By Jo Nova
Just how wise is it to have a grid dependent on all this fragile infrastructure?
Nature seems to be telling us something about adding another 10,000 kilometers of vulnerable transmission lines.
Yesterday six high voltage transmission lines collapsed in Victoria leaving half a million people without electricity for hours. But only a few weeks ago five towers collapsed in Western Australia putting 30,000 in the dark. And out in Kalgoorlie, when the gas backup plants failed, thousands of people went for days without power in 40 degree heat. Some people were unable to call triple zero, freezers full of food were spoilt and nearly everything left to buy had to be paid for in cash.
In Victoria the towers fell at 1:10pm during a storm. Their loss triggered the shut down of 4 large coal power units at Loy B Yang taking out 2 GW of generation. It took three hours to get one turbine back on line, and eight hours to restore the second. Everyone is talking about “the coal fired outage” but about half the wind power running at the time was also lost, and over the next hour, more than half the grid scale solar power also disappeared.
It was a shock to the system for a state with nearly 7 million people:
Graph from Anero.id Enery (Feb 13)
The sudden simultaneous drops for wind power and coal power suggests they were both affected by the transmission line failures. Brown coal generation fell almost instantly from 4GW to 2GW, but wind power in the state fell from 1.8GW to 1GW sharply.
Graph from Anero.id Enery (Feb 13)
Solar and wind power just made the storm damage worse:
The renewable cheer squad is calling for “a faster transition” to somehow solve these blackouts but both solar and wind power need thousands of miles of the very same collapsible transmission lines, putting the grid at even more risk of sudden breaks.
Indeed wind power fell right when we needed it. We can’t confirm yet how much of that was due to the towers collapsing, or whether it was because plants were shutting off in turbulent conditions.
Grid scale solar certainly didn’t save the day even though it was the middle of the day. Perhaps the solar plants were cut off, or perhaps the clouds rolled over? Solar “farm” production was reduced from 500MW to 200MW through most of the afternoon. And while rooftop solar suffered smaller losses, by 2pm it lost about 1 GW of generation too. About the nicest thing we can say about solar power is that it won’t destabilize the grid if storms arrive at night.
The things that did save the day were gas and hydro power (see below), but if Hazelwood coal power was still running, it would have helped too. Luckily, there is no drought on the East Coast at the moment. In a normal El Nino year, the hydro might not have been there…
Graph from Anero.id Enery
The Victorian Energy Minister blames the weather and doesn’t seem to realize some forms of generation need a thousand more miles of power lines:
But Victorian Energy Minister Lily D’Ambrosio said that if “catastrophic extreme weather” physically took out power lines, “then no matter what you do in terms of electricity generation or other technologies, that will cause outages”.
But if all of the state ran on coal fired power or gas, less of the state would have blacked out.
Grids with lots of transmission lines are vulnerable grids
The Guardian, masters of misinformation, told us that the coal fired plants were affected by the storms, just in case you thought they might be stronger than flimsy windmills and giant sheets of glass panels.
The Guardian didn’t mention the 2GW drop in wind power and solar output. They happen every day of course…
Further information is available from WattClarity — like grid inertia, and the frequency volatility.
There were some violent wind gusts during the first storm, c.3pm which brought down trees. Even more thousands of kms. of transmission lines make sense…not.
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How about this in The Oz an hour ago?
JARED LYNCH
jared lynch
Tesla took control of Powerwalls for profit during Loy Yang outage
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Your main image clearly shows mangled pylons, yet the trees are completely undamaged. I’ll leave it there.
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Just some thoughts after seeing pictures of downed transmission towers….
Why do we have transmission line towers collapsing? This never used to happen, back in the day.
Is it low quality Chinese steel? Is it poor design?
When the towers were designed with slide rules and pencils they were OK.
Now with finite element analysis they are not? We have people designing things that have no clue and no deep knowledge of structural mechanics, who can design nothing except what their computer program designs for them…
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Steel structure like this as used across the planet. This can only be faulty steel. The substitution racket in Daniel Andrew’s Victoria was well known, projects with minimum Australian steel were substituted. And Chinese steel is suspect.
It was all about his friends in Beijing and building projects we didn’t need and stopping those we did. Now with easily the biggest State debt in Australia, bigger than the next two combined, most of this is just a mess. And we in Victoria are being taxed to death to pay for faulty steel.
The only good thing is that it demonstrates that closing any more coal plants is impossible and we should never have closed the ones we had. Other countries mothballed them, but Andrews required them to be demolished.
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These towers look similar to the ones that fell over in SA a few years back , the towers coming from the Snowy Hydro Scheme definitely look heavier in the way they are made but back then they were made to a spec not to the lowest tender I guess .
Lucky for us we get our electricity from the Snowys so were unaffected but did notice one of the swampies cut out for some reason but restarted ok .
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Yes to underspecced steel towers in SA in 2016 as well as Vic now. This was noted in 2016 and similar episodes have since occurred in Vic.
A number of towers in the Geelong line were reinforced following buckling through lower grade steel but the vast majority in these lines remain at risk. Bowen’s “hurry, hurry, but keep the cost down” urging is now deploying many thousands of km of this high risk infrastructure.
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I’m also wondering if they are adding extra lines from solar and wind farms to these towers making them structurally inadequate.
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Green steel ?? 😀
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Relax. Our transmission lines will soon all be designed by AI.
As in Accidents Inevitable.
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Towers can fail for a variety of reasons. Structural footing failure, bolt shear failure, harmonic wind loading failure, ice/wind overload, etc.
Cheap towers are single bolted connections. Good ones have double bolted connections that enable regalvanizing and bolt replacement without a compression cage around the tower. Single bolted towers save about 30% up front tower costs. But are not as reliable as double bolted.
In the US, towers routinely see 140 to 200 KpH winds, so they have to be designed for that.
