‘Multiple faults’ led to huge South Australian blackout, preliminary report
UPDATED: Jay Weatherill is staking his future on renewable energy as debate continues to rage in the wake of a report blaming the state’s disastrous blackout on multiple power network faults.
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PREMIER Jay Weatherill is staking his future on renewable energy in the wake of a report blaming the state’s disastrous blackout on multiple power network faults.
The outage was caused by an overloaded interstate electricity interconnector switching itself off, after fierce winds knocked out high-voltage power lines, and wind farms were disconnected.
The Australian Energy Market Operator’s preliminary report, issued yesterday, finds there were “multiple faults in a short period” when severe weather last Wednesday struck high-voltage power lines near Port Augusta and in the Mid North.
AEMO says the outage was “triggered by extreme weather” but is vowing to conduct a thorough investigation into the subsequent response of power grid components, including wind farms which suddenly lost 315MW of generation.
The findings rekindled furious debate over renewable energy’s role in the outage, which cut power to some areas for days, prompting Mr Weatherill to flatly declare: “No storm, no blackout”.
Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull agreed the blackout’s root cause was storms disrupting transmission lines but declared rule one had to be keeping lights with secure and reliable energy.
But Mr Weatherill attacked Mr Turnbull, Opposition Leader Steven Marshall and Senator Nick Xenophon, accusing them of playing politics during an emergency by leaping to conclusions about wind power’s role in triggering the blackout.
“What you’re seeing is people running for cover because they are scared ... What we need to do as a state and a nation is to continue to promote renewable energy,” Mr Weatherill said
“We have a choice here and I’m prepared to be judged on this choice — a renewable energy future or a coal industry future.
“We’ve made our choice and we’ll be promoting this at a national meeting (of energy ministers tomorrow).”
Asked if South Australians might question that choice given the events of last week, Mr Weatherill declared: “We’ll have to wait and see.” He recommitted to the state’s target of 50 per cent renewable energy production by 2025.
The debate continued to rage this morning with Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce slamming the SA Government for 14 years of unreliable and expensive energy issues under Labor.
Speaking to ABC 891, Mr Joyce said while renewables reduced emissions they were highly fluctuating energy source that could be unreliable.
“You’ve got to start dealing with it,” he said.
“If you had proper base-load power requirements across the state you would have certainly had blackouts but not across the whole state.”
But Premier Jay Weatherill refuted the claims wind farms could not operate if the wind was too strong, which he said was confirmed by the technical operator in its report.
“Some of the wind farms did continue to operate and still continued to produce power,” he told ABC 891.
“By then we had significant parts of the system that was sucking power across the interconnector which then tripped the interconnector which then allowed the system to go down — so there was still power being generated by some wind farms.”
The national electricity market operator will continue to analyse the blackout’s causes and issue another update on October 19 but predicts a detailed report might take up to six months.
AEMO says transmission system faults caused by the severe weather included the loss, in the space of 12 seconds, of three major 275kV power lines in the Mid North, where 22 transmission plyons were toppled.
“Generation initially rode through the faults but (at 3.48pm), following an extensive number of faults in a short period, 315MW of wind generation disconnected, also affecting the region north of Adelaide’” it says.
“The uncontrolled reduction in generation increased the flow on the main Victorian interconnector (Heywood) to make up the deficit and resulted in the interconnector overloading.
“To avoid damage to the interconnector, the automatic-protection mechanism activated, tripping the interconnector.
“This resulted in the remaining customer load and electricity generation in SA being lost.”
AEMO says it directed the owner of SA’s transmission network, Electranet, to “progressively energise” the main Victorian interconnector by starting the Torrens Island Power Station.
This provided a “basis to allow customer supply to be restored”, says its report, allowing metropolitan Adelaide to be online that night.
Federal Energy Minister Josh Frydenberg said his meeting with state counterparts tomorrow could not have come at a more important time after the SA blackout.
He told The Advertiser the agenda would include important talks on battery storage of electricity, state-based renewable energy targets and measures to ensure power system security and reliability.
“Our goal is clear. We want reliable and affordable energy supply as we transition to a lower emissions future,” Mr Frydenberg said.
“But, at all times, energy security is paramount and that is why we need better co-ordination and co-operation between the states, territories and the Federal Government to harmonise state and federal-based renewable energy targets.”
Australian Energy Council chief executive Matthew Warren said the report raised a number of operational issues requiring more detailed analysis, particularly given the high levels of intermittent wind generation now operating in SA, which sources 41 per cent of electricity from renewables.
Mr Warren said the AEMO report confirmed the remaining generation in Adelaide and in the South East could not respond quickly enough, putting too much load on to the interconnector with Victoria, which in turn tripped and blacked out the entire system.
“It reinforces that we may need to think differently about the potential effect of extreme weather events, given we are now operating a more weather-dependent electricity system,” he said.
Grattan Institute energy program director Tony Wood said the report showed the state’s world-leading use of renewable energy was a factor but no firm conclusions should be drawn until the final report’s release.
The Australian Conservation Foundation’s Suzanne Harter said the SA outage should not scare Australia into retreating from clean renewable energy but, instead, prompt better understanding of how to make a secure, smooth transition.