[AusNOG] Adelaide Power Issue - DR planning

[Mark Newton]

On Sep 28, 2016, at 8:32 PM, Chris Hurley <chris at minopher.net.au> wrote:
> 
> Given the topics running this week on threat matrix's from low level chance / high impact etc this appears to be case of a known event coming ie bad weather It was forecast days in advance as being possibly hugely damaging. Why wasn't it better planned for?

It was: Quality facilities were designed so that they could run independently of mains supply, and they stayed up.

(or are you perhaps talking about something outside the remit of network operators?)


> It appears little was done to mitigate if breakers kicked in to drop them off the grid. Yes breakers needed to kick in BUT no one looked at powering up base load ahead of the time to restore the system.

It’s a privatized industry. If the owners don’t want to run their generators, they won’t run their generators.

The Pelican Point gas-fired generator has been mothballed for years because its owner worked out that selling their gas contract to Queensland was more profitable than generating electricity. Should they have done something different?


> Coal or to a lesser extent gas fired generators take time to wind up to speed ie several hours.

There are no coal power stations in South Australia. 

One of them was uneconomic to repair after a fire. The other one was shut down this year, because it was incapable of dispatching enough power to sustain its own operations at the available AEMO buy prices.


> Surely they could have been 'fired' up ahead of time. 

If you were a private owner of a generator, would you:

(a) expensively “fire it up” with no knowledge of whether it’d be needed, just in case; or

(b) wait until the AEMO spot-price was nudging $10,000 per MWh, thereby guaranteeing maximum profit, and start it up then?

I know what I’d do.


> Some one also forgot wind is useless in very high winds. You have to turn them off or they 'destroy' themselves. There are already reports of political finger pointing.

The wind generators were running right up to the point of the blackout at 4pm. This is a made-up point, you’ve been reading too much Fairfax or listening to too much Malcolm:Ieuan-Roberts.


> The issue has become politicised already,

Hahaha yes, it’s true. Stupid, isn’t it? Go ahead and politicize it before the engineering work has been done to definitely describe what actually went wrong. Top effort.

  - mark



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