Tower reliability: http://www.geengineeringsystems.com/ewExternalFiles/Tower%20Reliability%20Rev%201.pdf
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Most failures are due to extreme weather events.
https://wattclarity.com.au/articles/2022/12/how-common-are-islandings-and-transmission-tower-failures-in-the-nem/
There’s more info on transmission towers from the Aus Energy Regulator here:
https://www.aer.gov.au/system/files/AusNet%20Services%20-%20Technical%20AMS%2010-77%20Transmission%20Line%20Structures%20-%2029%20October%202020.pdf
So most are nearing end of service life, so more prone to failure.
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More reading.
PDF Structural Capacity and Failure Mechanisms of Transmission Towers under high intensity wind loading.
https://www.iosrjournals.org/iosr-jmce/papers/vol13-issue5/Version-8/D1305082533.pdf
Wonder how Oz towers would stand up to analysis…
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We had transmission towers withstand TC “Debbie” in 2017.I mean wind sustained at 180kph and gusts over 210kph. I put it down to low grade imported steel.
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David ( and TdeF), the same applies to our road construction in Victoria. At some time the specs for road construction have been altered probably in some cost saving measure. The regional roads in this state are terrible, but more notably any roads also built in the last 30 years are also suffering huge deterioration. We literally have parts of the Western Highway under 20 years old with sections that need annual resurfacing. Some of these sections started to break down with years of opening. Clearly the preparation and road base construction is sub- standard and you can only think this poor quality extends to structures like bridges etc. Which makes me fear all those tunnels that the ALP have built over the last 10 years in this state. Are they equally low quality?
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“At some time the specs for road construction have been altered probably in some cost saving measure.”
Exactly. I travel the Goulburn Valley Highway fairly often and there is always some sort of roadwork being done. Often I see a truck with a speed 40 kph sign with driver, a klm or 2 then some work being done, with vehicles onsite, then another truck with a speed sign also with driver. With all these extra costs, it seems the only way to save money is to reduce the cost of materials.
The other issue is see is that, on the multi lane highways, most of the damage occurs in the left hand lane, which is where we are supposed to drive unless overtaking. Much of the traffic is the heavier, road damaging trucks.
Then of course, when the damaged left hand lane is being repaired, all the traffic is in the right hand lane.
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Maptram:
years ago (before 1977) I knew an engineer trying to build a roadway in the Goulburn Valley for a Government project. He (and his company) objected to the Government Department method they had set down and were told that “the civil service knew best”. His company made sure that they were ‘covered’ for the expected breakdown of the road, which came true within 2 years.
Politicians claimed that the Company had people known to be supporters of the Opposition and claimed that inferior material had been used on the road surface (for cost savings). They then found that the Company had used the grade specified by the Bureaucrats after warning them (several times) in writing. The Government wanted the repairs to be done by the Company who told them “No Way”.
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They can fall because of weakened wires.
I’m guessing it will be like in SA where they will blame mini tornadoes despite evidence the winds were not that strong. Back then, they used a picture of a hall with a missing roof as evidence of an EF4 tornado, but a small whirlwind can suck a roof off of modern homes that are draft proof. I saw more pictures from that town and a very old weather board home across the street just had a gutter come loose. No way were the winds strong enough to bring down a tower.
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R.B.
Part of the SA troubles was said to be wet weather soaking the ground around the pylon’s footings.
Pictures with the collapsed towers intact but at angles & only supported by the wires.
Not sure how that suddenly affected them after 53 years.
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240 volt portable generators are the new Bitcoin
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BigW have 2kVA pure sine gens for under $500 if interested…
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Transmission lines have always collapsed. When there is only one concentrated source of generation, the generator will clear the fault and only those on that line will be affected. Now transmission lines work in both directions and it is increasing more complex to shed part of the network without interfering with the whole region. Also the generators are WEATHER DEPENDENT.
On Tuesday, southern Victoria went from bright sunlight to gale force winds and cloud in a matter of minutes as a front passed over. The clouds knock out solar and the high winds cause the wind turbines to shut down. So there is a dramatic loss of generating capacity as the storm front passes. Wind gusts at Fawkner beacon hit 116kph yesterday afternoon. That is about as good as it gets in this part of the world.
In the last century, grids spent a lot of money to be more tolerant to weather events. Now weather events are an essential component of generation. So vulnerabilities are being designed into the system.
I would not pick on the detail design of the towers as being the cause of the outages. Weather outages are fundamental to WEATHER DEPENDENT generation. It is all in the name. “renewable” they are not. Weather Dependent” they are.
The infamous Trabant epitomised the excellence of socialist engineering. Australia’s electricity grid is being redesigned by socialists. If you want reliable electricity, make your own.
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Are we building new transmission lines in regions more subject to PCG lightning strike?
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Yes, has to be some form of bad engineering: steel or design. In the UK we have transmission towers, pylons, that to my knowledge have stood for 50 years or more. And, that’s with gale force winds and the occasional hurricane. Someone is making a quick profit somewhere.
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Oh..that first one did appear after all. On ‘phone and nothing appeared. Sorry Jo.
[It could happen to anyone Annie. No need to apologize. 🙂 – Jo]
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When the transmission towers collapsed, a fault condition was created. Ie, a dead short circuit.
The synchronous power plant protective relays disconnected the power plants from the grid to protect the alternators. This ended the 50 Hz synchronization signal from the grid associated with the transmission lines.
Without the synchronization signal, any wind/solar grid tie inverters automatically disconnected. This prevents the wind/solar from backfeeding the grid and killing any electricians working to repair the transmission lines.
A forensic analysis of the tower collapses ought be performed to determine if they were structurally under designed, or if the spans were excessive, or if accumulated corrosion played roles.
New transmission lines, pylons, etc, to support additional wind/solar, cost approx USD 4 Million per mile and will take a decade to design, obtain right of way, comply with environmental impact reports, and physically construct. The construction time is about 140 miles/year or 12 miles / month after everything is ready to go.
