The future of energy generation and storage

[CanOz]

Anyone who thinks there is any good that comes from Coal, has not been to China. Get rid of this dirty stinking rotten scurge thats choking our planet...Get rid of the old farts that support it too

 

[luutzu]

Real bird lovers want to see them happy in the wild.

Only right wing fascists keep things locked up.

That's a good one. Been a while since I cracked up like that.

But to be fair to noco, I think he really love birds though, just loving it his ways.

 

[luutzu]

Anyone who thinks there is any good that comes from Coal, has not been to China. Get rid of this dirty stinking rotten scurge thats choking our planet...Get rid of the old farts that support it too

Or drive with their windows down in Sydney. Reminds me, gotta change them air filters. $70 a year man.

 

[explod]

That's a good one. Been a while since I cracked up like that.

But to be fair to noco, I think he really love birds though, just loving it his ways.

Sorry ,

a bit mean but just seemed a good opening.

 

[Smurf1976]

Indeed so.

You may have written about this already, but I'm interested in the consequences of feeding intermittent power like solar and wind straight into the grid. Does this cause problems and if so what's the way around it ?

I'll steer clear of the ideological / political debate that seems to have erupted and will focus on the practical aspects.

Keeping to layman's terms so far as practical:

Electricity by its nature is an instantaneous thing. It exists in real time only, you can't store electricity as such (well, not in any significant quantity) so it's either being produced (by what ever means) when it's used or you can't use it. In that sense it's comparable to light or sound, produced as you see or hear it, and is not comparable to something like wheat or iron ore which can be grown or mined then stockpiled for use whenever.

The second key point is that consumption of electricity varies greatly throughout the day and seasonally. In SA that variation is greater than most places on earth with peak demand on a hot Summer afternoon about 4 times the level seen in the middle of the night with mild weather.

Within Australia, Queensland and Tasmania are at the other end of the scale with far more stable demand, though there is still significant variation, and other states are somewhere in between. The reason for that greater stability in Qld and Tas relates to the dominance of constant process heavy industrial loads in those states combined with greater weather consistency (Qld is consistently hot in parts of the state for an extended period and Tas is consistently cold throughout winter versus SA with both extremes but most days being neither).

Since electricity itself cannot be stored, the means of production (whatever that may be) must scale up and down to match that demand exactly as it occurs. In Qld or Tas that means significant variation, maximum is less than double the minimum, whereas in SA greater variation is required since maximum is roughly 4 times the minimum. There are both technical aspects to this as well as economic (generating plant unavoidably sits idle much of the time in a place like SA which adds to the capital cost per unit of actual production).

The next point is about precision. Comparing the grid to a car (since just about everyone is familiar with car travel) and suppose that the speed limit is 100. You'll be in deep **** if you're doing 95, that's an outright disaster that will be headline news, and the same applies if you're doing 105. Even doing 99 is too slow and 101 is too fast. You want to be sticking right smack on 100 at any given time regardless of whether you're going up hill or down. Anyone who has ever driven a car will know that doing that is impractical but it's how the grid needs to operate. So there's very little room for error when it comes to power generation and the means of power generation needs to follow consumption with a very high degree of accuracy.

So what's the problem with wind and solar?

First is that the energy source used is intermittent and fluctuates constantly. Sitting here watching the output of my solar at home earlier this evening, it dropped 7.35% in 24 seconds and then went up 3.79% in the following 12 seconds (6 second data sampling intervals). Nothing unusual about that, it's just what happens when you've got some cloud around.

It's the same for all grid connect solar unless the sky is completely clear which usually it isn't. That said, put enough of them together, spread over a large area (whole state or country) and those short term fluctuations will balance each other out extremely well such that what occurs overall is a far more gradual change. One goes up, one goes down, it all balances out reasonably well. That said, nothing can stop the inevitable collapse of output when dark clouds roll across a previously clear sky over a city with thousands of solar systems installed.

