h/t AndyG55, JoNova – South Australia, the world’s renewable energy crash test dummy, is once again experiencing horrendous power price spikes and rolling blackouts, thanks to excessive reliance on wind, a lack of dispatchable power capacity, and high demand caused by a Summer heatwave.
Rolling blackouts ordered in Adelaide as city swelters
Widespread power blackouts were imposed across Adelaide and parts of South Australia with heatwave conditions forcing authorities to impose load shedding.
About 40,000 properties were without electricity supplies for about 30 minutes because of what SA Power Networks said was a direction by the Australian Energy Market Regulator.
The temperature was still above 40C when the rolling blackouts began at 6.30pm to conserve supplies as residents sought relief with air conditioners.
Appearing live on Facebook for a question and answer session, Premier Jay Weatherill blamed the national energy market for the outages saying a gas-powered generation plant in SA had not been required to come online. “The rules of the energy market are broken,” he said. “We’ll be asking for changes.”
SA Power Networks said in a tweet tonight: “AEMO has instructed us to commence 100MW rotational #load shedding via Govt agreed list due to lack of available generation supply in SA.’’
…
Federal Energy Minister Josh Frydenberg blamed the blackouts on the SA government’s renewable energy target, which he described as ‘‘madness’’.
…
Read more (paywalled): http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/nation/rolling-blackouts-ordered-in-adelaide-as-city-swelters/news-story/6308d0d103a2ab4f979391d5d4ca49c5
JoNova notes that electricity prices have spiked to $13,440 MWh, or $13.44 / KWh. Wind power is only producing 7% rated capacity.
The rolling blackouts make a mockery of South Australian government assurances in December, that the state of South Australia has sufficient thermal power capacity to meet requirements.
Update (EW): Fixed the calculation of price / KWh
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This posting is a bit off…
Nowhere in The Australian’s story, and I read the whole pay-walled story, were windmills or green energy blamed for the outage.
What is blamed is that an existing gas-fired power plant was not brought online to handle the additional demand, and that’s why there were outages.
In other words, according to The Australian, government incompetency in running the power grid is the problem, not specifically green energy in this case.
http://www.heraldsun.com.au/blogs/andrew-bolt/sa-loses-power-in-another-wind-farm-fail/news-story/8e5db34f658a3153f7f0a8d91a077b82
If they didn’t have enforced over-reliance on wind then it would have already been running.
And who is paying for this existing gas-fired power plant that can’t run 100% capacity for most of the year. But the maintenance cost for this plant will be the same and you can’t shut it down. This is a lose lose way of doing business.
This is the kind of stupid Democrats in America want to ram down the citizens throats. Good thing the Democrat Party has been losing seats, at every level from municipal to Federal, in our government. And thank you, Evil Marcellus Shale!
Not just Democrats, there is a bunch of alarmist republicans in DC right now trying to lobby the president and congress to do a “free-market carbon trading scheme”. They think if they label it “free-market”, they can fool the conservatives into buying it.
That pack of RINOs has been onboard with shutting down coal and taxing rain fall water for twenty years, nothing new is this latest backstabbing of America. Democrat Party is the primary enemy and cloaks the activity of many fellow travelers.
That defines a nonstarter.
UK looks pretty close to capacity today too…
http://www.gridwatch.templar.co.uk/
And it is forecast for more cold. Perhaps it is a good thing that the weekend is coming up.
Mike,
Gracias para eso.
No sabía que el Reino Unido obtiene casi la mitad de su energía de la CCGT*. Tiene sentido, con sus depósitos de gas del Mar del Norte.
*Combined Cycle Gas Turbines
How long will it be before the government down under declares you should irrigate using Gatorade because it has electrolytes?
Brawndo.
It has what plants crave.
Don’t give them any ideas!
Welcome to the 21st century. It’s gonna look a lot like the 19th.
and the start of the 19th, not the end……
Well, here is another direct quote from the article:
“Widespread power blackouts were imposed across Adelaide and parts of South Australia with heatwave conditions forcing authorities to impose load shedding.
About 40,000 properties were without electricity supplies for about 30 minutes because of what SA Power Networks said was a direction by the Australian Energy Market Regulator.
