Guest essay by Eric Worrall
h/t Dr. Willie Soon; an independent report blamed operator incompetence for allowing clouds to affect the solar energy supply.
NT sacks energy chiefs after report into Alice Springs system black
Giles Parkinson 9 December 2019
The Northern Territory Labor government has sacked the territory’s two most senior energy chiefs following a damming report from the market regulator into a “system black” event that hit the city of Alice Springs in October.
Tim Duignan, the CEO of Territory Generation, and Michael Thompson, the head of network operator and systems control company Power and Water Corporation were both sacked after the government received a report from the Utilities Commission into the outage, which affected 12,000 customers for between 30 minutes and 10 hours.
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It seems clear that this is not a problem about technology – despite some trying to sheet the blame on the amount of rooftop solar in the local grid and the impact of passing clouds – but of corporate and energy culture. And of incompetence.
An investigating report by consultants Entura – requested by the Utilities Commission – found that staff managing the system did not anticipate the approaching cloud cover, and did not know what to do when they realised what was happening and output from the Uterne solar farm and rooftop solar panels declined.
Thermal generators failed because they had not been properly maintained, and the staff had no idea how to re-start the machinery, because procedures had not been updated since the installation of a big battery. To cap things off, there was insufficient spinning reserve and the system was unstable.
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“This whole debacle could have been avoided if the companies and the government had shown real leadership by listening to workers and acting on their concerns raised about the condition of Ron Goodin PS and the capabilities of Owen Springs to deliver reliable power to the Alice Springs community,” he ETU said in a statement.
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Read more: https://reneweconomy.com.au/nt-sacks-energy-chiefs-after-report-into-alice-springs-system-black-10094/
The official report is available here.
The following is a video commentary on the story;
Even if we accept the official explanation of what went wrong, one thing is clear about our renewable future; more moving parts, more chances for some idiot to mess things up.
I have looked for sunshine hours for Alice Springs but have been unable to find them as it is not a state capital. From BOM maps it gets more sun that other cities in Australia with only north west Western Australia getting more sun. Alice Springs appears to be the ideal site for solar, no hydro, isolated from the main grid, very high sunshine hours, hot temperatures so high demand for air conditioning during the day although it does get cold winter nights. If solar can’t be made to work for Alice you have to wonder if it will work anywhere.
Solar does work well in Alice Springs , my under powered and aged portable unit on the camper trailer struggled down south but worked so well around Alice I put off buying another regulator .
Then I got over to the west coast and it turned to crap again .
The generators for Alice Springs are gas fired .
I had to laugh at the official report. It reminded me of ones I used to see in nuclear power – especially from poor performing stations.
“The operator failed to anticipate…[insert some condition] and taken prompt action”
Of course nuclear power plants, like power grids, are multi billion dollar, complex systems with state of the art process control systems to take human anticipation out of the equation
Saint Greta says this is exactly what you deserve!