knocks a one in ten year total failure event should be considered)
The fact that the managing authority seems to have decided to limit wind generated power in to the grid as a short term risk mitigation action is informative.
While black swan event do occur and total redundancy is impossibly expensive, the fact remains that big storms have hit other parts of Australia, especially Queensland, without bringing down the electricity grid for the whole state.
Queensland is a good comparison since it is also at the end of the NEM grid, so it can be islanded, and gets hit by severe tropical storms every few years.
The evolution of the grids certainly required planning and testing as they were expanded. The issue is that all the design and testing was done with the stability of synchronous generators at the core. With so much asynchronous generation from the doubly fed and full converter wind turbines (and the domestic PV), South Australia’s grid was operating well outside the designed parameters for grid stability whenever there was a high amount of wind generation.
The the following letter to the AEMC in July by the South Australian Energy Minister, Tom Koutsantonis shows that the government knew they were in dire straights given the right (or wrong) conditions. See Section 1 of Attachment A (page 10) for the requested rule change and the reason.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-10-04/electricity-security-complex-in-sa-says-koutsantonis/7899302
And yet this same minister had been making public statements that all was well with the South Australian grid, right up until the blackout.
Wind turbines with synthetic inertia may have prevented the statewide blackout at additional cost. But then again. their long recovery times after supplying synthetic inertia (they slow down a LOT after overcurrent events) may have just delayed the inevitable.
Bingo!
@joel Snider October 5, 2016 at 10:16 am:
Your two axioms would be better stated as:
“Never underestimate the human capacity for doublethink.”
“You will ALWAYS underestimate the human capacity for doublethink.”
There’s a big difference between being unable to know and being unwilling to know, with the latter being much more common – and pernicious. As Orwell put it:
“Even the humblest Party member is expected to be competent, industrious, and even intelligent within narrow limits, but it is also necessary that he should be a credulous and ignorant fanatic . . . In his capacity as an administrator, it is often necessary for a member of the Inner Party to know that this or that item of war news is untruthful, and he may often be aware that the entire war is spurious and is either not happening or is being waged for purposes quite other than the declared ones: but such knowledge is easily neutralized by the technique of doublethink.”
‘There’s a big difference between being unable to know and being unwilling to know, with the latter being much more common – and pernicious.’
Agreed. Although it’s sometimes hard to tell the difference. There is also a tendency among intelligent/informed people to assume that everyone has equal understanding – I have discovered this not necessarily to be the case. In fact, WAY too often, I find people’s opinions shaped as much by a general osmosis of information that just trickles in, and people learn it the way they learn a Burger King jingle – just though constant input and repetition. Then you combine that with the natural human trait of balking at anything that threatens your world view, and you get an outright resistance to learning.
And of course, too much exposure to this type of person results in the second type of intelligent/informed person that assumes everyone else is an idiot.
And I guess that’s the root of the separation – how much of this organized stupidity is deliberate or just happenstance?
” . . . how much of this organized stupidity is deliberate or just happenstance?”
Actually, it is neither, with the exception, for a very few influential figures, of the former. You say – correctly – “[often] people’s opinions [are] shaped as much by a general osmosis of information that just trickles in, and people learn it the way they learn a Burger King jingle – just though constant input and repetition.” I say the same is true of their “world view” – their philosophy – and that is what enables the organized stupidity – the doublethink – to operate unchallenged. For a good (disregarding the somewhat naive military apologia) succinct explanation:
http://fare.tunes.org/liberty/library/pwni.html
Like Freud’s Devil – a composite Id – inherent and impossible to exorcise.
I don’t understand why the IPA, a free-market think tank, would genuflect, albeit shallow, to the ravenous renewable rent-seekers as in: “While renewables may very well have a place in our future energy needs …”.
Well, as a free-marketer myself, I think this goes along the lines of “a free-marketer will sell you the rope you use to hang him”.
That, or they sniff profit in having the government confiscate money from everyone, then dish it out to well-connected free-marketers in the name of saving the planet.
It looks like Nick Stokes and Griff are vying for the Monty Python Black Knight award – although I’d say that Nick has won it hands down.
As much as I was ready to blame it all on wind power projects here, I feel that the evidence is not quite there yet. I read the report – Four wind farms failed at 16:18:09, and two at 16:18:15, six seconds later. Why did they fail in groups all at once (to the second) if a wind gust caused them to spin too fast and therefore shut down? I guess I can believe it could happen due to the way the wind farms are interconnected, but I would have to hear that from an expert in transmission and/or someone familiar with how this particular system was connected. It seems equally plausible at this point that the wind farms could have been tripped out due to the instability that happened externally to them (the downing of three pylons nearby). I will wait for the final report.
That being said, doesn’t this situation do a wonderful job of highlighting that when 48% of your power comes from wind, you have a problem. Forget about the downed pylons for a second. The storm could have shut down all the wind farms within a few minutes, which would have overloaded and tripped the interconnector from Victoria all the same.
Thus, regardless of whether or not it did this time, the AEMO (and every other jurisdiction) must now realize that it could happen again, solely because of the prevalence of wind farms vs. other sources of power.
Forget the overspeed shut down theory – it didn’t happen.
The blackout was caused by lack of system stability. Firstly in that the wind turbines themselves are not hugely stable so that the short circuits from the fallen towers were enough to trip them off the grid. Secondly, they do not contribute to the stability of the grid because they operate asynchronously (like the inverters for PV) so when the wind farms tripped as reported, the remaining wind farms did not help the grid stay up to give the grid operators enough time to load shed (selective blackouts).