Wind is very similar. Huge constant variation from individual turbines but put enough together and it becomes more stable. But as with solar, if there's no wind then there's no power and yes periods of very low wind across entire states most certainly do occur periodically (typically happens once every few days). As with solar spreading them over a much larger area (multiple states) would offset that to a considerable extent but at present there's a high concentration of wind in Vic plus a relatively small part of SA and that's a problem in that sense. Reason they're mostly in SA is simply financial - relatively high electricity price and a good wind resource makes it the attractive place to put them if the motivation is $.

All this intermittency means that we can't count on the wind to blow when power is needed. For that reason AEMO considers that the "firm" output of SA's wind farms is 10% of their peak generating capacity. So build 1000 MW and we can be reasonably certain that at least 100 MW will be produced when it's needed (on average it will be more like 350 MW but without storage it's the low point that matters not the average). For Victoria that figure is 7%, for Tas it is 8% and for NSW just 1%. Those figures are for summer when, at the national level, demand peaks (Tas being the only state with peak demand in Winter).

There's some more certainty with solar since there will always be at least some solar production during daylight hours although the amount varies but at least it won't be zero if it's light (and you can be very sure that it will be zero when it's dark so again that's greater certainty). Solar does fit reasonably well in places with a Summer daytime peak demand for that reason, it will always generate something during the peak, although it's completely useless for supplying the secondary peak at 6pm in Winter (so solar only works well up to the point that it brings the Summer peak down to the same level as the Winter peak, after that adding more solar doesn't help in terms of reducing the need to build conventional generation although it still saves on fuel).

So the bottom line with all that is that in the absence of storage we still need conventional generation (primarily coal, gas and hydro in the Australian context with some oil and a bit of biomass) to be capable of meeting practically the entire system load on occasions when the wind isn't blowing. Solar is moderately effective at meeting peak demand up to a limit.

The second problem with wind and solar is a more technical one, system inertia.

In simplified terms there's a lot of energy embodied in the sheer physical mass of rotating machinery in conventional power stations. Steam turbines spinning at 3000 RPM will automatically release a lot of stored energy if anything tries to slow them down. So too will a hydro turbine which embodies comparable energy despite hydro operating at much lower speeds (vast majority are no more than 500 RPM and plenty are below 200 RPM). Both steam or hydro both embody a lot of energy in that rotating machinery and there's a worthwhile analogy with a freight train there - it's not easy to bring it to a halt suddenly and it will tend to "ride through" any external shock imposed upon it unless something truly catastrophic happens.

In contrast solar has no rotating machinery and wind is at best a poor contributor to system inertia. Impose an external shock on the system and solar / wind simply cannot ramp up because they can't suddenly make the wind blow harder or the sun shine brighter. Even worse, if system frequency drops they may well give up and stop generating altogether (to a significant extent this does seem to have occurred in SA - wind output went down when the system desperately needed it to go up). Conventional generation will also trip offline if frequency falls in a big way but past experience is that wind and solar tend to fail first and that does seem to have occurred in SA judging by what AEMO has released thus far.

The relevance of all this, in layman's terms, comes down to the need to keep system frequency stable.

First point to note there is that all synchronous machines (conventional power stations) will be running at precisely the same frequency in an AC power grid. So the frequency at Torrens Island (SA) will be exactly the same as the frequency at Loy Yang (Vic), Bayswater (NSW) and Tarong (Qld). Hard though it may seem to comprehend, the turbines at Gladstone (Qld) are joined to those at Yallourn (Vic) just as effectively by virtue of being synchronous machines in an AC network as they would be if they were sitting right beside each other and joined by a physical metal shaft. Unless something goes wrong a synchronous machine by its very nature is locked to grid frequency.

So what happens in a completely conventional generation system (no wind or solar) if there's a sudden failure of something?

In short, every generating unit "sees" that fault and everything not already at maximum will add more energy to the system of its own accord "just like that" due to the energy embodied in that rotating machinery itself. In addition the governors will act to add more steam or water and in the case of steam plant other systems will then act to ramp up the boilers. To the extent that grid frequency does fall, literally every generating unit will slow down at once and in doing so they'll all be contributing their inertia to the system thus limiting the rate and extent of the decline.