The temperature was still above 40C when the rolling blackouts began at 6.30pm to conserve supplies as residents sought relief with air conditioners.
Appearing live on Facebook for a question and answer session, Premier Jay Weatherill blamed the national energy market for the outages saying a gas-powered generation plant in SA had not been required to come online. “The rules of the energy market are broken,” he said. “We’ll be asking for changes.”
SA Power Networks said in a tweet tonight: “AEMO has instructed us to commence 100MW rotational #load shedding via Govt agreed list due to lack of available generation supply in SA.’’
AEMO has instructed us to commence 100MW rotational #load shedding via Govt agreed list due to lack of available generation supply in SA.
— SA Power Networks (@SAPowerNetworks) February 8, 2017
In a later tweet, the company said power was back on and returning to homes.
AEMO has called end to load shedding, we are restoring power. Should take 10 to 15 minutes. Approx 40,000 customers affected about 30mins.
— SA Power Networks (@SAPowerNetworks) February 8, 2017
State Energy Minister Tom Koutsantonis was quick to lay blame, tweeting: “Every South Australian has a right to be angry. We had spare capacity in the SA generation market and the market didn’t turn that generation on.”
Power shedding tonight was avoidable. There was sufficient local generation to meet our demand tonight, but AEMO didn’t instruct it on! Why?
— Tom Koutsantonis (@TKoutsantonisMP) February 8, 2017”
I have to admit, I am confused. Texas has managed to integrate enough wind to produce more than 15% of last year’s electricity from it, cannot balance with hydro, and has lowered electricity prices by ~30% since 2007 while massively expanding their transmission infrastructure. They are planning on adding more wind and solar this year – wind because it is lower marginal cost than existing coal, and solar not because it is cost competitive over the course of a year, but because it is basically guaranteed to be producing at max power during the “hundred hottest hours,” and so would be competitive even with no subsidies.
All this in an independent electricity zone with roughly the same number of customers and electricity demand. Seriously Australia, can’t you just copy Texas? You have more wind, more solar, hydro to balance with, abundant natural gas, and a larger footprint grid over which to balance your supply.
By the way, if you know that your grid has massive use in the summer and that wind doesn’t blow when its hot you might want to either, I don’t know, 1) keep online your plants that you already built or 2) install solar.
Amateurs.
re:”and has lowered electricity prices by ~30% since 2007″
My bill does not bear this out.
ALL your other ‘facts’ and assertions need vetting too, I think.
e.g., the time we’ve had high electricity demand wind has only provided in the single digit percentage of total electric demand.
Like I usually say in these cases, the people must want it this way or it would be different.
Interesting point; I wonder, is SA populated by a majority of masochists?
SA is a look into the future. Despite some of the worlds highest solar availability, high winds, very large nuclear resources, lots of gas, potentially lots of oil shale, it can’t supply reliable energy, solely because of socialist government energy policies.
To take a related example, a company recently discovered one of Australia’s largest copper resources in remote farmland in SA Southeast. The company was forced to limit the size of the planned mine to a fraction of the resources available, so the surrounding sparse farmland wouldn’t adversely be affected. The mine plan doesn’t even take up 0.01% of available farmland in the area, in an area of previous copper mining. This is in effect saying the company cannot make a profit, to suit socialist principles. Mines only really become viable if they have size and economy of scale. Most of the farmers in the area would actually benefit from the mine from various flow-on and downstream effects.
SA is out of control.
Isn’t the capital in the area affected by the blackouts? If not, I wish it was. Once it actually begins to inconvenience the politicians it will come to an end.
TomB, it has to be the
[finance] capital in the area affected by the blackouts getting to inconvenience the politicians
till that will come to an end.
JoNova update for all Aussies-
http://joannenova.com.au/2017/02/south-australian-electricity-is-coming-your-way/
When we lived in Adelaide we didn’t have a/c. Have Aussies all become sissies?
dearieme, before you, without a/c, in australia lived
– Ned Kelly https://www.google.at/search?client=ms-android-samsung&ei=-pqcWITRF4LbUevZsfgC&q=mick+jagger+australia++movie+&oq=mick+jagger+australia++movie+&gs_l=mobile-gws-serp.
