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.’’
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Federal Energy Minister Josh Frydenberg blamed the blackouts on the SA government’s renewable energy target, which he described as ‘‘madness’’.
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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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From the article;
“Temperatures have already soared to 43.8C in Bankstown and other parts of Sydney’s west and as high as 46.2C at Ivanhoe Airport, in lower western NSW.”
http://www.news.com.au/technology/environment/weather-forecast-sydney-brisbane-adelaide-heatwave-hell/news-story/2987928bc491cd60b3c5543ba36620e6
Most likely the airport too at Bankstown.
And to keep the power reserve the NSW Tomago aluminium smelter has been asked to shut down their 6 pot lines and the manager aint a happy chappy at the cost. Welcome to Green jobs.
Meanwhile in SA with a power ‘hiccup’ we get half truths from the Govt re Pelican Point-
http://www.adelaidenow.com.au/news/south-australia/blame-game-over-rolling-blackouts-as-south-australia-promised-dramatic-overhaul-of-energy-grid/news-story/6f659cfefcead66d2599f3449f1cb2d6
“Mr Butler said there was no supply problem in SA, because the state had enough generation to meet demand.
Instead, he said the load shedding would have been avoided if the Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO) had directed the gas-fired Pelican Point plant to operate a second generator.
Pelican Point was ordered to fire up the generator on Thursday afternoon, which meant that the state avoided further rolling blackouts on Thursday evening.”
As the AEMO pointed out it takes 6 hours to fire up a base load gas plant like Pelican Point so no time when the wind died except to demand manage with rolling blackouts. Yes they can order PP to generate any time but at what cost to users, when they’ve already been put offline by subsidised, mandated wind energy dumping of unreliable electrons. The bankruptcy of their stance is not fooling anyone-
‘State Energy Minister Tom Koutsantonis said on Friday AEMO had “serious questions” to answer before a Senate inquiry today, but refused to reveal more about the “dramatic market intervention” he has promised.
Mr Koutsantonis said only that it would require taxpayer expenditure and would be released “very, very soon”.
“We’ll make that announcement when we’re ready. We’re not going to come out and speculate about it, obviously we want to make sure we have a plan we can give South Australians that they can look at, that they can hold up and they can understand exactly how we will impact into the market and what the impact will be on them,” he said.’
Watch that secret space folks but one thing’s for sure, it will involve fossil fuels and taxpayer dough to try and mend what they broke.
How would you like to be responsible for managing this variability in a period of peak summer aircon demand during a heat wave-
http://anero.id/energy/wind-energy/2017/february
That graph illustrates the point I make about dumping. From it you can easily draw a horizontal averaging line through the oft quoted 30-32% of installed capacity and from that you can see the obvious for the owners should they rightly be limited to only tendering power to the grid they can guarantee 24/7 all year round. It’s immediately apparent in that level playing field they can’t sell what they generate above that 30-32% line and they’d have to partner and pay thermal generators to make up the differences below the line to achieve that average. The gaming of the grid would be over for wind, just as it would be for large scale and rooftop solar unless they can fork over for storage. It is the great deception of renewables in a nutshell.
After all the businesses leave SA, the electricity demand will probably go down quite a bit.
And this years ‘I know nuthink!’ Sergeant Schulz award goes to our illustrious Treasurer-
‘The Weatherill government was warned eight months ago about the conditions that led to this week’s South Australian blackouts.
A confidential internal briefing paper said forecast low reserves of electricity generation were likely to lead to such power cuts.
The report notes there are “low reserve conditions in South Australia for summer 2016-17”, with a corresponding graph showing peak power generation reserve shortfalls between January 30 and February 14.
The report warned that given the closure of South Australia’s last coal-fired power station last May, “there are times when maximum daily demand is projected to exceed supply from scheduled generation in South Australia”.
“At these times, the region will rely on imports (via interconnection) and wind generation to meet operational demand,” the report by state Treasurer Tom Koutsantonis’s Department of State Development says.
“Under lower wind conditions, there would be supply shortfalls in the state if additional imports from Victoria were not available. The level of imports will be subject to the availability and capacity of the interconnector, and the coincidence of high demand in Victoria.”
The report from last June, obtained under freedom of information laws, notes that in South Australia between 2004-05 and 2014-15 there had been an average annual growth in wind power of 44.1 per cent, while rooftop solar had grown an annual average of 89.2 per cent between 2008-09 and 2014-15.
“Wind and rooftop PV actual generation capabilities are highly dependent on weather conditions at any given time,” the report says.
The Treasurer yesterday said he was unaware of any such warnings, though the report was released by his department. “I haven’t seen the forecasts,” he said.’
(Michael Owen, SA bureau Chief, The Australian 11/2/2017)