Reverse the above if the fault is a sudden loss of a large load (big factory, city, whatever) rather than a loss of generation. Everything ramps down, rotating machinery will itself absorb some energy, and the extent of frequency rise is quickly contained before any real problems occur.

So what about wind and solar? Well the crux of it is that the wind and solar we've got right now just doesn't respond in this way. Something goes wrong, frequency starts to fall and the response from solar and wind is either nothing or, worse still, they trip offline too thus adding to the problem.

That leads to a situation where conventional generation needs to control frequency for the entire grid despite not supplying all the load. There's no issue there if wind is supplying 5% of the load but take that to 50% and things get rather difficult.

It's a bit like having a highly leveraged share portfolio. Take it too far and you'll end up wiping yourself out and going broke.

Much the same with power. Having a small amount of conventional generation trying to control frequency of a much larger load, the rest being from wind and solar, is basically applying a lot of leverage to the capabilities of that conventional generation. When something goes wrong, and significant faults with the grid or generation aren't that uncommon, it's problematic when most of the generation either does nothing to assist or worse still adds itself to the problem.

Looking at what happened in SA (simplified to the major points) and noting that all this happened in the space of about 2 minutes. The following is based on AEMO official reports based on what is known at this time (subject to revision if further information is found) with some added comments by Smurf.

1. Prior to the incident SA demand was 1895 MW. This excludes small distributed generation (eg rooftop solar) which has the effect of being "seen" as reduced demand rather than generation as such.

2. Supply was 883 MW from wind, 613 MW from Victoria via the 3 interconnector circuits (2 x AC, 1 x DC) and 330 MW from gas-fired generation in SA.

Note - the above figures don't add, presumably due to network losses and differences in the time of measurement. I haven't verified the reason, just quoted AEMO's data here.

3. For the gas-fired generation the plant online was Ladbroke Grove units 1 & 2 (gas turbines, nominal capacity 40 MW each) operating at 42MW and 40MW (so running flat out) plus 3 units at Torrens Island B (steam turbines, nominal capacity 200 MW each) operating at 82MW, 84MW and 82MW. All other conventional generation in SA was offline (shut down normally since not needed) at the time.

Detail by the second (hours : minutes : seconds noting that AEMO uses AEST not SA local time)

Note about terminology.

"Reclosed" = line was turned back on after tripping itself off.

"Trip" = disconnected automatically by circuit breakers (due to a fualt) or simply failing.

16:16:45 = System normal (pre-incident)

16:16:46 = Fault on a distribution line in Adelaide. No major impact, just a distribution fault and the line was reclosed straight away with no apparent problem or impact. Presumably the trip was just something hitting the line briefly and causing no actual damage (that sort of thing is fairly common in such weather).

16:17:33 - First 275kV (major transmission) line fails.

16:17:59 - Second 275kV line fault. Line is reclosed after about 1 second.

16:18:08 - Third 275kV line fault. Line remains out of service. No attempt to reclose due fault being within 30 seconds of previous fault (on the assumption that something serious is going on, potentially posing a danger to life, and it's not just a minor line fault)

16:18:09 - 123MW reduction in wind generation from multiple wind farms. This was an involuntary response, not something intended.

16:18:13 - Fourth 275kV line fault. Reclose attempted but unsuccessful. Now there are 3 x 275kV lines out of service.

16:18:15.1 (yes, down to the 0.1 seconds here) - 192 MW reduction in output from two wind farms occurred. An involuntary response, not intended.

16:18:15.5 - Flow across the AC lines from Victoria measured at 850MW, about 250MW over capacity, as a result of the loss of wind generation in SA.

16:18:15.8 - Victoria to SA lines opened (turned off) automatically to protect themselves from damage given the extent of the overload.

16:16:16 - Complete collapse of the SA power system with all remaining wind farms, all gas-fired generation and the Vic - SA DC interconnect tripping offline. That's an expected and desirable response in all cases at this point due to the massive overload now faced by these generating plants (gas and wind) and the DC interconnector. They'd have been destroyed real quick had they not shut down at this point and instead tried to actually supply the required volume of power into the system which, with the loss of other wind generation and supply from Victoria, now vastly exceeded the capabilities of plant still running at this point.

