The South Australian Blackout.

1.                  I predicted this would happen back in 2009/10 in my article “On Coal-fired & Other Power Electricity Generation”.  This is NOT a once-off event - it will happen again in the not too distant future, and what’s worse, will continue to do so.  Why?  Because of the continual instability created in the grid system by the constantly-changing wind generators producing insufficient stable and reliable power generation, thus requiring reliance on power from Victoria, in order to continually get South Australia out of its' insane situation.

2.                  Any change in power generation from the wind generators has to be compensated by thermal power generation units trying to ‘chase’and maintain a stable supply.  This decreases their efficiency substantially, more than obviating any gain from wind generators!  These severe load changes can create a power wave within the grid system that can create instability as the thermal units chase the wind generators' severe load changes.

3.                  Because the winds were so severe on this occasion, the wind generators would have been non-operative and locked – an automatic protection in wind turbines.  So 40% of the power was already out of service before the blackout.  So, YES!  The wind generators DID cause the blackout by increasing the load substantially on the Victoria to S.A inter-connector.

4.                  If the wind generators were allowed to operate in such severe winds they would have torn themselves apart.

5.                  I have since learn that the wind generators were supposedly operating in which case the storm was NOT that severe or anything like a 50 year storm. From BOM records it was gusting 87 kilometres per hour and in some places 115 kilomtres/hr.

 In Queensland (with our cyclones) we would refer to that as a steady sea breeze. So which lie are they choosing to tell?? The wind generators erratic behaviour could not be controlled causing instability in the grid or they were not operating because of the severity of the wind. You can’t have it both ways.

6.                  It is the first time ever in the history of power generation in Australia that transmission towers have fallen over; yet we have seen far more severe weather elsewhere than that which occurred recently in South Australia.  I have personally operated units in such weather with no blackouts or instability in the grid system, even though we lost two units.  One of them being mine!  (The unit transformer was hit by a 20ft sheet of roofing aluminium torn off in a storm.)

7.                  Even though the towers had collapsed, the grid system would not have gone out because the line protections covering those towers would have tripped within 6 cycles: i.e. one tenth of a second, isolating them from the grid and protecting the rest of the grid system.

8.                  The total hypocrisy and stupidity of the South Australian Government is unbelievable.  Because they blindly and stupidly knocked down the black bituminous coal-fired thermal power stations they had insufficient power.  Thus, they have to import it from Victoria through the state inter-connector which was never intended for that purpose.  So when it exceeded its maximum load capacity it tripped, as it was supposed to do.

9.                  Guess where the power imported from is generated? Yes, Victoria!  The Victorian brown coal-fired thermal power stations have a thermal efficiency half of that of the black coal-fired power stations which the idiots in South Australia knocked down, just to pander to the Left-wing loony Greens who could not lie straight in bed.

10.              The average price for electricity in South Australia with its ‘40%’ “renewable” energy is over $300 per megawatt hour.  On the other hand, the average cost of electricity in Queensland, NSW, Victoria, and Tasmania is around the $75.00 to $80.00 mark.  That is about only 25% of the South Australian price!

11.              To those gullible people who are so ‘passionate’ about so-called ‘clean energy’ you can expect, without doubt, the same problem if the other states ever got near to the S.A. insane “renewable” energy program.