Victorian (Australia) Electricity supply meltdown.

[member_xyz]

https://www.smh.com.au/national/victoria/blackout-ahead-for-130-000-homes-as-power-system-falters-20190125-p50tn7.html

Old "Reliable" coal fired Base Load generation shut down and neglected.
New renewable supply inadequate and extremely poorly planned.

But politicians and regulators will come up with another plausible explanation, record heat. Yeah right, we live in Antarctica.

 

[member_xyz]

https://www.theage.com.au/national/victoria/blackout-ahead-for-130-000-homes-as-power-system-falters-20190125-p50tn7.html

Wind generation fell to 25% of capacity by early afternoon (peak heat conditions), surprise surprise.

But wait for it, minister is saying "its all a fault of old unreliable coal generators". Who the fuck is going to invest in coal generation and reliability when politicians believing in new religion can't wait to shut it down.

Nothing wrong with renewable energy, but everything is wrong when its driven by incompetent political agenda.

[beanflying]

As the bulk of the currently operational wind generation happens within 50-60km of me it was nearly Calm for the bulk of the day increasing with the change and sea breeze later in the afternoon currently nearly calm again so get a grip on some basic FACTS and not on the coal shovel before spouting 

The Turbines along the Gippsland coast are not optimized for Northerlies either so the wind in the Eastern part of the State would likely see them either disabled deliberately or well below performance due to the wind direction.

I grew up in the Latrobe Valley and went to Uni there too when Mr Kennett screwed the SEC a very very long time ago for a short term gain. Privatization is what has failed not just the current or even the previous state governments.

[Electro Detective]

The real issue, as I HUMBLY see it,  is that the high rise shoe/sardine/dog box developments are drawing a LOT of power that just isn't there when DEMAND is over the top,

especially if the shoe/dog box owners are not at work,

or back at shoe/dog box HQ because of a work power failure >>>>>>  come utility cutoff 

or at best any unemployed shoe/dog box owners occupiers are taking away the headroom power that battling Victorians expect to be there,
to cover on freaky 40 C plus day/s
or freezing winter nights.


It's already a BALL BREAKER as far as traffic goes    because of these money spinner high rise shoe/dog box developments

but crunch time comes when bean counter pocket filling BS talk dies in the ass on a 40 C day,

and they have to pull the plug on a few unfortunate suburbs via Spin The Bottle 

and blame the 'old system' that's being asked to perform what even a 'new system' could not possibly cope with   

BRING BACK THE SEC and F off the slimy profiteers who aren't even Victorians,

and I doubt they are even Australians!!!!!! 

[jonovid]

not enough VIC hamster wheels? anyhow Government of Victoria can always go to Elon Musk & ask for some batteries.
I remember when coal was cheap & reliable,
I remember when A heat wave was a period of 3 or 4 days back-to-back. 
not just one day here or there. why is it only hot on public holidays this yr?   
I remember when Bureau of Meteorology predicted temperatures, was the same as temperatures independently recorded by farmers.
I remember when the weather had nothing to do with politics!
I remember when Al Gore predicted a flood.  nothing happened.
I remember when Elon Musk was not seen as a god.

[Electro Detective]

I remember when Electricity and Gas were 'utilities', not buy and sell corpoRAT 'commodity' clownage games at the Stock Market Casino 

I remember when Petrol was affordable and did not vary in price by 30 to 40 cents a litre (e.g. $1.19 to $1.49, then $1.59 to $1.29, then $1.39 to $1.69 etc)

FOR NO REASON AT ALL, and no one brings it up. They must believe we are stupid ignorant SUCKERS. Who can disagree with that? 

Are the middle east oil goons pumping prices on the westerners who have forgotten the art of DIY? 


How many suited crims have jacked this country, and how far do they think they can keep up the BS ?

Especially once the  -unmetered immigrant bring in-  and  - back door Visa Forever extension flogging- honeymoon period wanes,
and starts to put a strain on an already overloaded infrastructure

Australians are SUCKERS to have let it go so far, and better prep up for worse, because that's how apathy works   



Awaiting some quality apologist spin, no straight up BS please   

[beanflying]

You were ranting fine until you got to spouting anti immigration  and in particular as today is the celebration of white invasion by illegal immigrants of this country we all live in.

Kennetts ideological privatization of State owned entities was a dumb ass move. Slow Easy and Comfortable used to make a profit in spite of being bloated to hell with employees and was in need of a good trim not a flog off. Since then virtually zero capital has been spent on grid feed that is not renewables of all types and taking Hazelwood offline without considering a replacement first was an act of Lunacy in a growing state. We have Loy Yang A & B making 50% of our power now over 30 years old and nothing in the pipeline I am aware of to replace them as base load producers.