This 732 mile project in Wyoming USA took 18 years before work began and cost USD 3 Billion.
https://www.eenews.net/articles/western-transmission-line-breaks-ground-after-18-year-wait/
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And/or from where the steel used in their construction was sourced.
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Lance,
That sounds right, but:
doesn’t agree with the picture in my head (which certainly could be my problem). The synchronisation “signal” is just the 50 Hz AC on the line, and as long as there’s *some* generator still connected there will be a signal to synchronise to. Is that not correct?
I thought it was more about “momentum”. Prior to the towers collapsing, coal generation was about double wind’s, providing a firm 50 Hz waveform for wind to synchronise with. Just after the collapse, coal fell by about half and, with wind now about equal, it could push the frequency around. Sanity checkers would then kick in saying that this is no longer a 50 Hz waveform and start pulling non-synchronous generators from the grid.
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Any thermal power plant connected to that transmission line would have seen the fault and disconnected. There is no other source of 50Hz synch pulse than the thermal plants.
No wind or solar plant is able to connect to a grid unless there is a pre-existing synchronization signal. Because without the synch pulse, the inverters could attempt to connect “out of phase” and cause a tremendous and hazardous mismatch in phase relationships, causing an essential short circuit depending on the voltage/current phase imbalance. Imagine fireworks of MW scales.
The protective relaying at the power plants can disconnect on voltage trip, current overload, frequency droop or peak, or other intentional safety events.
Momentum is the kinetic energy of the turbine/alternator mass at operating speed. Each turbine/alternator pair is about 600 tons of mass rotating at 3000 RPM. In a dead short situation, the shaft can see an instantaneous shock load of 300 Million HP per genset seeing a dead stop, instantaneously. This can shear off a 1 M thick shaft like a toothpick.
The 50 Hz waveform only exists IF the thermal plant is connected. Somebody has to be “Boss” and it isn’t possible to have hundreds of wind/solar inverters “guessing” at what the line frequency is. All thermal units are synchronized so their inertia is coupled electrically into essentially a single massive flywheel. But the alternators cannot endure a dead short. So they disengage.
When a fault occurs, some generators might remain active, but on a different grid segment, disconnected from the faulted line. Line fuses would separate one subgrid from others, so there might be active thermal generation on a subgrid. But the faulted line and associated lines would be without power from any source. It is a control system and safety issue.
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Thanks, Lance. That was very informative.
I take it that any power sources on the segment with the dead short automatically disengage, as do other grid segments.
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Which was the problem with South Australia years ago. When virtually the whole state went dark, the interconnector to Victoria also tripped. As you put it Lance, the Vic power supply was the “boss”. SA had already closed down its last coal plant and with little gas generation they had huge difficulty re-starting the whole system.
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“Huge?” We were out in September 2016 for 3 hours or so, along with most of Metroplitan Adelaide. Some places (Port Lincoln for example) were out for much longer, but they were the exception. Re sequence of events, I believe the Interconnector failed first – ie: before “the state went dark.” It was tripped by the various storm events particularly in the mid North. I am not suggesting SA is any kind of power exemplar, far from it.
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There was a very good discussion of the SA incident here at the time, with a timeline and good graphs of what happened when. See 28 September 2016. Wind was supplying 880 MW out of a total of 1900 MW. The main issue occurred over only 12 seconds. First 2/3 lines failed, then the Davenport-Belalie line went out, which by itself shouldn’t have caused a blackout. But then the wind turbines were prematurely shut down, losing 800 MW, and the Heywood Interconnector, supplying 525 MW, couldn’t handle the increased load, so it too disconnected.
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Adellad:
The Adelaide Hills was out for 3 to 5 days. You were one of the lucky ones.
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Restarting a grid is a nightmare that rational people do not want to consider.
The grid is essentially an inductive load. Motors, transformers, etc. The small resistive load is water heaters and cook stoves.
An inductive load needs between 4 and 6 times the apparent/real power equivalent to energize. Ie, it takes 4 to 6 times the running load of a motor in order to initially start it up.
So, if the grid load was 2 GW upon fault, then if all the loads are still connected, it takes 12 GW to restart them. Only for a few seconds, but if one cannot supply those few seconds, the the grid fails and goes black again. The only way around this is to segment the grid and restart it a ‘micro grid at a time’. The only stabilizing influence is resistive loads, so that means residential loads. Industrial loads are almost entirely inductive.
Only the thermal generators can produce the coupled, synchronized, base load, frequency reference for all others to follow. Without that backbone, a functional grid is not possible except on a very localized and isolated micro grid disconnected from the main grid.
Grid scale power generation, transmission, distribution, and voltage/frequency control, is very, very, far from the capabilities of solar and wind sources. Steam plants drive the grid that follows the connected load. Everyone else is following that lead, and mostly, poorly, in the sense that solar/wind are 2 levels removed from grid reality, and cannot sustain more than a parasitic capacity or dispatchability. IOW, non dispatchable power is not a benefit, but rather a liability, with respect to grid stability.
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Perhaps you can liaise with Jo and do a dedicated article on the topic of renewables driving the existing grid.
Should be an interesting read.
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Smashing idea, do consider this, please, Lance.
Auto
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Thanks Lance. My mistake, confusing “lines” for “grid”. Clearly everyone needs to get off the shorted lines, but the rest of the grid will still have a solid waveform. That explains the huge drop in coal generation, but it’s still surprising that about half the wind generation apparently hangs off this same stretch of lines.
One thing you mention has me puzzled:
There isn’t *really* a pulse waveform is there? It’s just the sinusoidal waveform where first-in sets the phase and all others must synchronise with it (which rotating generators do well, but inverters sometimes do pretty badly).
