2016 South Australian blackout

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. Kangaroo Island did not lose its supply,[1] as the Kangaroo Island power station had been built to supply the island in the event that the power cable under Backstairs Passage might fail, so the island was self-sufficient for electricity when the mainland grid failed.

Storms

On the day of the failure, South Australia experienced a violent storm reported as being a once-in-50-year event.[2] There was gale force and storm force wind across wide areas of the state. It included at least two tornadoes in the vicinity of Blyth,[3] which damaged multiple elements of critical infrastructure.[4] The state was hit by at least 80,000 lightning strikes.[5] The wind damaged a total of 23 pylons on electricity transmission lines, including damage on three of the four interconnectors connecting the Adelaide area to the north and west of the state.

Power grid

The South Australian power grid is operated by ElectraNet and connected to the National Electricity Market via two interconnectors to Victoria. These are the Heywood interconnector (recently upgraded to 650MW at 275kV)[6] in the southeast of the state and the Murraylink (220MW at 150kV) HVDC further north, connecting Berri to Red Cliffs in Victoria.[7] The Heywood interconnector had been down for upgrade earlier in the year, and was initially blamed for the widespread outage.

Blackout

The weather had resulted in localised power outages throughout the day, but at around 3:50 p.m. local time, almost the entire state power grid cut out. Early indications were that as the transmission lines in the Mid North failed due to damaged pylons, the automatic safety features in the network isolated the generators to protect both the generation facilities and the end consumers' equipment. Over a short period, this resulted in most of the state's distribution network being powered down as the transmission network acted to protect it.

The preliminary report from the Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO) identified that problems started 90 seconds before the eventual failure. The first line to trip was a 66kV line near Adelaide, and it was automatically reset. The first major fault was 47 seconds later when two phases of the 275kV line between Brinkworth and Templers grounded two phases of the circuit. The Davenport–Belalie line tripped with one phase to ground, was automatically reset, but tripped again nine seconds later, so was isolated for manual inspection, with the fault estimated to be 42 km (26 mi) from Davenport. One second later (7 seconds before the state went dark), the Hallett Wind Farm reduced output by 123MW. Four seconds later, a third 275kV transmission line showed a fault, the Davenport – Mount Lock is on the other side of the same towers as Davenport–Belalie, and the fault was estimated to be 1 km (0.62 mi) further on. Finally, all within one second, the Hornsdale Wind Farm reduced output by 86MW, Snowtown Wind Farm reduced output by 106MW, Heywood interconnector flow increased to over 850MW and both circuits tripped out due to the overload. Supply was then lost to the entire South Australian region of the National Electricity Market, as the Torrens Island Power Station, Ladbroke Grove Power Station, Murraylink interconnector and all remaining wind farms tripped.[8]

Restoration

As so much of the network had been shut down, the authorities needed to act carefully to bring it back online and provide a stable network. This was initiated in the first few hours following the start of the outage, initially using the Victorian interconnectors to establish a stable frequency on the network, and gradually add South Australia's power generators to the network and restore power to areas as soon as possible. The initial focus was to restore power to the Adelaide metropolitan area, and suburbs started to regain power within about three hours, and much of the city power was restored by 10 p.m. By the following morning, power had been restored to most of the areas of Adelaide and the areas south and east of it that did not have storm damage to the distribution network. The substantial damage to the transmission network north of Adelaide meant that large areas of the Mid North and Eyre Peninsula did not have power restored within 24 hours, and further damaging weather indicated that it could be at least the end of the weekend before some of those areas were restored.[9]

AEMO had contracts with two "System Restart Ancillary Services" (SRAS) providers to help bring the network back up. One of these had also suffered storm damage, but would not have been useful anyway due to its location in the network. The second was unable to provide enough power to restart any of the Torrens Island Power Station units, so Torrens Island needed power from the Victorian interconnector to be restarted. AEMO was still investigating the failure of this second SRAS at the time of its interim report.[8]

By the morning of Friday 30 September 2016, about 10,000 properties had not yet had power restored since the blackout on Wednesday afternoon, and 18,000 more had lost power due to distribution network faults caused by continued stormy weather. An additional transmission line fault near Tumby Bay was only detected as ElectraNet tried to power up the system, and this fault prevented the power generator in Port Lincoln from being used to power the lower Eyre Peninsula.[10]

Due to the extensive nature of the damage, temporary transmission towers were sent by Western Power; these towers can reach a height of 58 metres and take only one day to erect. It is expected that the towers will remain in use for 6 to 12 months while the permanent repairs are made.[11]

Consequences

The Flinders Medical Centre, a major hospital in Adelaide's southern suburbs, was affected when the fuel pump for the diesel-powered back-up generator failed after operating for about an hour. As a result, 17 patients were transferred from the intensive care unit to the adjacent Flinders Private Hospital, which still had an operating generator.[12] Several embryos were also lost at Flinders Fertility.[13]

The zinc smelter operated by Nyrstar at Port Pirie was expected to be shut down for several weeks, as the diesel back-up generator failed after about four hours, and the content of the smelter cooled and solidified.[9]

Immediate political responses

A number of politicians commented whilst the emergency was unfolding. The Australian Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce told ABC "[Windpower] wasn't working too well last night, because they had a blackout",[14] while the Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull said state governments had paid "little or no attention to energy security."[15]

Energy minister Josh Frydenberg said that "energy security was the (federal) government's "number one priority".[16] He later said "it has to be underlined that this was a major weather event."[5]

South Australian senator Nick Xenophon said he supported renewable energy but that the state's approach relied too much on wind. South Australian Premier Jay Weatherill said Xenophon had "jumped the shark" as the situation was yet to be analysed.[5]

Queensland One Nation senator, Malcolm Roberts urged all governments to "exit all climate change policies" while South Australian Greens senator Sarah Hanson-Young said it was "pathetic" that people were politicking while emergency service officers and volunteers are flat out responding.[5]

Connections to the state's renewable energy targets and the storm damage were contradicted by others.