So wind did not directly cause the SA system black (complete failure of the grid), the ultimate cause was multiple transmission line failures in a very short space of time (far too quickly to do anything about it). That said, wind did fail before conventional generation failed and it was that failure which ultimately brought down the entire system. Lines failed > some wind failed > more lines failed > more wind failed > rest of system now heavily overloaded > literally everything else shut down to protect itself (hard to avoid at this point).

Not known is what happened with small scale solar, output from which wasn't too great anyway due to the weather. The most likely answer to that question is that it failed sometime after the loss of wind generation and before the complete system collapse. Some generation failed, frequency dropped and that would have taken out at least some solar generation before the whole system actually went down. That will probably never be known for sure but it's the likely scenario. While not overly relevant in this case (and that itself makes it hard to measure) it sure would have been if this had happened on a sunny day when solar output was high.

So what's the solution?

Storage in any form gets around the inherent intermittency of wind and solar. We harvest crops intermittently but nobody complains about that since food can be and is stored prior to consumption. You can harvest the wheat today, mill the flour later, bake the bread sometime after that and so on. Storage gets around the problem of the underlying production being intermittent. Fill the storage when there's plenty, take it back out when there's not.

We also need system inertia and that's a bit more tricky. Wind and solar can be configured to do it a bit better than they do now but there are still limits. Storage based on batteries can offer some response too if the electronics driving it are designed appropriately. Ultimately though, big rotating machines win when it comes to this aspect - pumped hydro, flywheels, conventional generation online below capacity.

Looking at a smaller system, Hydro Tas can and does run King Island (a small self-contained power system not connected to anywhere else) on 100% wind at times and does so successfully. To do that, in addition to the actual wind and solar generation, there's:

1. Battery

2. Flywheel coupled to a diesel engine (so the engine is effectively instant starting)

3. A great big resistor (electric heater) to "burn off" any surplus power real quick if frequency starts to rise above 50Hz.

4. A "smart grid" able to disconnect non-critical customer loads (primarily water heaters) immediately so as to assist in controlling frequency. We're not talking conventional off-peak here, we're talking about doing things down to the second or less.

5. Conventional diesel generators able to supply the full load are still in place and ready to start when needed.

Needless to say all that isn't cheap (though it beats running all the time on diesel for a remote system like this) and isn't an economically viable option for supplying an entire state or country at the present time.

Which brings us back to things like pumped hydro if we want to store large amounts of power in the national grid. There's 3 such schemes in Australia presently (2 in NSW, 1 in Qld) but we'll need a lot more of that plus some use of other means of storage if we're going to go completely renewable. And pumped hydro does have that inescapable advantage in terms of stability - great big rotating machines with their inherent inertia. That said, there's a definite role for other types of storage too (though small batteries at the household level aren't too good environmentally that's for sure).

 

[sptrawler]

Brilliant smurph, I hope you saved a copy of it, because you will have to use it when the same question is asked, again and again and again.
Mate you are a saint.

 

[SirRumpole]

Mate you are a saint.

Yes he is. Makes some others look pretty cheap.

 

[sptrawler]

Yes he is. Makes some others look pretty cheap.

You shouldn't be self self deprecating, we don't think less of you.

 

[SirRumpole]

You shouldn't be self self deprecating, we don't think less of you.

You mean you and noco, the gang of two ?

 

[sptrawler]

You mean you and noco, the gang of two ?

No I actually mean people such as yourself, who rant endlessly about subjects you know nothing about.

Then when it all goes pear shaped you start asking for information, that you should have known, before you made your statements..

This is the problem with social media, you get to say what you think, even though you know nothing about the subject.

Unfortunately it is a growing phenomena.

 

[luutzu]

Sorry ,

a bit mean but just seemed a good opening.

Not mean at all. Even Noco would probably admired that kind of comeback.

I'm still laughing thinking about it. ah heck, I gotta go out more.