I worked at the NSW Electricity Commission 40 years ago (in a very blue-collar role). What you say about the sheer power was made clear to me, but one fun aspect was how deceptive the power stations were. Visiting Pyrmont, for example, I think it was downrated to 135 MW at the time, the banging and clattering was something to behold. You had a real sense of walking around in the great machine. Then, visiting Eraring with its, at the time, brand spanking 650 MW generator, all there was to see was a large room and a big cowling that hummed. Talk about anticlimax.
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The 50 Hz waveform is a sine wave. The peaks of that waveform are the “synch pulses”. Those pulses tell an inverter what the grid frequency reference points are and allow synchronization between a pure sine wave or modified sine wave (dirty signal) power to synchronize with the overall grid.
Any cyclic deviation from constant frequency results in power losses in the inductive loads ( motors/transformers), overheating of motors, etc. That’s why constant frequency is so important.
In the large, most people do not comprehend the issues of large scale power generation, transmission, distribution, maintenance, reliability, costs, and maintenance. They’re not stupid, just poorly informed. All of these things cost money, time, effort, risk, etc. It’s a laugh that the solar/wind ‘hangers on’ want to sell unreliable generation into a grid that is financially based upon reliability. Every solar/wind generator ought to pay the cost of their connection to the grid and amortize that cost over their actual generation and reliability. If that happened, you’d see solar/wind electricity at 4 times the existing prices. That’s the price of politics and ignorance of grid operational costs.
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Lance,
This would also explain the flywheel in the King Island grid . Running wind and solar without it (and the battery + resistor ) when the diesel is off (like now) would be chaotic .
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Airports used to use a no-break system that kept a motor operating with a 15-ton flywheel. When the mains failed, a clutch connected the still-spinning motor, now acting as a generator, to a diesel to continue supplying power without any interruption.
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Lance,
After the relays tripped there would have been voltage spikes too caused by the load shedding . This would have tripped solar and wind as well . We had flickers before the failure which would support your hypothesis (I think).
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Time for our resident poet to rewrite The Bastard From the Bush about this?
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It might be safer to go back to the source material, Lawson’s “The Captain of the Push”. That is considerably less rude.
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You can see outages on the AusNet grid at
https://ausnetservices.my.salesforce-sites.com/OutageTracker/
It takes a while to load as there are still lathe numbers of outages.
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OT, as there is no open thread, but worth reading:
Climate Change Manifesto
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If only Snowy 2.0 had been completed!
In practice, one analysis shows, the effective dispatchable storage might be as little as 40GWh {40,000 MWh}, but Snowy has been so successful in its mainstream media management that it is constantly referred to as a week of storage.
Looks like Snowy 2.0 will be a much larger Green Elephant than expected!
https://majorprojects.planningportal.nsw.gov.au/prweb/PRRestService/mp/01/getContent?AttachRef=EXH-2536%2120191108T002841.497%20GMT
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The Victorian blackouts were obviously caused by climate change, I mean we had a reliable grid until ‘climate change’ became the ‘vibe’, since then the grid has been destabilised, weakened, partially replaced by weather dependant generators on a stick, more long high voltage lines are just more targets for the ‘weather’ to obliterate, so yes, ‘climate change’ is to blame.
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Unlike our pre-climate change ancestors, we have to deal with “extreme weather events”- phenomena that, as MSM would have us believe, didn’t exist until quite recently in the history of mankind. We can ignore all historical accounts and physical evidence and simply assume our forebears lived idyllic lives in a continuously stable environment that was unaffected by any natural catastrophes
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Every time I think the Guardian has hit rock bottom and can’t possibly go any lower, I’m proved wrong. A transmission line collapses, and the headline is “storm causes outage at state’s largest coal-fired plant”.
OK, this time, they really have hit rock bottom and really can’t possibly go any lower. Please.
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They’ve taken up the challenge and are running with it. LOL.
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So the outage was caused by Climate Change? And if we fix Climate Change there will be no more outages? Clearly the sooner we blow up all the coal/gas power stations the more secure our energy will be.
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Plus the obligatory photo of dirty smoky polluting emissions belching out into the pristine environment – oh the horror!
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I read the link to the guardian and it told me how independent and truthful they were. They have the hide to ask for money! The last paper I bought was the Australian about a year ago, but I got sick of its neo-con tripe. Miss the crosswords though.
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One of the great un-reported tragedies of the “covid era” is the absence of the local newspapers at the fast food outlets and coffee shops.
Avoiding the cost of the “daily rag” was a worthwhile discount on the “egg muffin” and seniors coffee..
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Since money is no object in the “inevitable transition to Green Energy” why not run these transmission lines under ground?
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That could upset the wainbow serpents or snails or frogs or troglodytes – besides, the vibrations might upset Mother Goddess Gaia…
It appears those pylons were made from the same steel our train tracks were made of: a little gust of wind, a warm sunny day and SNAP!
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They have been debating under grounding for years, but the high cost became a problem.
A rural uprising is on the cards, it makes political sense to bury the transmission lines. With global cooling around the corner, weather should become even more extreme.
We need a robust inquiry into the steel.
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Even at Vicdanistans reduced rates ,right now wind is contributing a whopping 10%, the answer must be to build more cow fans, that’ll fix it.
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Will WA come to the rescue again?
The South Australian blackout of 2016 was a widespread power outage in South Australia that occurred as a result of storm damage to electricity transmission infrastructure on 28 September 2016. The cascading failure of the electricity transmission network resulted in almost the entire state losing its electricity supply, affecting 850,000 SA customers.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-09-29/wa-sends-power-towers-to-help-out-sa/7891014?section=wa
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WA transmission towers may not be a worthwhile investment, as two of these went down in much the same way recently during a storm.
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That transmission line runs through the facility where the Victoria Big Battery is. (the one that had the fire a while back) I’ve seen some commentary that says, “This won’t happen when we have renewables with battery storage”. Well, it will when the line is down that is to/from the battery. Not to mention the batteries not having the storage required for any reasonable duration of supply anyway.
