Essay by Eric Worrall
Wild weather has pushed the Aussie State of Victoria’s fragile grid beyond breaking point during the last few days. The last thing Victoria needs is senior academics pushing non-solutions.
A major blackout left 500,000 Victorian homes without power – but it shows our energy system is resilient
Published: February 14, 2024 8.10am AEDT
Roger Dargaville
Director Monash Energy Institute, Monash UniversityHalf a million homes and businesses in Victoria were left without power late on Tuesday following a major power outage. The disruption occurred when severe winds knocked over several high-voltage electricity transmission towers, causing all four units of the Loy Yang A coal-fired power station to trip and go offline.
Victorian Energy Minister Lily D’Ambrosio described the blackout as “one of the largest outage events in the state’s history”.
The event has prompted questions about the reliability of the state’s electricity grid. But it’s important to note these extreme winds would have seriously disrupted any power system. It has little to do with the mix of renewable energy and conventional fossil fuels.
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According to a statement from AEMO, the storm also damaged hundreds of powerlines and power poles and restoring electricity to all customers “may take days if not weeks”
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Battery storage may have helped steady the grid. Batteries have ultra-rapid responses to these kinds of disuptions and can add or subtract power from the grid within milliseconds to keep the grid stable.
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Read more: https://theconversation.com/a-major-blackout-left-500-000-victorian-homes-without-power-but-it-shows-our-energy-system-is-resilient-223494
The immense vulnerability of Australia’s industrial heartland to the severing of a single connection to a distant coal plant is a disgrace.
I don’t know why Professor Dargaville suggested batteries might solve the problem. Batteries could have stabilised the grid – for a few minutes. The suggestion any remotely affordable level of battery capacity could have maintained grid supply in the face of major and prolonged transmission outages is absurd.
More powerlines might have improved the odds of electricity getting to where it is needed – but more powerlines would also have been damaged by the storm. At best this would be a very expensive solution to energy resilience.
A distributed network of modular nuclear power plants could have eliminated the risk of a single point of failure bringing down the system, and could have reduced or even eliminated widespread blackouts.
If a network of modular nuclear plants was established inside Melbourne, Melbourne would not have suffered a major outage after the connection to a distant coal plant was severed.
But nobody is implementing sensible energy solutions in today’s Australia. Australia’s climate obsessed politicians only permit uselessly unreliable green energy solutions which don’t actually solve anyone’s energy problems.
I put together an overall picture that shows generation, interconnector trade, battery operations, rooftop solar, and demand. Elements of the picture for wind, solar and batteries can be found in more detail in other posts of mine on the thread. However, it is clear that ahead of the big trip wind and solar generation was being lost and replaced by hydro and gas, reductions in exports and even a little battery discharge.
When Loy Yang was lost at 13:10 there were further losses of wind and solar tripped out or cut out by load shedding. Interconnector imports supplemented the support from gas and hydro for a while. Further load shedding and loss of renewables output followed from about 14:20, with interconnector support also switching off. It took until almost 17:00 before operations really stabilised at the reduced demand level.
Victorian resident here. Living in West Gippsland, not too far from Loy Yang power station (I can see the condensing steam from the cooling towers in the distance).
The storm, as experienced here, was brisk with gusty winds, but nothing to write home about. It was over in less than 10 minutes and resulted in a few tree limbs falling onto the road (Where I live, I keep a chainsaw in the back of my ute when going in to town as fallen trees are a common occurrence). There was one large tree blocking the normal route into town, but other than that mostly smaller limbs.
Power went out at a little after 4pm on Tuesday and has only just come back online, despite being up in nearby towns much earlier. There doesn’t seem to be any particular damage to any power line infrastructure in my immediate vicinity (though that’s no guarantee that there isn’t damage that I just can’t see), and given the strength of the storm here, I wouldn’t expect extensive damage.
Grid scale batteries wouldn’t do anything to help here. This was, as far as I can tell, a grid failure. With urban users being restored well in advance of rural users, as is always the case. I feel for the local dairy farmers, hopefully they were able to get hold of generators sufficient to run their milking machines and keep the milk cool, just trying to keep my fridge full of food from spoiling was enough of a pain. Though, I have a generator on hand for when the power goes out anyway, it’s just a part of life out here.
Thanks for that MarkH. So odd the storm did so much damage, if it wasn’t that bad, maybe it was worse in other places? Or maybe the lines were badly maintained? Lots of questions.
If you spend a big budget on connecting up new wind and solar generation you may skimp maintenance of the core network. Especially if you expect a major generating asset will close 8n a couple of years, making a line redundant.
“ There doesn’t seem to be any particular damage to any power line infrastructure in my immediate vicinity”
Indeed there wasn’t. The power lines were downed near Geelong, about 180 km away. It was the resulting shock to the grid that caused the 4 units of Loy Yang to trip.
There were power lines downed over wide swathes of the state. That’s why it’s been taking so long to restore supply. Trying to focus on a pair of towers on one line as representing the entire damage is very misleading.