 

[luutzu]

No I actually mean people such as yourself, who rant endlessly about subjects you know nothing about.

Then when it all goes pear shaped you start asking for information, that you should have known, before you made your statements..

This is the problem with social media, you get to say what you think, even though you know nothing about the subject.

Unfortunately it is a growing phenomena.

Isn't that how we all learn Homer? Thinking we know something, very sure we know it until someone made a persuasive argument that we then look up and think it over then thought, yea I was wrong or was a bit off there.

Takes a lot of intelligence and courage to do that. I know because I'm never ever, ever, wrong about anything

How have you been btw?

 

[sptrawler]

Isn't that how we all learn Homer? Thinking we know something, very sure we know it until someone made a persuasive argument that we then look up and think it over then thought, yea I was wrong or was a bit off there.

Takes a lot of intelligence and courage to do that. I know because I'm never ever, ever, wrong about anything

How have you been btw?

It's annoying, when you are seeing a lot of your workmates laid off, in coal fired power stations.
Then you read the misconceptions behind the closures.

But on a personal note, been retired five years, can't complain.
Get my seniors card this month,yeh.

 

[luutzu]

It's annoying, when you are seeing a lot of your workmates laid off, in coal fired power stations.
Then you read the misconceptions behind the closures.

But on a personal note, been retired five years, can't complain.
Get my seniors card this month,yeh.

Yea that'd be annoying, but I don't think any coal power plants are ever closed to save the environment; or closed because the greens and SirR give the Premier and Turnbull a call.

So you're officially an old bastard

I was showing my daughter how to use the calculator the other day and she asks how to work out my age. Yea, I'm much older than I thought I was. Ah crap, my birthday's coming up too.

 

[SirRumpole]

No I actually mean people such as yourself, who rant endlessly about subjects you know nothing about.

Then when it all goes pear shaped you start asking for information, that you should have known, before you made your statements..

This is the problem with social media, you get to say what you think, even though you know nothing about the subject.

Unfortunately it is a growing phenomena.

In fact it hasn't gone "pear shaped" because what Smurph said confirmed what I said before in this thread that storage is the key to renewables, as well as wide geographical dispersal and variety of renewable sources, an opinion that was formed by doing research and reading about the subject and which was expanded by asking a few questions of someone who knows what he is talking about.

I'm sure that Smurph's comments enlightened not only me but others who perhaps had not the benefit of doing their own research.

Maybe you had better look at your own prejudices which you have stated yourself regarding friends in the coal industry losing their jobs which has obviously clouded your judgement. How many jobs have been and will be created in the solar PV installation industry ? A lot more than the jobs lost in the coal industry I reckon and maybe some of them are ex coal industry workers.

 

[sptrawler]

In fact it hasn't gone "pear shaped" because what Smurph said confirmed what I said before in this thread that storage is the key to renewables,.

Yes I noticed you quoted a battery developed in Australia, which I posted, everyone is aware of the storage issue.

The problem is, not many are aware of the system security issue, therein lies the issue.

Also by the way I have been involved in generation most of my life, be it diesel, solar storage generation at Denham and Mekatharra.
In the later part of my career I worked in the control room of a power station that could run on gas,coal or fuel oil and any combination of the fuels.

I don't have a leaning towards coal, just know it is the best resource in Australia to be producing base load from, at this point of our energy/economic cycle.

Ideology isn't my strong point, we tried solar storage at Meeka in the 1980's, in collaboration with M.A.N of Germany, it ended up being sold for scrap.

I take my hat of to smurph, for writing such detailed and descriptive explanations, he obviously has a gift and also an interest.

I personally can't be bothered, maybe if I was at work on night shift, I wouldn't be so short and may engage more.

P.S I'm not prejudice, just understand the issues.

 

[Smurf1976]

Did the wind power fail because the wind was actually too strong for the turbines so they had to be shut down ?

At this stage that's uncertain based on the available information.