– and prior the aborigines / whom I think to prefer australia WITH a/c /
While extreme conditions, such as heat, cold, storms, etc, can at times tax any power grid, it is clear why this event occurred: over reliance on an inherently unreliably power source…ie wind. See this link and carefully read the whole thing (parts of it have already been linked to in earlier comments).
http://www.wattclarity.com.au/2017/02/initial-analysis-sa-load-shedding-wed-8-feb-2017/
The fundamental importance of reliably dispatchable power sources is the key cognitive disconnect of those who think that there is any real value to most solar/wind installations. The only way to relieve this inherent problem is storage (not usually viable or technically possible), OR, the provision of reliable backup..ie thermal plants. Since hydro is usually used by default if available (inexpensive), and nuclear plants are designed to be base load, that only leaves gas/oil/coal. To be available in the time frame such as this event (ie a few hours), they generally must be at least kept hot, if not rolling. This means that anything more than a trivial amount of solar/wind “contribution” is inherently uneconomical. There is no escape clause to this reality.
Up here in Canada, we have the same problem in Ontario, except we haven’t crashed the grid…yet, but our 7000 wind turbines do not generate any more than about six percent of Ontario’s electrical energy requirement….
Duane how much did you pay for your power. I paid ( with taxes) $146.45 for 1252 kW.h. and for any Aussie reading this ? Q, What would that be in SA? Thanks.
Actually in the last Ontario Energy Quarterly Report, wind only produced 4.1%. Nuclear 61.9%. Hydro 20.9%. Gas 12.3%. Biofuel and solar less than one%. You can find that information on this link under Power Data.
http://www.ieso.ca/pages/power-data/default.aspx#report
The large industrial users are going their own way.
http://www.solarserver.com/solar-magazine/solar-news/current/2017/kw06/first-solar-awarded-140-mw-pv-module-supply-contract-for-sun-metals-pv-project-in-australia.html
First Solar, Inc. (Tempe, AZ, U.S.) on February 8th, 2017 announced it has been awarded the PV module supply contract for the 140 MW Sun Metals solar farm in North Queensland (QLD), Australia.
________________________________________
So both, the australian as the corean utilities live on their respective products as on subsidies from taxpayers.
My cynical thought is that the sort of thing going on in South Australia might not result in any long-lasting cure. Despite the early 2000’s blackouts in California, the Democrats and greens were not permanently out, only out for a term of a useless RINO, Schwartzenegger. The greens never learn and never forget.
Queanbeyan-Palerang Council opposes Jupiter wind farm at Tarago
http://www.goulburnpost.com.au/story/4456751/council-opposes-jupiter-wind-farm/
The Queanbeyan-Palerang Regional Council is set to oppose the construction of the Jupiter wind farm at Tarago saying the green energy site would be an eye-sore on the region.
The NSW department of planning will likely have the final say on the project, but the council’s opposition is another hurdle for EPYC who have been trying to get it off the ground since 2014.
QPRC’s planning and strategy committee will meet Wednesday night and is expected to conclude the energy farm proposed is too intrusive, would increase traffic and interfere with fire-fighting operations.
RWTurner, you know JoNova talked about – price spikes –
“Look at the price spike and the forecast for tomorrow:”
$13.00/kWh? Wow, my electricity price is typically $0.13/kWh. At that price, it would only cost about $700 to charge a Tesla Model S.
Great point about electric cars. There is no reaaonable dispute that renewables have led to higher electricity prices and less reliability. Now add in a large shift to electric cars and tbe system breaks down completely.
Ratepayers and auto users will pay more and more of their income for less functionality. That will result in reduced living standards. Aka sustainability
There has to be something wrong with that $13 / kwh figure. Our rate is also closer to 13 cents /kwh. At $13/kwh my $100 monthly electric bill would be $10,000. Nobody could afford that.
David S – Yours was the 135th comment, and the first one to question the $13/KWh figure. While Eric correctly quotes JoNova’s figure of $13,440/MWh, JoNova does not have a link to the number. Also assume that is Australian dollars, so it would be more like 10 US dollars. Johann Wundersamer(above) shows $143.98/MWh, which seems more reasonable. At A$1.31 to US$1.00, this would be about about US$0.11/KWh. This is probably wholesale price, so it is still pretty high.
