The great blackout of 2016

[Big Crow]

Hi all, long post but hopefully provides some clarification to some points raised within this thread.

Structural and Electrical Engineer here. I have no skin in the game regarding renewable energy, nor politics. It does however piss me off to see misunderstanding peddled as fact, or people just plain making things up, which perpetuates further misunderstanding. People falling over themselves to score political points from an emergency excasserbates this tenfold.

Anyway, let's set a few things straight.

1. The blackout was caused by an issue with transmission. Namely a series of towers falling over in a significant wind event. This has nothing to do with generation, or wind farms, or any other conspiracies.

2. If you want greater reliability then you have to pay for it. Most of these towers are very old, around 50-60 years. To put it simply, the wind event that occurred exceeded the design wind speed for many of these towers, and they failed. Sure, we could strengthen them or even replace the line, but we're talking about hundreds of towers in one feeder and we'd have to pay for that. Regardless of who's in power at North Terrace, there just isn't the public appetite to incur that kind of cost (see point 3). It also wouldn't be worth it for a 1 in 50 year event - in some cases winds may have actually been higher than 1 in 50 levels locally at the site of the towers.

3. If you want greater reliability you have to pay for it (v2.0). Another thing which might help is an extra interconnector to Victoria or NSW. We currently have two - Murraylink and Heywood. Some very clever people have been looking at how best to go about installing another one for a while now, but for now haven't figured out the best way to make it work yet. Once we figure it out, it's probably worth it for better power security.

4. We pay high electricity prices in SA primarily because of the large spread of our transmission network, and comparatively low population. Compare that situation to other states which require less transmission lines to serve more customers. Of course our cost per consumer is higher. No conspiracy here.

5. The power went across the state because the system acted exactly as it is designed to do. Every other state's network is designed the same way, to protect the larger system for damage. Now, getting power back on did take a long time. Remember the interconnectors from point 3? One of them is a DC link, up near Berri. To restart the DC link you need the circuit within to have power, and in our case this comes from the Heywood interconnector. To get the power there, the network has to be turned on again gradually, working around to the DC interconnector. Doing so too quickly results in further outages. Put simply, it's a long way and takes a long time to do safely.

6. Temporary poles/towers. No state has a large amount of emergency infrastructure just sitting around gathering dust. It would be uneconomical and not useful. Western Power (ElectraNet's WA equivalent) are sending us some of theirs, and I believe there are some from Queensland also. ElectraNet would do the same for other utilities if the situation was reversed.

 

[Vader]

I am sure other states have blackouts for same reasons as SA but the entire state doesnt get knocked out.
Labors push for renewable energy, while warranted, has been pushed too quickly and left the state vulnerable to outages.
SA energy prices have sky rocketed and yet the people who pay have a shody service.

You do realise that the blackout had nothing whatsoever to do with renewables?

Prices are definitely related to renewable energy, and that's a fair complaint. But not the blackout.

 

[Sam_Malone]

Given how disgracefully he's handled himself over the crisis, he'll remain in hiding for some time I reckon.

He has so much class. Good on him.

 

[Slippery Pete]

4. We pay high electricity prices in SA primarily because of the large spread of our transmission network, and comparatively low population. Compare that situation to other states which require less transmission lines to serve more customers. Of course our cost per consumer is higher. No conspiracy here..

Except that South Australians paying way more than any other state is a relatively new phenomenon.

Cmon, people weren't born yesterday.

 

[Red mist]

The river by the golf course in Gawler was out of control. It was flat out Friday night.

I've got a job at Virginia I don't think I can get to.

 

[Sam_Malone]

I've got a job at Virginia I don't think I can get to.

3 day weekend.

Never hurts to hear those words. Unless you're self employed and then the floods can GAGF'd

 

[ThreeLeggedCrow]

Subsidised wind farms force closure of local base load stations and which now rely on base load using 1000km of poles and wires from interstate .


Wind farms are non functioning (useless) outside of there operating parameters and their reliance will plunge the state in darkness .

Interstate connectors add a 1000km of potential things to go wrong with no other local base load and their reliance will plunge the state in darkness.

So the reliable local services are removed and have two new services applied to the system that have great potential to put this state into darkness ( 3rd world ) .

Can you have local base load , wind and interstate connectors ? Somethings got to give.

 

[Red mist]

3 day weekend.

Never hurts to hear those words. Unless you're self employed and then the floods can GAGF'd

Self.

 

[Sam_Malone]

Self.

I'll give you $500 to render a few yobs gobs shut?

 

[FantasticShirt]

 

[Bicks]

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[feenix67]

Except that South Australians paying way more than any other state is a relatively new phenomenon.

Cmon, people weren't born yesterday.

Remember that s**t people believe about privatisation and competition?