In that context AEMO will certainly be doing a very thorough review of everything that happened with the aim of determining precisely what occurred and in what order. There's a lot of data to compile there, a lot of engineering work to be done etc determining both exactly what happened and what needs to be done differently (changes to physical infrastructure and/or how things are operated) and that's likely to take a few months. Think in terms of "aircraft crash investigation" type process there - piece it all together and work out the full chain of events and how it could have been avoided.

What can be said at this stage though are that three likely scenarios exist for the loss of wind generation.

1. Voltage increased at the site of the wind farms and caused individual wind generators to trip or reduce output. This is the most likely scenario.

2. A sudden extreme weather event occurred at the wind farms which cut their production. Given the number of wind farms involved and the timing of events this is relatively unlikely for the first loss of wind generation and very unlikely for the second loss but not totally impossible (having so many transmission lines come down in quick succession is also unlikely but it did actually happen....).

3. Tripped due to falling system frequency although it wasn't overly low at this point. Possible but a voltage-related trip seems more likely in the absence of detailed information.

So most likely the wind farms stopped working due to the electrical "shock" they experienced when the lines came down. That's the probable explanation at this stage.

What would have happened if Northern power station, the SA coal plant that was recently closed, had been running at the time?

Given the location of the line faults nearby it's plausible that Northern would itself have tripped offline (shut down) uncontrollably. We'll never know for sure but it's plausible that it could have. That said, it's also plausible that it would have continued operating and that the whole SA system black would never have occurred. That's really speculation though and we'll never know for sure - Northern PS certainly has failed in the past when external grid faults have occurred so there's no guarantee it would have kept going this time (but it might have).

One thing's certain however. If Northern had stayed on then the chance of a system black would have been reduced. A drop in output and ramping up production elsewhere (Torrens Island realistically) would have been needed to avoid overloading the remaining transmission but that would have been orderly rather than sudden. No major overload of the SA - Vic lines would likely have occurred so they wouldn't have shut down and there would also have been no overload of other SA generation causing it to also shut down. But the unknown is whether or not Northern PS would actually have coped with so many line faults occurring nearby causing voltage fluctuations - it's very plausible that it would have tripped under that scenario (as would any power station when confronted with that situation).

So to answer the question about coal versus wind in this situation, it's really to hard to say at this stage. The grid suffered a massive impact, greater than practically any operator anywhere allows for on a routine basis, and that did cause problems with wind generation. But then it may also have caused problems with a coal-fired plant located nearby (ie Northern) so it's wrong for anyone to claim that having Northern in operation would definitely have avoided problems in the absence of a thorough engineering analysis. Maybe it would have, maybe not.



On other matters, supply to Port Lincoln and surrounds was initially restored with generation from Port Lincoln power station (oil-fired gas turbines) however that power station later broke down (for reasons I'm unaware of) with AEMO's multiple attempts to bring it back into operation being unsuccessful.

Prior to that break down Port Lincoln PS was operating as a stand alone power supply - so that's not connected to the rest of the grid, just generating power and supplying the local area (that part of the grid still intact but separated from the rest of the system by faults) directly as a completely separate system. Under normal circumstances this station operates in the grid like any other (although most of the time it is idle, being used only for peak load operation since it's a high cost plant to operate). Since there's more than one generator at this plant and everything failed at once something drastic must have gone wrong to cause that. Weather-related presumably but I'm not sure on that.

In terms of how the system was re-started, the basic process was:

1. Re-establish AC transmission between Vic and SA. Use this to energize the grid in SA but with loads disconnected (so no actual power supplied but parts of the grid live as such).

2. Quarantine power station (gas turbines, gas-fired, Adelaide area) started up.

3. Restoration of high priority loads (hospitals etc) and use the available power to start other power stations*

4. Generation progressively brought online at Torrens Island PS (steam turbines, gas-fired), Snuggery PS (gas turbines, oil-fired) and Pelican Point (combined cycle gas turbine, gas-fired) with load restored progressively as generation availability increased (it taking considerable time to bring 7 units online at Torrens Island, 3 at Snuggery, 2 at Pelican Point and ramp them all up - that's hours not minutes since we're dealing with boilers that need to warm up, build up steam pressure and so on).