If the WUWT blog is retain it’s excellent credibility, it behooves all of us to give numbers the “smell test” before making comments.
To have a spot price rise this high is quite possible. It rises to the level of the most expensive bid required to clear the market. Most electricity will however be traded on contracts that are nowhere near this.
https://www.aemo.com.au/
Follow the spot price
“JoNova does not have a link to the number.”
Actually, she does.. Just above her graph. https://www.aemo.com.au/
The $13,4440/MWh was correct at the time she posted it., as her screen capture shows.
Not as bad at the moment the heat wave is travelling east, so NSW and Victoria are going to get rather warm.
“If the WUWT blog is retain it’s excellent credibility, it behooves all of us to give numbers the “smell test” before making comments.”
Yes, you probably should .old engineer, else your credibility will suffer further..
JoNova was absolutely correct about the spot price on that day.
https://www.aemo.com.au/
She gave a direct screen capture, which I checked immediately
Johann Wundersamer has shown that screen capture just above.
That $143.98 is the current spot price, at the end of the solid price line, not the peak spot price.
re: There has to be something wrong with that $13 / kwh figure.
To believe the screen capture referenced below, that must the ‘marginal’ cost of the last additional kWh added into the system by some generation entity who offered on contract that last kWh at that price; this would not reflect the cost of ALL kWh input into the grid of course. JUST the last few kWh input into the system for the time period indicated.
We run into similar situations here in Texas where the last top kWh draws top-dollar when supply is short.
AndyG55- Ouch! Certainly deserved that. But I still find it hard to believe that spot prices for one half hour can be 100 times the normal price. Even after doing a web search of electricity spot prices I don:t understand it. Did every supplier get A$13,440 a MWh for one half hour for the electricity they supplied? If so, some companies made a bunch of money off the consumer’s misery.
In NZ the highest bid required to be accepted to meet the demand sets the spot price, but it looks as though that varies across countries. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Zealand_electricity_market gives an outline of the system down here.
https://www1.electricityinfo.co.nz/ gets you information on what’s going on.
re: “Did every supplier get A$13,440 a MWh for one half hour for the electricity they supplied? ”
Of course not.
In an open market there are “asks” (asking prices) open at that top MARGINAL cost. IF all other lower cost “asks” are met (have been bought), and one is willing to buy at THAT top ‘ask’ price then YOU PAY that top rate but ONLY for whatever quantity was “for sale”
old engineer, the +$13,000/MWh lasted a lot longer than half an hour, it went over a four hour period.
BTW, notice the period between 17:30 – 19:30. At 18:00, SA’s 1482MW wind generation was producing a colossal ………….. 84MW.
http://www.wattclarity.com.au/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/image5.png
http://www.wattclarity.com.au/2017/02/initial-analysis-sa-load-shedding-wed-8-feb-2017/
http://www.wattclarity.com.au/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/South-Australia-Summer-Capacity-vs-Actual-Supply-Feb-8.png
If this keeps up people in this region are going to start purchasing potable generators.
The kind that run on gasoline or diesel.
Forcing people to burn fossil fuels themselves is hardly the way to cut their usage.
We have edible generators? Ah, yes, oxen. Converts biomass to work directly.
🙂 Oh, you meant _portable_. 🙂
Burning fossil fuels is good. Far too much CO2 has been sequestered. At 170 ppm, most terrestrial plants would no longer be able to photosynthesize. Life on Earth depends on freely available atmospheric CO2.
Life in the oceans may survive a bit longer, but life on land would quickly extinguish without atmospheric CO2.
That is precisely what HAS been going on, for at least 20 years. Smart people everywhere have seen this mentally retarded sh*t coming since the early 1990s.
A tiny note. Who and why did the Australian people replace tony abbot who has his feet note ground and his service is to the Australian people. Money? Whose?
Turnbull’s unfounded ego….undermining Tony Abbott from the very beginning
and the constant bombard of fake news about Tony Abbott from the ultra-left ABC and the far-left MSM.
The people didn’t replace Abbott … he was replaced by the Turnbull in teh party room.
Paging Nick Stokes, Mr Stokes are you there? … Mr Stokes … Mr Stokes …
+100
Nick Stokes is not an apologist for the South Australian Labor Government.