Six towers went down on that 500 kV line near Geelong at abou1.30pm. That is when Loy Yang tripped (all 4 units).
That day started with a hot sunny morning with a steady N wind. I believe wind power was a record. Then isolated bands of storms came while it was still warm. Then the wind turned to S and SW, but not so strong. Where I am in Melbourne, the storm was between 3pm and 4pm; thunder etc and brief heavy rain, but no wind damage.
As I understand, the Moorabool damage was the only one involving >200 kV lines. Ehsewhere there was just fallen trees and poles etc.
At the moment, (3:20pm Thursday) demand in Victoria is very low, 3129MW.. usually around 5000+
I guess demand is low because so much is not connected. !
Supply is mostly from Coal and Gas.
Coal 2407MW… Gas 472 MW… Hydro 150MW… Solar 162MW… Wind 97MW.
I had a good laugh at this part of the article: “If a network of modular nuclear plants was established inside Melbourne, Melbourne would not have suffered a major outage after the connection to a distant coal plant was severed.”
Pity no such modular reactor exists- the last remote possibility, Nuscale, has given up. RRoyce is still researching-but for the moment, the tech is dead. That’s aside from the tens of billions of dollars or so such a fantasy would cost- remember- modular reactors were set to be more expensive that conventional reactors, not less. How’s the UK going with their $39billion reactor, years late and many others, years late and billions over budget. Sure, that’s just what we need.
https://www.energycouncil.com.au/analysis/small-nuclear-reactors-come-with-big-price-tag-report/
https://www.globalconstructionreview.com/14-years-late-finlands-new-reactor-olkiluoto-3-starts-generating-power/
https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/nuscale-power-uamps-agree-terminate-nuclear-project-2023-11-08/
Do keep up.
https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/Articles/Agreement-signed-for-planned%C2%A0UK-fleet-of-AP300-rea
Letting the cat out the bag arguing why similar unpopular and expensive offshore wind should be supported by all true climate changers-
From The Australian (15/2/2024)
An energy industry expert says he believes the Allan government has removed an offshore wind policy directions paper from its website because it makes “embarrassing statements”, including that “up to 70 per cent” of Victoria’s agricultural land could be required for wind and solar farms if the offshore alternative is not used.
The March 2022 paper has disappeared from the Department of Energy Environment and Climate Action’s website, prompting Centre for Independent Studies energy program director Aidan Morrison to suggest that the government is trying to hide a document which highlights the massive challenge Victoria faces in meeting its target of 95 per cent renewable energy by 2035, and net zero by 2045….
The figure is used to justify the decision to invest in offshore wind, which the paper predicts will cost $94/MWh as of 2026, compared with $49/MWh for onshore wind, and $35/MWh for solar, with those figures falling to $40-63/MWh for offshore wind, $44/MWh for onshore and $25/MWh for solar by 2050…..
“This represents something of a pattern of the way the case for large amounts of renewables is consistently rolled out,” Mr Morrison said.
“They tend to establish one particular fact, as a premise for justifying urgency or subsidies on one element of the system, in this case offshore wind, and then they try to hide or bury the reasons for that urgency and subsidy so it can’t be used as an argument against the whole transition later on.
Yes folks the fickles are also very dilute forms of energy and consequently with net-zero they’re a massive blight on precious Gaia.
Link paywalled-
Victorian government removes ‘embarrassing’ offshore wind paper from its website | The Australian
Given that AUD/GBP is about 2, and the AR6 CFD round sets a price of over £100/MWh in current money for offshore wind I think the subsidy they will need has been grossly underestimated. Not sure about water depths, but if they have to resort to floating turbines you can add another 75%.
Assoc. Prof. Roger Dargaville is an expert in energy systems and climate change. Roger specialises in large-scale energy system transition optimisation, and novel energy storage technologies such as seawater pumped hydro and liquid air energy storage. He has conducted research in global carbon cycle science, simulating the emissions of carbon dioxide from fossil fuel and exchanges between the atmosphere, land and oceans as well as stratospheric ozone depletion.
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..Guess I’ll always have to be, living in a fantasy……from now on.
Just like Mr Gore said...
One of the largest outages ever that may take weeks to restore does not strike me as very “resilient”
Victoria lacks the land area for wind and solar. Has to go offshore… apparently no other energy source is available.
https://joannenova.com.au/2024/02/victorian-govt-accidentally-admits-wind-and-solar-could-use-70-of-all-agricultural-land-in-the-state/
“Professor Dargaville: We Need More Grid Scale Batteries to Combat Supply Outages”
Uh, NO, “professor,” “we” need more REAL POWER PLANTS to combat supply outages.
Stop building worse-than-useless wind and solar, and start building coal, oil, gas and nuclear plants. Supply outages will soon be a distant memory.
Continue squandering resources building worse-than-useless wind and solar and SUPPLY will become a distant memory.
Continue squandering resources building worse-than-useless wind and solar and the future will be along these lines:
(Child) “Mommy, what did we use for light before candles?”
(Mother) “Electricity.”