[cdev]

why utilities and other public services are being privatized

[NiHaoMike]

Maybe Ohmconnect can look into making its program available in some parts of Australia?

[beanflying]

Maybe Ohmconnect can look into making its program available in some parts of Australia?

Why would we want yet another overseas parasite taking money from our power usage to guilt home owners into reducing it? This is putting a single bandaid over a sieve for a companies profit.

What we need is infrastructure spend on the grid (not more patches) and an increase to base load supply (from a mix of sources).

There is about ZERO to be gained in terms of 'profits' from the private companies dropping capital spend so they keep propping up what assets they own or control from the formerly Government owned entity.

We subsidize and incentivize Wind and Home Solar (soon to be some larger commercial solar online too) but they will never meet base load demands on their current increase in capacity. We as a society have about a snowballs chance in hell of putting a Nuclear Plant anywhere in spite of being one of the worlds larger suppliers of the raw ingredient so that is off the table for consideration.

Our current Base load mix is Brown Coal, Natural Gas and Peak backup from some Hydro when needed with a small (but growing) contribution of renewables. Brown Coal is far from ideal from an environmental and public health standpoint but we have some very very large reserves available for ongoing generation if needed but we are also getting this sort of idea from State Government. Current Mix for information https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_power_stations_in_Victoria_(Australia)

The policy will also ensure new projects comply with Victoria’s plan to have net zero emissions by 2050 and puts strict requirements on private sector proposals for new uses of coal.

What we need is a responsible path forward with Government spend and leadership including buying back or building additional assets if needed. IMO this means we need to be planning for at least one more large Brown Coal plant to get us through the next 30-50 years until renewables can get closer to meeting demand.

[apis]

I had the impression Australia was a developed country with a lot of technical competence. Australia is also the worlds third (or was it second) biggest exporter of uranium fuel. So you ought to be able to build a high quality reactor or two. Add to that lots of solar and wind of course. Hydro can help act as storage for wind and solar. The brown coal you can leave in the ground, it isn't going anywhere. It will still be there if future generations need it.

But I suspect the people who owns the coal power plants and coal mines wouldn't like that.

[tautech]

I had the impression Australia was a developed country with a lot of technical competence.

Competent governance is quite another thing !

Like many govt's they can't see the wood for the trees and even if they could they wouldn't/haven't got the balls to do something about it.
How many prime ministers you lot been through lately Bean ?

[beanflying]

It has been a long while since we even tried to have a sensible debate about a local Nuclear based solution. Power Generation is fairly much a State by State thing but Nuclear regulations are Federal which doesn't help. That is before you even get to not in my backyard issues.

We still haven't been able to come up with a sensible place for our own Nuclear waste in spite of very stable geology and vast part of the country with very low population densities. Still ongoing but for background there may be possibly 500-1000 people total within 100km of this proposed site https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-02-17/barndioota-nuclear-waste-site-planning-outrages-locals/9456052

Victoria has one of the largest Brown Coal reserves in the World so Coal would be the sensible interim measure. Our Gas Fields in this State are fairly good but they are finite and fortunately we are unlikely to allow fracking to stretch that.

[beanflying]

Competent governance is quite another thing !

Like many govt's they can't see the wood for the trees and even if they could they wouldn't/haven't got the balls to do something about it.
How many prime ministers you lot been through lately Bean ?

As per the previous post Federal to State is part of the issue. Our current substitute tosser in charge is on borrowed time as we have a Federal Election in the next few months as he was so loved before he rolled the 'Elected PM' for the job he will receive an appropriate result soon 

[Electro Detective]

All that political stuff is just the usual smokescreen/s to cover up back door deals and or some incompetence thrown in for scapegoat purposes, end of story.

You can forget nuclear power ever happening here too, there's no money in it for the external 'third parties' and their slimy two faced rep mates here

And if it does happen (good luck with that)  you can take it to the bank there will be an impossible 'accident' somehow, and nuke power gets scrapped for another century.

Smell the coffee folks, it's the same recycled BS every decade   

Do we want Australia to be a phuqued country like many OS places where they fell asleep at the wheel?

LOL, imagine impoverished aussie boat people headed for the Africa, China, Middle East for a 'better life' over there,
with a 24/7 barbie happening on deck, flanked by slabs of discounted Aldi beer and watching the footy/cricket/tennis on their kids iPads   

Nah, can't happen... or can it?   

[apis]

If I understood it correctly, the grid and generators are failing because of stress caused by an unusually extreme heat wave.
Has it occurred to people that what is causing the more frequent and more extreme heat waves could perhaps be a little phenomena called global warming? And that in turn is primarily caused by burning coal. Maybe investing in more coal isn't such a good idea.