Instead, they had just 7 seconds from the first wind farms to go offline and one second from the 2nd set of wind farms going offline before the whole grid blacked out. Synchronous generators of the same capacity as the lost wind farms would not have tripped in the first place. Synchronous generators of the same capacity as the remaining wind farms would have kept the grid stable long enough for controlled islanding.
Wind generation using massive windmills is erratic, unreliable, difficult to manage, ugly as sin to look at (Freudian towers waving mechanical arms are not a turn on, at least not to me!), and they kill wildlife. They also have subtle effects on susceptible (acid-loving) plants as calcium diffuses out of their foundations. And they are so expensive they need subsidies, both for construction and in operation. Subsidies are a regressive tax on others so impact negatively on the economy, especially the poor. Wind generation also makes the grid, which operates perfectly well with other forms of generation, very difficult to manage. Nor are their decommissioning costs built to their costings, as is required with mining and nuclear. How are their owners going to get rid of the massive concrete foundation blocks? Just leaving them to pollute well into the future (concrete does break down) is not acceptable since most natural ecosystems in Australia are sensitive to disturbances and are delicate.
Nor are they carbon neutral. Not only are great amounts of carbon dioxide produced during their construction, they also have a subtle but real effect in reducing wind speed which reduces the rate of supply of that essential nutrient for photosynthesis, carbon dioxide (yes Greenies, it is an essential nutrient, not a pollutant) thus lowering the photosynthetic rate (although this last is speculation at present although there is evidence based on the massive increase in crops that we are now obtaining worldwide due to the increase in CO2 in the atmosphere with a very welcome large reduction in the price of food).
The obvious solution for Australia is to go nuclear as this is cheap, reliable and safe, although the initial costs are high. The output from nuclear generators can be rapidly adjusted to meet fluctuating demand. And Aus has a lot of suitable raw materials: yellow cake and the even more abundant thorium.
And, perhaps best of all, high or no winds do not affect nuclear plants.
Now, if only we could harness the hot air emitted by the protagonists for wind generation.
The coal industry also requires heavy subsidies, estimated at 3/4 trillion USD annually worldwide.Coal mining alone is responsible for tens of thousands of human fatalities, and that is before the stuff is even burnt.Coal power stations also emit more radioactive material directly into the atmoshpere that that consumed by the entire neuclear power industry, as most coal is tainted with various radioactive isotopes.
Thinking about the headline:
“Australian Energy Market Operator report says wind farms were the ultimate cause of blackout, network withstood pylon downings”
It seems to me that this is a case of blaming the last straw for breaking the camels back and ignoring the cinder blocks it was loaded up with. If the wind had gone offline first, and the grid had stayed up till the pylons went down, would that prove it was the fault of the pylons going down that caused the blackout, not the wind farms disconnecting?
Right now, the logic seems to be that because the wind going off line was the last thing that happened before the inter connector was taken off line, that it is to blame for the whole thing. It isn’t that simple.
I take from the report only that an extensive series of failures of no specified nature caused the disconnection of 315mw of wind generation.So this still leaves the question of whether it was a failure of transmission infrastructure, rather than anything to do with wind turbines themselves.Interesting to note that at the time half of the states power was coming from wind turbines which supposedly don’t work in high winds.
Dan,
there is an engineering limit after which the turbines shut down to protect themselves.
there also a number of other shut down criteria because they are non synchronous, a transmission fault on the line can meet these criteria.
it is not clear to me what fault condition occurred when the turbines turned off.
It is entirely predictable that during high wind events that the turbines produce more power, coal / gas backs off because wind takes priority, leaving the mix of wind as a % high during storms etc. Thus when a turbine comes off line during a storm, the impact is much larger.
The issues are a natural consequence of the design and operation of the grid.
Wind / Solar are prioritized above coal / gas.
During a storm, solar would naturally go to about zero.
During a storm, winds speeds would go up, ergo the capacity of the wind farms go up.
During a storm, it is likely that wind / rain / lighting will take out power poles / lines.
Non synchronous supplies can not handle voltage fluctuations etc, triggered by the storm and the low voltage conditions.
Wind turbines also have an upper limit then they are turned off to protect them. Not sure if this was the case or not here as the fault conditions were not specified.
In any case when there are storms, there is a good chance that the wind power will be disrupted.
The power plant in VIC is not a swift gas turbine and can not handle this sudden change. So any time there is a decent storm, there is a reasonable chance of this happening in SA.
SA needs to have spinning reserve during storm season in state, if this is not practical, shut the wind down and run the state from the interconnector. The grid as it is currently designed and operated can not handle rapid changes in electrical supply.
This is entirely predictable and a natural consequence of have a large penetration of non-synchronous supplies that are intermittent.
The Heywood Interconnector disconnect had nothing to do with Victorian generation capabilities (we have plenty of gas peaking plants as well as the coal plants plus our grid is connected to the Snowy Hydro Scheme). The loss of the wind farms meant that the SA grid needed to draw the difference from the interconnector and it became overloaded.
Check the preliminary report by the AEMO below (or at the link at the end of the article).
16:18:15.5 (T-0.5s) Flow across Heywood Interconnector increased to over 850 MW.
Table 3 Events resulting in Black System, page 10
https://www.aemo.com.au/Media-Centre/-/media/BE174B1732CB4B3ABB74BD507664B270.ashx
But you are spot on about the need to curtail when there is too much wind generation. And the South Australian Energy Minister, Tom Koutsantonis wanted the market rules changed to allow this (back in July while telling everyone that everything was fine).
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-10-04/electricity-security-complex-in-sa-says-koutsantonis/7899302
I still think the headline needs changing.
“Australian Energy Market Operator report says wind farms were the ultimate cause of blackout, network withstood pylon downings”
They didn’t say that.