Sheoaks weather station and Avalon weather station are 10-15 km either side of the spot where the towers collapsed. Both these station s show a big gust nearly an hour after the collapse. 85km/hr at 1:59pmm Sheoaks and 122km/hr at Avalon 2:19pm.
No doubt things can vary over that distance and gusts be localised. But interesting those two stations had peaks well after the collapse but were only 60-70km/hr gusts at about the time of the collapse.
The storm path was passing from Sheoaks toward Avalon.
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.
The total current capacity and energy storage of all Big Batteries is 1415MW and 2023MWh respectively.
These are used for grid stability and not for back-up.
If requred for back-up they would provide around 4 minutes of national demand!
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Maybe I took too long but I’m now convinced that this headlong rush by the Albanese government, in particular, energy and climate change minister Chris Bowen, is not down to naivity or plain stupidity. It is a perfidious campaign to destroy Australia’s economy and bring Australians into a state of majority serfdom where we become vassals to globalist elites.
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The Australian grid now has no redundancy and can’t even tolerate a 20 minute storm which wasn’t even particularly bad.
Imagine how easy it would be for an enemy, internal or external, to utterly disable Australia with very minor actions, made even worse by pathetically weak transmission towers.
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Lucky Wickedtoria isn’t in the cyclone latitudes, otherwise troppo-force winds could howl for days on end and then not one pylon would be standing – or they’d be underwater. First-world taxes for third-world infrastructure: welcome to the club.
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Australia’s anti-energy Minister, Simpleton Chrissy Bowen doesn’t even understand the correct units of battery capacity and yet is making multibillion dollar engineering decisions which are destroying Australia.
I wouldn’t mind betting he could not even identify the positive or negative terminals of a battery, or even know they have terminals…
And I’d also be willing to bet that he couldn’t tell you off the top of his head the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere, or even know what CO2 is because he calls it “carbon” (sic).
What we’ve just seen, yet again, demonstrates why politicians and those who tell them what to think – senior public serpents – shouldn’t be allowed to make engineering decisions.
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I recall reports when SA had the same problem that the feeder transmission line towers or pylons from wind and solar installations to main grid were sub-standard quality and the government had allowed the cost cutting for RET investors.
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I live in SE Qld and those SA towers certainly looked underspecced, so do the Vic ones, compared to what gets built in QLD.
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The wind gusts experienced yesterday would have been on the limit of their design.
Weather dependence is an inherent feature of the 21st century grid in socialist countries. The front that passed through would stop solar from cloud and wind due to high wind. So a sudden loss of generation and loss of a major transmission line combined with the loss of distributed generation meant load shedding was required to avoid total collapse.
The new socialist grid has weather dependence as its main feature. Sudden changes in weather will inevitably cause havoc.
Solar works well for a few hours per day if there are no clouds. Wind works reasonably well when wind is in the range 20 to 70kph. They typically shut down if gusts are going to exceed 90kph, which happened in Victoria on Tuesday. There are not enough batteries spread around to maintain stable supply when generators are dropping out in great number.
The front that came through in the afternoon dropped a little over 20mm in 10 minutes. It was reminiscent of cyclonic rain.
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I have a friend in Seymour, Victoria, who was without power for about 12 hrs.
I have another friend who owns a factory in Moorabbin, suburb of Melbournistan. The power company told him he will have no power until late Friday. All the workers have had to be sent home without pay. The factory has solar but that’s useless without batteries. And he would need an infeasibly large battery bank to power the factory.
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“Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world…”
H/t Yeats.
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Are all the factory workers casual?
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No. They may in fact have to be paid but I think there’s an exception for certain disasters.
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I think there are provisions for employers to stand down employees during certain events, subject to awards etc. I wonder if this qualifies as a natural disaster or if it’s just a failing of an electrical provider.
Hopefully the staff have leave accrued to use that in a worst case.
But, the point you were illustrating does highlight the impact or potential impact of unreliable energy. Cost to business and/or employees and community.
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All the wind/ solar fan club and green blob were all over social media yesterday blaming the unreliability of coal for the massive outage. Most of these nitwits were probably the contributors to the ” Istandwithdan” mob who achieved notoriety during the COVID bollocks. They have no understanding of any part of the electrical grid, particularly when generators have to be tripped to protect the rest of the network. Which is essentially what happened here in Victoria yesterday and South Australia years ago. It’s the same old maxim – a network is only as strong as its weakest link. It looks like the weakest link are those substandard transmission pylons. How could they just crumple like that? It’s bad design and engineering.
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Victoria had a tornado in 1897 that destroyed the town of Nhill. This was three years after a near miss of a tornado just as strong.
It had one in the 70s that struck a car. The car not only flew off the road but the occupants were sucked out and had their clothes ripped off.
There is nothing unusual about strong winds happening in Victoria. Even the reasoning that they happen more frequently due to fossil fuel use wouldn’t justify decarbonisation. They happened frequently enough 100 years ago to cause structural damage. Every 9 years instead of 10? What difference does that make to structural engineering? They blew often enough before on hot days that, if someone started one, there would be a catastrophic bushfire somewhere in Australia every year.
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A report at the time. “Friday November 19th 1897 will live in the memory of every Nhill resident till the longest day of his life by reason of an event unprecedented and almost unparalleled in the district, aye, and even the Colony.”
