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The Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO) has found that the sudden and unexpected loss of half of South Australia's wind power in the midst of the severe storm on September 28 was a key event in the state-wide blackout.
The operator's update on the outage shows it expected all generators should have been able to ride through the transmission faults caused by the storm.
"Nine wind farms exhibited unexpected power reduction during the six voltage disturbances on the transmission system," AMEO's report said.
The size of voltage dips observed by SA wind turbines online at the time of the event was sufficient for ten of the thirteen wind farms online to activate their fault ride-through mode. Depending on the wind farm, this mode of turbine operation was activated between three and six times, as shown in Table 4.
Of the 13 wind farms on line prior to the event, four remained in service: Canunda, Lake Bonney 1, Lake Bonney 2 & 3, and Waterloo. Of these, only one (Waterloo) initiated ride-through mode multiple times, but it remained in service because it was set to a limit of more than six ride-through events.
But the report also points to two other major problems.
The first is that fossil fuels are not a panacea as some would wish. The diesel and gas generators paid handsomely to provide black start services to the state both failed, one within 15 seconds, causing the blackout to last much longer than it would have done otherwise. AEMO refuses to name the failed generators, citing “confidentiality” agreements.
The three diesel generators that should have provided power to Port Lincoln also failed – two tripped almost immediately and the third had to be shut down.
And, as the report also notes, this is not the first time that the Heywood interconnector has been separated from the state. Three of the previous disconnections occurred when the main coal generator, the now closed Northern brown coal power station, tripped and caused the system to collapse. The other occurred when bushfires in Victoria caused multiple transmission line failures.
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Comments
But really, allowing Uhlmann's article to be published, particularly in that manner with the deliberately inflammatory link on the home page, does show such abysmal judgement that it calls into question the whole news service. Especially since he is the senior editor and should know better.
It's a case of if they'll go that low, they can no longer be relied on to the "good old ABC" you could trust if there was doubt. They now have to be assumed to be full of it, unless they are supported by a reliable source.
I don't want to make too much of this, but I do think it's important to try and avoid scattergun attacks on media outlets, especially those that attempt, or perhaps only claim to attempt, factual reporting. In most cases the selection and treatment of topics is mainly driven by the need to get advertisements in front of eyes. Aunty's imperatives are a bit different, but she still needs to give her audiences (I get cranky when people talk about The ABC audience - there must be at least 15) enough of what they know they want.
Even Murdoch papers occasionally do useful climate related reporting. I've just come across this report in The Oz, of all places, from Senate estimates: http://www.theaustralian.com.au/higher-education/govt-funded-lomborgs-vanity-book-senate-estimates/news-story/c910a37727718a081b303897238a3913
The sidebar description reads: " In today’s High Wired we get mansplained by Birmo and get very perplexed about $640,000 for ‘vanity publishing’ "
The guts of the story is that Australian taxpayers handed Lomborg $640,000 to support “extensive consultations through youth forums, media discussions, meeting with world leaders, including interactions with Australian dignitaries and officials, a number of papers that were commissioned from academics in areas that were relevant to the millennial development goals”.
But it was unclear which academics contributed to the book — none appear to be attributed — or what they produced. It is also unclear about the other activities under the funding.
I hope Uhlmann, or an alert junior reporter, picks that one up.
If Uhlmann wants to talk politics, I'm fine with that. He's the political editor. Politics is his thing. However, if he wants to get into technical subjects that he's not well versed in, particularly when they have all sorts of important ramifications in combination with a history of humungous bunfights, then it really would be a bloody good idea if he learned what he was talking about before shooting his mouth off. He seems to have operated on the basis that since this subject had political implications, that somehow made him an instant expert.
Truly it's way past overdue to see some serious questions asked of our politicians about what they think and where they stand - not just asked but investigated, because I think there is such a huge divergence between what many of our senior and highly placed politicians say their position on climate is and what they (aggressively don't) do about it that it requires serious and deliberate misdirection and misrepresentation to sustain it.
http://www.shapingtomorrowsworld.org/lewandowskyseepage.html
Get real, in a warming world, EVERY storm carries the imprint of the warmed up global system !
and such tactical stupefying nonsense.
Also the poisoning influence of the Murdochs and Kochs can't be over emphasized.