*Not all power stations are set up to be capable of starting in the absence of external power from the grid since power stations themselves have electrical systems which need to be operable. So a few plants are equipped with systems (eg diesel generators) to power their own internal systems, start up, and then use power from there to bring other plants into service. That's the standard approach just about everywhere (globally).

Due to the inherent variability of output at a time when stability was critical, wind generation was intentionally held to either very low levels or literally zero throughout the restart process. With the thermal plant needing to gradually ramp up and with restoring supply to consumers as the priority, it simply wasn't practical to have generating plant with intermittent output in the system at that time hence keeping it shut down. Wind farms in SA have mostly recommenced operating now however (some still being impacted by ongoing transmission problems).

A bit about terminology here:

Steam turbines - that's a steam turbine driving the alternator ("generator" in layman's terms) plus a boiler to produce the steam and various systems to supply fuel (gas in the case of Torrens Island) and so on.

Gas turbine - that's a jet engine in layman's terms. Note that the engine is used to turn an alternator and is not used to produce thrust as in an aircraft but it's the same underlying technology just sitting on the ground rather than in the air. These are quick and easy to start up but the downside is higher fuel consumption than other technologies (though it has improved over the years).

Combined cycle gas turbine - that's a gas turbine (jet engine) with the exhaust heat recovered to produce steam which then drives a separate steam turbine. The advantage is fuel efficiency and reduced emissions, roughly 50% more power from the same amount of fuel, with the disadvantages being high cost of construction and a much longer startup time when compared to open cycle gas turbines (gas turbine with no recovery of exhaust heat).

 

[sptrawler]

If Northern was online and did trip, it would have been a "hot start" and getting back online would have been achieved fairly quickly.
I know you can't turn back time, but it does show how fragile the whole Eastern States grid could become, if major thermal plants are abandoned before a sustainable system is in place.
Let's not forget, it wasn't long ago there was talk of the Government buying Hazelwood and Loy Yang, then closing them.
Maybe this failure, may bring some degree of rationale to the debate, and bring about a holistic approach.

 

[Boggo]

If Northern was online and did trip, it would have been a "hot start" and getting back online would have been achieved fairly quickly....

and the Eyre Peninsula, Port Lincoln etc wouldn't have been offline for three days.

 

[Tisme]

Tisme, sometimes the truth hurts and that is evident from your terse comments...Time will tell if they continue to have strife with their power supply and the high cost there of to the SA consumers.

:topic

The car industry was domed to fail due to the lack of export sales and high cost of labour thanks to our beloved unions....It is called competition.....No more shoe factories....No more clothing factories.....No more woollen mills....And the steel industry is being heavily subsidised by the Australian taxpayers.

Gillard gave the car industry millions of dollars which were supposed to keep the car industry going until 2022...This 2016...6 years earlier.

I can tell you up front I never hurt when truth is talking Noco. That piece you posted is akin to a dung beetle that collects a bit of sh17e here a bit of sh17e there and rolls it all into a ball of sh17e to create a masterpiece that will surely impress those who appreciate sh17e as the centre of their world. Give a halfwit the opportunity to choose between Force Majeure and sensationalist fishwifery, a journo will invariably choose the later for those with a tin ear who lap up their master's voice (i.e. Murdoch).

Of course the twisted pylons and the interwoven high voltage lines were because of PV cells and turbines, what else could have caused system to shut itself down from short circuits, brown outs, etc.....surely not the cyclonic winds. How could anyone qualified and experience in the engineering game ever compete with a super sleuth from Liberal Party NewsCorp armed a well worn anti ALP poison pen.

If you ever worked in the corporate world you would know the union/wages/satan stuff is scapegoat for executive failure. Corporations much prefer to enterprise bargain and of course both sides of the argument make ambit claims in negotiations....that's how business operates at all levels. The biggest companies have organised work forces, either through unions or through inhouse structures,it is not unusual to have boards of directors who are ex unionists, ALP hacks, etc. It is not unusual to have union representation on executive panels at the bequest of the CEOs to maintain connectivity with the workforce, superannuation panels are the same, etc.