Before the Storm, for several days intense heat had prevailed averaging over 100 degrees in the shade. Friday opened quietly, though early in the morning the wind began to rise, and, increasing in violence as the day advanced, raged at hurricane force during the afternoon, and the air was filled with dust. All wished for the trying weather to culminate in a thunderstorm. These hopes were realised when about 4 o’clock, banks of cloud rose slowly above the horizon in the northwest. The firmament had a lurid portentous appearance which deepened as the general canopy of heaven became obscured. The whole sky assumed this red and hazy hue, imparting a terribly weird and ominous appearance. Shortly before 5 o’clock these strange elemental phenomena increased to become positively awe-inspiring and a premonition of coming disaster struck the hearts of the inhabitants. Just on 5 from out of the lurid heavens a rapidly revolving and fast approaching white circular column was observed, it burst upon the town with all it’s roar and fury with overwhelming force – huge buildings were lifted bodily and thrown shattered to the ground, some avere that fire balls played over the store and burst like incandescent bomb shells, the rain came down in torrents and vivid lightning played with dreadful menace. After a most fearful 15 or 20 minutes the violence decreased, but the town presented a truly dilapidated and desolate appearance, and great were the lamentations when the full extent of the damage was ascertained”. Apparently, weather is more variable than it ever was, due to climate change. Yeah right!
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I was looking at the price graph on the AEMO website yesterday and noticed a spike to $16,000 / MWh for almost 2 hrs in both the People’s Democratic Socialist Republic of Victoriastan and also in Tasmania .
https://aemo.com.au/energy-systems/electricity/national-electricity-market-nem/data-nem/data-dashboard-nem
Click on ” Price and Demand ” .
I saved screen shots of each state but I have no way of posting them here .
That would have cost the retailers a motza !
The retailers will have to get their money back from somewhere . That somewhere will be the customers !
Expect a hockey stick shaped graph of retail prices , coming soon !
Remember the bad old days when coal fired generators could reliably pump out electricity for $25.00 a MWh ( without political interference ) and retail price was 6.25 cents a KWhr ? I do !
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I posted a screenshot of the prices yesterday before I knew any details of the spike:
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2024/02/12/the-deindustrialization-of-europe-in-five-charts/
I speculated that it was likely due to wind turbines being braked and cloud over solar panels causing the sudden drop in generating capacity. That was likely the case but then there was the tower failure that could not be cleared before Loy Yang A dropped out.
Weather dependence is now a feature of the socialist grid. Bad weather and bad grid are inevitable until the perfect weather of the 1850s is restored.
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My understanding is that once we achieve Net Zero, there won’t be anymore extreme weather, and everything will be fine.
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That’s when they release Disease Y.
Disease X is already reserved for the US Presidential Election.
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Simpleton Bowen’s portfolio should be renamed from anti-Energy to Deindustrialisation which is the real purpose of wind and solar plantations replacing power stations.
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Many of the Big Batteries in Australia use multiple Tesla MegaPacks 1MW and 2.6 MWr and the US cost is US$ 1.24 million each. Usual warranty is for 15 Years with a degradation to 70% capacity over this period subject to certain operational constraints. Tesla claims they will recycle old units but provide no details of the recycling process now in operation.
Note: a Coal fired power station is good for 50 years oerational life or more.
Has any one seen a delivered cost to Australia in AUD allowing for shipping, insurance (fire on ship) and exchange rates? This would not include actual site preparation, installation and connection to the grid costs.
There is a lot of secrecy about just how much these Big Battery installations cost.
Although assembled in the USA I bet they use Chinese made batteries.
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With a guestimate for shipping, insurance and current exchange rates a 1 MW and 2.6 MWhr Tesla Megapack would cost around AUD $2 million landed in Australia to give a battery storage cost capital cost of AUD $1300 per MWh
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Correction $1300 per kWh
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The Chinchilla Battery project in Qld has 80 Tesla Megapacks for a claimed project cost of $150 million so around A$2 million per Megapack
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I don’t know how the media can claim it was a coal power failure. The coal plants were running fine until the towers went down. They then had nowhere to send their power so had to shut down, otherwise the outcome could have been far worse. So what happens with the wind and solar power when their transmission lines go down, can they just shut off as well or what, then if they do, they are still making power that has no where to go?
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If the thermal plants went offline due to the tower collapse and resulting line fault, the synchronization signal was lost and the solar/wind plants were disengaged from the grid.
If the governing reference signal from the thermal power plants is lost, the solar/wind sources CANNOT connect to the grid. This is a safety feature ( to prevent killing electricians repairing the grid) and a functional feature to prevent solar/wind trying to engage a grid when they are out of phase, electrically.
So, yes. If the thermal/steam plants are offline, the solar/wind has “no where to go”.
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If Bolt is correct we have a super disaster coming when we increase TOXIC W & S NINE FOLD and NINE times the TOWERS and WIRES to collapse and 9 times the TOXIC mess to clean up?
Shouldn’t we stop all future dangerous W & S rubbish and only build genuine BASE_LOAD POWER like RELIABLE COAL, GAS and NUCLEAR?
And they don’t require all the new TOXIC W & S lunacy and 9 times the TOWERS and WIRES to service these incredibly dangerous, UNRELIABLE disasters.
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Weve had three previews so far, as to what happens when the power pylons fall down in a strong breeze.
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Well, what I’ve said for years is that your home energy system should be designed for autonomy, not just feed-in rebates.
Now we see why.
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Are we looking at the real cuprite here? Brown coal took a hit at 1310 then between 1315 to 1320 shut down. The only wind farm playing around that completely dropped out was Dundonnell 1, 2, and 3 They dropped out at 1305 to zip by 1310 about 268MW switched off. This could be the first hit. The graphs are pretty course but about 400MW was reduced off brown coal in that 5 minute window from 1310 to 1315. Would that be enough of an excursion to cause Loy Yang to trip. The powerlines must have hit way later at around 1445 to 1450 with the passage of the trough/front. (Have saved the relevent web pages before AEMO and Wind Energy Australia eat them.) Same situation happened in SA. Authorities blamed the towers coming down but I believe it was the wind farms again running in gusty conditions and shutting down causing power surges from dumping out huge amounts of energy that cannot be quickly replaced by coal fired. It is also worthy of note that gas and hydro were being ramped up from 1200 and then really had to kick in around the 1320 mark when Loy Yang dropped out. Why the Dunndonnell farm dropped out at 1305 is a mystery, winds in the area were 22kph gusting to 30 at Mortlake. Food for thought.