Opposition Leader Bill Shorten accused the Coalition of "playing politics with what is a natural disaster" and that there was no link between the storm damage and the state's renewable energy target.[15]

Some experts also dismissed suggestions of a link between renewables and the outage.

The Grattan Institute's Tony Wood was reported as saying "If you've got a wind farm or a coal-fired power station at the end of a transmission line, and that system either is taken out by a storm or is forced to shut down to protect itself from a storm, it doesn't matter what the energy source is" while Clean Energy Council's Tom Butler said the weather event "created a fault in the system which has caused the generation to trip offline" and that "the Snowtown wind farm, north of Adelaide, was actually helping to prop up the state's power supply ahead of gas power stations as the network was gradually brought back online."[17]

Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews told ABC radio that Turnbull had conflated two issues, that "the poles and wires had blown over".[18]

Ensuing flood

Following the power outages, the same storm resulted in major flooding, which was dubbed "unrelenting" by South Australia Services Minister Peter Malinauskas. A flood emergency was issued for towns and suburbs north of Adelaide.[19] Flood warnings were also issued for the Adelaide hills area.

See also

References

  1. ↑ "Thousands still without power as wild weather continues". InDaily. 28 September 2016. Retrieved 30 September 2016.
  2. ↑ Waldhuter, Lauren; staff (29 September 2016). "SA weather: Worsening conditions cause more blackouts as BOM warns of more storms". ABC News. Retrieved 29 September 2016.
  3. ↑ "SA weather: Blyth residents cleaning up after tornadoes sweep through state's mid north". ABC News. 29 September 2016. Retrieved 29 September 2016.
  4. ↑ "SA blackout: Why and how?". 2016-09-28. Retrieved 2016-10-02.
  5. 1 2 3 4 Bourke, Latika; Koziol, Michael (28 September 2016). "Minister Josh Frydenberg, senator Nick Xenophon question renewables in wake of South Australia blackout". Sydney Morning Herald. Retrieved 30 September 2016.
  6. ↑ "SA-Vic (Heywood) Interconnector Upgrade". ElectraNet. Retrieved 30 September 2016.
  7. ↑ "SA power outage: How did it happen?". ABC News. 29 September 2016. Retrieved 29 September 2016.
  8. 1 2 Washington, David; Siebert, Bension (5 October 2016). "Blackout report leaves renewables debate dangling in the breeze". InDaily. Retrieved 5 October 2016.
  9. 1 2 "SA weather: Restoring power 'very delicate affair'". ABC News. 29 September 2016. Retrieved 29 September 2016.
  10. ↑ "Flood risks for SA as Premier flies into blacked-out region". InDaily. 30 September 2016. Retrieved 4 October 2016.
  11. ↑ Weber, David (29 September 2016). "Western Australia sends transmission towers to storm-affected SA". Australian Broadcasting Corporation. ABC News. Retrieved 30 September 2016.
  12. ↑ Edwards, Verity; Puddy, Rebecca; Owen, Michael (29 September 2016). "Storm leaves SA without power, heads to NSW, Victoria, Tasmania". The Australian. Retrieved 30 September 2016.
  13. ↑ Shepherd, Tory (30 September 2016). "Power blackouts from storm have destroyed embryos at Flinders Fertility, leaving families and medics distressed by their loss". The Advertiser. Retrieved 30 September 2016.
  14. ↑ Riordan, Primrose; Evans, Simon (28 September 2016). "SA blackout: Nick Xenophon, Barnaby Joyce blame renewables". Australian Financial Review. Retrieved 30 September 2016.
  15. 1 2 Anderson, Stephanie (29 September 2016). "Malcolm Turnbull criticises state governments for 'unrealistic' emissions targets over energy security". ABC News. Retrieved 30 September 2016.
  16. ↑ Lane, Sabra (29 September 2016). "Politicians put their spin on the blackout that plunged all of South Australia into darkness". 7.30. Retrieved 30 September 2016.
  17. ↑ Doran, Matthew (29 September 2016). "SA weather: No link between blackout and renewable energy, experts say". Retrieved 30 September 2016.
  18. ↑ Hutchens, Gareth (30 September 2016). "'Ignorant rubbish': Daniel Andrews slams Malcolm Turnbull over SA blackout comments". Retrieved 30 September 2016.
  19. ↑ "'Unrelenting': flood emergency north of Adelaide as rivers continue to rise". Retrieved 2016-10-03.
This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the 10/24/2016. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.