Or wind farms.
Note all wind farms were up and running at their peak capacity for the conditions on that day.
The SA government will ramp up wind farm building to provide extra capacity in the months and years ahead ensuring that they stay in Government.
Dear, oh, dear. It is not a simple question of capacity. The grid system is very complex and its stability mechanisms are designed around steam driven turbines and cannot be changed easily or economically, even if the technology is available – and much of it is. There are also market regulating mechanisms in play in South Australia. The process in SA is driven by politics with little or no understanding of the technical challenges or market mechanisms and with inadequate resources simply because despite the sky-high price of electricity in that state and massive public subsidies, wind and solar are not yet economic options and won’t be for many years yet.
Sarc
Interesting report by an engineer involved. See DJR96 comments on this article:
http://reneweconomy.com.au/aemo-says-wind-farm-changes-mean-sa-blackout-wont-repeated-43631/
“Indeed, Marxsen told the audience that in the age of the internet software changes could be downloaded by the manufacturers without the market operator knowing. He likened it to an update of an Apple iPhone, where the user has no idea what is being changed.
This, he made pains to point out, wasn’t an attack on wind, but a recognition that we are in a new world, so we need new ways of dealing with that.
Indeed, culture as well as technology will be critical components of managing the grid in the future. If power engineers, like many in the mainstream media, refuse to believe that wind and solar can play a dominant role in the grid, then the task will be difficult.”
Don’t worry technical folks it’s just a software update problem and we’ll be issuing another patch real soon.
The biggest problem South Australia has is keeping up the demand for power Olympic Dam has. BHP Billiton and the South Australian government should have had a better plan for the growth in demand the mine would place on grid power. http://www.news.com.au/finance/markets/bhp-to-suck-up-states-power/news-story/a365050c12b9fd76cfc4df099ec3baf3
Buying your own generator may soon become an urgent necessity if this green insanity continues. I would be very interested on people’s views on the fuel type you should choose, presumably diesel is soon for the deep six.
Well, I’m going to point out again that there was extra generating capacity available. It wasn’t turned on when it should have been.
“Appearing live on Facebook for a question and answer session, Premier Jay Weatherill blamed the national energy market for the outages saying a gas-powered generation plant in SA had not been required to come online. “The rules of the energy market are broken,” he said. “We’ll be asking for changes.””
Philip,
I have been working in a chlorine factory where we were obliged to go down from 132 MW to 42 MW as fast as possible (10-15 minutes) if a load peak was expected. The reward: cheap power for the 42-132 MW part, the punishment: huge penalties (hundredthousands of euros) if not down in time.
It is near impossible to predict what will happen in the next 15 minutes of grid capacity. I did make some graphic algorithms to aid the operator to decide when to go down, based on previous (working) days, weather, temperature, time of the year,… but that was sometimes a near-disaster as there were sudden peaks which were simply unpredictable.
The national grid operator in Australia has made something similar, even based on the previous 6 years (!) of power usage. The main unknowns in this case were:
– it was the first time in years of such a huge heat wave.
– real wind yield was only half the predicted one.
– power use was much faster climbing than in every half hour prediction.
– besides a few power stations in repair, 89% of all fossil power was up and running,
– Interconnections to other states were running at full load, even at the edge of safety.
– two big fossil units were in fact mothballed as uneconomic, one could be run in a few hours, the other one needed a several weeks, but later it was revoked to half a day. They were asked to bid (it is a “free” market…) the day before, but apparently they asked too much money. No wonder if you have to shut down, because of oversubsidised windfarms…
So what broke the energy market in reality: heavely subsidised wind that can go under the price and has zero obligation to regulate the grid in any way: here is my power and pay me for that. No matter the market price for that moment is zero or even negative, no matter that they can fluctuate from 0% to 100% capacity in minutes… Others may try to regulate frequency, balance production and demand, compensate for dips, stand still if there is overproduction…
On the other side of the picture, I’d like to see these proponents of renewable energy spend a winter in Canada, particularly on the western Prairie provinces, depending mainly on wind and solar for their heat and light. They’d be screaming for a return to fossil fuels, even lignite coal, within a week.