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A very interesting set of observations, Thanks Jonsey!.
Great question.
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That’s what I was kind of wondering about at my comment #14.
I was assuming the towers collapsed just after 1pm because that was the stated blame and that was the timing of power losses.
I live 45km north-west of the towers that fell.
The reason I looked at the weather station info was because that timing seemed off. (as you are noting) The storm passed over us on it’s way toward the towers at maybe 1:15pm, give or take. The weather station info down near the towers shows the strongest gusts later than this, as expected by my on the ground experience.
Just checking my solar production and it dropped off a cliff at 1:23pm with the dark clouds coming over and came back on at 1:38pm as they cleared. There was a strong wind and gusts just ahead of the storm front.
It was certainly a windy day, but nothing that seemed particularly dangerous. (the 122km/hr gust recorded at Avalon is significant, but an hour after the power drop)
So, was there an isolated localised gust / wind burst at the towers just after 1pm?
Did the towers fall just after 1pm for reasons other than wind?
Or, per your question, did they fall much later than the power drop but are being blamed?
.
Some commentary in this article. https://wattclarity.com.au/articles/2024/02/another-tower-collapse-poses-more-questions-about-transmission/
The article links to a “fact sheet” about the threat of severe convective winds on transmission lines. Which of course ties threats to climate change.
https://www.climatechangeinaustralia.gov.au/media/ccia/2.2/cms_page_media/721/ESCI%20Case%20Study%202_Severe%20winds%20120721.pdf
.
It also links to an Ausnet report which has a section about the assessment of the health and age of Vic transmission lines.
https://www.aer.gov.au/system/files/AusNet%20Services%20-%20Technical%20AMS%2010-77%20Transmission%20Line%20Structures%20-%2029%20October%202020.pdf
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This has an AEMO market notice issued at 1:22pm which says the lines came down at 1:08pm: https://wattclarity.com.au/articles/2024/02/13feb-systemfrequency-mn114577/
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Regardless what AEMO says the radar archive says 1409hrs for the storm that went through Carrs Rd at the entrance to Local Mix quarry. Granted, downbursts and microbursts lead bad storms ahead of the roll cloud at the leading edge of the storm but not an hour before the storm. Something DID happen around 1305. All the wind generators from Horsham right back to Meredith show a sudden drop at that time (…yet Mortlake didn’t stop) In all, 15 windfarms all show the 1305hrs drop
*the link may not work straight up. its free to join the site, however. DONT FORGET to CONVERT FROM GMT add 11hrs for AEDST
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Jo’s interpretation of the storm is unsurprising very different from the ABC.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-02-14/victoria-melbourne-power-outage-storms-how-did-it-happen/103464714
The root problem was localised power-pole and line damage, not the collapse of six high-voltage transmission towers near Geelong. The tower collapse did cause a load-shedding event which tripped Loy Yang A. It took a very long time to get it back online, but there was sufficient power available to those customers whose reticulation wasn’t affected once the load-shedding event had been worked through. Coal power plants are much slower to bring online and offline than hydro or gas.
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Well, of course.
Jo tells the truth.
And Their ABC is the taxpayer-funded, lunatic Left propaganda arm of Government and the Left in general.
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I wouldn’t expect their abc has anyone who knows a volt from a watt, so don’t rely too much on their poxy report.
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Ask an “expert” from the gubermint or ABC what the difference is between watts and VA in a pulsating dc system is, and see how they reply. 😆
[Comments written in correct English without the coded language like “gubermint” are approved faster. We don’t want to create a discussion forum that newbies cannot even follow. – Jo]
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I can clearly recall our ABC giving us plebs (via their chief political reporter), a factual tautological lecture in power generation, where frequency was measured in Hertz per second. It appeared that his knowledge was much superior to else ABC staff.
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If the root problem was localised pole and line damage, why does the Ausnet outage tracker currently have thousands of customers listed with outages and the reason stated by Ausnet is “FT Feeder Trip”.
There was a storm in Melbourne’s south-eastern suburbs that created an amount of tree and house damage. Through Oakleigh, Springvale, Dandenong. But that doesn’t shut down a cities train network.
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Apparently, the collapse of physical transmission towers is, by your account, unrelated to power transmission, maintenance, and reliability. OK. Fine.
Prove that assertion.
Prove to us all how the collapse of 6 HV transmission line towers had no apparent influence upon the overall grid. Yes. Do that.
So, the fault, according to you, is that Hydro and Gas power generation was the Saviour of the Grid, and the Coal plants were “slower to bring online”. That is the claims of an economic, engineering, power generation, and system stability, idiot.
Simon, thanks for the laugh. In a practical world, your intelligence and practical knowledge would rate somewhere between my dog’s crap and his vomit.
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Hi Lance, for some reason my vote in your favor wouldn’t register. so I here by give you 100 thumbs up for the reply.
regards Laurie
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Pfizer ad shown at the superbowl – Not shown in Australia
Subliminal advertising?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fwvjimuwVyY
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Who’s got all the diesel generators, you know, the ones that Tassie had to round up to use while the undersea extension lead was U/S, then got taken to SA where they needed them after a storm trashed most of their pylons, Melburnistan now needs them urgently, perhaps Kalgoorlie has them.
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We can retrieve all of Victoria’s diesel generators that are down at the Wonthaggi desalination plant. They’re used to supply the contracted megalitres of water each year, that haven’t actually been needed since it was built. But the contract and keeping the facility fit for purpose requires them.
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Since we were burned out in the 2009 bushfires – I have my own diesel generator – courtesy of Hyundai – very reliable and it ran perfectly for 9 hours yesterday following the loss of mains electricity due to load shedding at 2pm yesterday. If everyone had a decent generator – we could tell the idiots who want to ruin our landscape with 100s of wind turbines and all the interconnecting powerlines to go away (and that is the politest way I can say it)
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This encourages people to look for alternatives. The grid is becoming a product of socialist engineering. The Australian grid is rapidly becoming the Trabant of electricity networks.