 

[Vader]

2. If you want greater reliability then you have to pay for it. Most of these towers are very old, around 50-60 years. To put it simply, the wind event that occurred exceeded the design wind speed for many of these towers, and they failed. Sure, we could strengthen them or even replace the line, but we're talking about hundreds of towers in one feeder and we'd have to pay for that. Regardless of who's in power at North Terrace, there just isn't the public appetite to incur that kind of cost (see point 3). It also wouldn't be worth it for a 1 in 50 year event - in some cases winds may have actually been higher than 1 in 50 levels locally at the site of the towers.

This is a very valid point. People look at the image of the pylon that was pulled out of the ground, see the abysmally inadequate footings, and blame the Labor Government.

That power pylon is probably 50-60 years old. I don't know which party would have been in power back then, but it sure wasn't the Rann/Weatherill government.

It's also worth noting that power pylon footings are an engineering issue, and would be determined at the operational level of the company which installed the pylon in the first place. Anyone who thinks that the politicians (of either variety) have any say in this are seriously deluding themselves. No Minister for Energy is ever going to bother himself (or herself) with the minutiae of power pylon footings.

I agree that the footings for that pylon were manifestly inadequate. No argument at all. But blaming Labor for it is stupidity beyond the idiotic.

 

[brucetiki]

That power pylon is probably 50-60 years old. I don't know which party would have been in power back then, but it sure wasn't the Rann/Weatherill government.

Would've been a Playford Liberal government back then.

 

[Big Crow]

I agree that the footings for that pylon were manifestly inadequate. No argument at all. But blaming Labor for it is stupidity beyond the idiotic.

Yeah, blaming politicians for the design of a structure makes no sense whatsoever. Politicians don't design structures, and there aren't a lot of engineers in parliament - although you could easily convince me that there should be!

Just on the footings, they're actually a lot bigger than they appear to be in that photo - seems like the angle makes them appear very shallow. They're not, but they're not huge either. Just like the towers that collapsed due to steel failure, they were likely not up to withstanding the wind speeds we saw last week, but the footings gave way before the steel. From experience they are about a couple of metres deep, and around 450mm diameter. The footing's capacity for pull out failure would not have been helped by saturation of the soil from heavy rain.

These towers are designed differently to other structures around us, like buildings, houses, public infrastructure and the like. Because there are so many towers repeated over the length of a transmission line, small savings in materials add up to significant savings when multiplied over a large number of structures. Because of this they're heavily optimised, and the design method is different from that used on other structures. Structural design is typically based on first principles limit state design, but design of transmission and communication towers utilises a lot of empirical data from actual testing - literally build a tower in the middle of the desert, load it up and examine how it fails (sounds fun, right?). Long story short, these towers are incredibly efficient, and don't have the same redundancy built into them as other structures, which is fine if you optimise them correctly from a statistical loading event perspective. It does mean that when you have an event equal to or greater than what they've been designed for the probability of failure is much higher.

 

[Slippery Pete]

Remember that s**t people believe about privatisation and competition?

I've never been in favour of privatizing essential services.

There's plenty of useless government bloat you can clip before you even think about selling off essential services.

 

[Slippery Pete]

Would've been a Playford Liberal government back then.

You never miss an opportunity do you...

 

[Bicks]

You never miss an opportunity do you...

And how many Labor Governments since to do due diligence of the system & Infrastructure ?? Ummmmmm

 

[feenix67]

All state governments are hopeless.

The end

 

[1970crow]

Wow, my hubby couldn't believe those footings, either. He's used much bigger, stronger footings for much smaller devices. Ridiculous!

It doesn't really matter. When a huge amount of lateral force is applied either the footings will give way or the structure itself will fail if they don't. End result is the same. Unless there's a line release system, once one tower went down, there was always the likelihood of a domino effect.

 

[1970crow]

All state governments are hopeless.

The end

And unneccessary.

 

[FantasticShirt]

And unneccessary.

If you want to talk about unnecessary look at local govt first. 3 tiers is too many, Federal to handle the whole of nation issues, state to handle state specific. Scrap the local government bullshit (more so now that they're becoming increasingly aligned to political parties).

 

[Lawrst]

4. We pay high electricity prices in SA primarily because of the large spread of our transmission network, and comparatively low population. Compare that situation to other states which require less transmission lines to serve more customers. Of course our cost per consumer is higher. No conspiracy here.

You're kidding yourself if you don't think renewable energy has played a large part in higher prices.

 

[Big Crow]

You're kidding yourself if you don't think renewable energy has played a large part in higher prices.

Never said it didn't play a part, but it's also not the main driver.

 

[treeman]

If you want to talk about unnecessary look at local govt first. 3 tiers is too many, Federal to handle the whole of nation issues, state to handle state specific. Scrap the local government bullshit (more so now that they're becoming increasingly aligned to political parties).

I've always thought you scrap the state government and you keep the local.

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