I have been saying this for quite a few years now – if you want reliable electricity then make your own or, at least, be in a position to make your own as the need arises.
I know two households that have now been without power for 24 hours. One has a portable generator that keeps the freezer powered.
The wind was strong enough to take a brach off one of my trees. A couple of days of winter wood now cut up.
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The best solution would be to have a natural gas powered home generator. The 8kVA 240V Generac Home Backup Gas generator is an affordable standby generator that offers protection during an outage, however they cost around $7000.
And in Victoristan the Communist Allen Goverment are onto this – banning natural gas connections to new homes.
30
But we are heading for a natural gas shortage, plus exploring for gas and oil is illegal in much of Australia, plus fracking is banned in Victoriastan.
And when the grid goes down, gas will likely stop flowing as well.
And as you say, CO2 Lover, in Sicktoria, gas supply is banned in new homes.
We really are becoming a Third World country.
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David I met a fella from Apollo Bay.A rig worker in the Bass straight souther ocean area.He said there are capped reserves everywhere.He stated the geologists estimate hundreds of years of domestic and exportable gas and that is conservative estimates.He said there are capped fields in the western district.This shortage talk is pure Bull Tish.
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I was told by a family member about Commonwealth Oil Refinery capped oil/gas wells dotted around the Queensland countryside Roma District from early 1900s, he said the reason why they were capped was that then new Middle East oil/gas fields were far less expensive to exploit at that time.
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I mentioned a while back about pure sine inverters that had outstanding specs put out by an Aussie company.
Unfortunately they discontinued them years ago.
By chance I discovered an equally impressive unit today.
10,000W continuous, 30,000W peak for 20 seconds, 0.3%THD.
No, they’re not typos! Only a few $k too!
The downfall of most inverters is that they’re HF rather than LF and so typically have laughable surge characteristics so motors and inductive loads just trip them out.
Amazing. I’ve contacted the supplier for more info, but such a unit would be perfect for most houses.
10
This is the lead in to many Climate Cult articles.
It takes for granted that we must meet Australia’s “net zero target”
But what is the benefit if we do? How many fractions of a degree C does all this pain and expense reduce “global temperatures”?
And what is the detriment if we do not? Being shammed at the next UN or WEF talkfest?
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“How many fractions of a degree C does all this pain and expense reduce “global temperatures”?
That’s something they can’t tell us because they don’t know, but would likely be less than 0.0000000000000001 deg C.
00
I think you have dropped too many zeros!
00
You would think people writing this stuff would take a second to think about what they are writing. MASSIVE INDUSTRIAL INFRASTRUCUTRE, is creates from MASSIVE amounts of carbon based fuels. There is no other way. And it would all need to last more than 200 years before it recovers nmore energy than went into making it.
Big miners LOVE NutZero. Global mining will need to increase 4-fold in the next 5 years to meet NutZero. For that reason alone, it simply cannot happen.
There are a few savvy Greens starting to realise why big business is all for NutZero and the transition. It helps eliminate green tape, The words Climate Change™ in any funding proposal is now an essential requirement to get the funds. The words Climate Change™ mitigation in any project now reduces green tape unless it is in Bob Brown’s back yard.
30
Ever heard of the Republic of Palau?
It features in this hydrogen demostration plant
Before committing $ billions to another Green Elephant like Snowy 2.0 the sensible thing is to spend a few $ million on a demostration plant to work out the costs and feasabilty first
The progress of this hydrogen demonstration plant should be watched with interest.
In the early 1970s I gave a dissertation on the “Hydrogen Economy” as a Chemical Engineering student – it has been a long time coming!
https://www.csenergy.com.au/what-we-do/renewable-energy/hydrogen/kogan-renewable-hydrogen-demonstration-plant/kogan-renewable-hydrogen-project
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Our numnut premier of QLD has decreed today that they will legislate a 75% reduction of emissions by 2035, I think a smarter plan would be to keep what we’ve got going until then, it has been 3 years since Callide 4C exploded, we have been given an incomprehensible cartoon detailing what they think happened on that fateful day.
Something that couldn’t happen, shouldn’t have happened but did happen.
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Have India and China got that message? Any reduction in CO2 emissions achieved by deindustrialising (what is left) Australia will be swamped by in an increase 100 times bigger by India and China using our coal with their own!!!
10
nuclear – nuclear – nuclear – nuclear – do I need to say more?
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Is that a bomb threat on our brains trust in Canberra?
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Coal – Coal – Coal – Coal!
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Coal first and foremost until reserves are running out and transition to nuclear energy in between times.
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SMR conversions for existing power station coal fired boilers or replacement generator units using the same locations, and electricity grid system.
MMR for off grid areas to replace diesel generators over time.
00
SMR
https://www.smrnuclear.com.au
00
Surely all other transmission towers of the same design and construction will have to replaced so that the grid functions better when weather events re-occur. Alternatively we should follow Adam Bandts logic whereby “out-of-control” storms can be contained!
10
It wasn’t the failure of the towers that caused the cascading failures. It was sudden downturn in wind and solar due to cloud cover over solar panels and excess wind cut-out on wind generators.
The grid is infested with WEATHER DEPENDENT generators. Sensitivity to weather is a design feature. Such cascading failure will become much more frequent.
The grid is now the product of socialist engineering. Decades to build in resilience to weather events has been undone in less than a decade. The failure of the towers is just a side show.
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The fall in solar output is known in QLD as the Russ Christ Effect. Hot days, airconditioning running overtime. storm comes in from the west in the afternoon and blocks insolation before it gives relief to rather hot residents.
00
The public are being treated like mushrooms – kept in the dark and fed manure.
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[…] Further information is available from WattClarity — like grid inertia, and the frequency volatility.Jo Nova Blog […]
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