[tautech]

If I understood it correctly, the grid and generators are failing because of stress caused by an unusually extreme heat wave.
Has it occurred to people that what is causing the more frequent and more extreme heat waves could perhaps be a little phenomena called global warming? And that in turn is primarily caused by burning coal. Maybe investing in more coal isn't such a good idea.

Well yeah......bah humbug !
Some reading for ya:
https://www.eevblog.com/forum/renewable-energy/$14-000-per-mw-renewables-economic-suicide/

[beanflying]

Caused by a load peak and a lack of capability to meet that peak. We have recently decommissioned one of the larger (really dirty) base load plants and have been increasing the use of Gas as base load which historically was used for peak generation due to the shorter run up times. One partial day of extreme heat is not a heatwave but the system is already under pressure without it.

I used the word interim with Coal for a reason, Brown coal in particular is not a good fuel for lots of reasons but we need something to tie the system over until renewables/storage can take more of the base load needs.

[cdev]

If I was Australian, I would be using solar power for 99% of my cooling needs, that seems like a no-brainer as the more of one you have the sunlight the more electricity you have to cool.

If you can get some trees in between your roof and the sun during the hottest times of the day that reduces your cooling load a lot too.

Light colored roofs (in the infrared range) make a huge difference too. Investigate what colors work best for your climate.

[apis]

If I understood it correctly, the grid and generators are failing because of stress caused by an unusually extreme heat wave.
Has it occurred to people that what is causing the more frequent and more extreme heat waves could perhaps be a little phenomena called global warming? And that in turn is primarily caused by burning coal. Maybe investing in more coal isn't such a good idea.

Well yeah......bah humbug !
Some reading for ya:
https://www.eevblog.com/forum/renewable-energy/$14-000-per-mw-renewables-economic-suicide/

Right, I had forgotten that it is not the coal/gas/oil industry who are lobbying to sell more of their products. No, everyone who says climate change is real is actually part of an evil global communist AND jewish conspiracy to kill 6 billion people (not entirely sure why? probably just b'cause their evil and communists and let's not forget jews). How could I forget!

(N.B. sarcasm)

[NiHaoMike]

Shortly after Japan had their nuclear disaster that caused an energy shortage, the Japanese were quite good about saving energy to mitigate the problem. Why are the Australians having difficulty doing that?

Light colored roofs (in the infrared range) make a huge difference too. Investigate what colors work best for your climate.

I have always supported the idea of painting the roof white in hot climates. Maybe the power companies should offer rebates on white roof paint?

[Gyro]

If I was Australian, I would be using solar power for 99% of my cooling needs, that seems like a no-brainer as the more of one you have the sunlight the more electricity you have to cool.

If you can get some trees in between your roof and the sun during the hottest times of the day that reduces your cooling load a lot too.

Light colored roofs (in the infrared range) make a huge difference too. Investigate what colors work best for your climate.

I find it rather strange that a country which...

- has such a low population density relative to its land mass,
- has so much uninhabited wilderness / desert,
- has such a high sunshine record,

... isn't totally self-sufficient in solar power. 

[beanflying]

Because Solar works for 8 hours a day and Victoria has a population of over 6 million (not so low density). We need an interim solution until storage solutions are improved for renewables for base load.

Individual home grid feed solar is fairly common and subsidised, but the storage option there has payback figures that don't add up at that scale yet either.

[tautech]

If I was Australian, I would be using solar power for 99% of my cooling needs, that seems like a no-brainer as the more of one you have the sunlight the more electricity you have to cool.

If you can get some trees in between your roof and the sun during the hottest times of the day that reduces your cooling load a lot too.

Light colored roofs (in the infrared range) make a huge difference too. Investigate what colors work best for your climate.

I find it rather strange that a country which...

- has such a low population density relative to its land mass,
- has so much uninhabited wilderness / desert,
- has such a high sunshine record,

... isn't totally self-sufficient in solar power. 

See quoted reply for post #11 in reply #13.
Governance, or complete lack of. 

Simply, no vision for the future and the future needs of the population.

Shortly after Japan had their nuclear disaster that caused an energy shortage, the Japanese were quite good about saving energy to mitigate the problem. Why are the Australians having difficulty doing that?

Tsunami can hit any installation near the coast, their disaster was somewhat of their own making.

[Gyro]

Because Solar works for 8 hours a day and Victoria has a population of over 6 million (not so low density). We need an interim solution until storage solutions are improved for renewables for base load.

Individual home grid feed solar is fairly common and subsidised, but the storage option there has payback figures that don't add up at that scale yet either.

Sure, I understand that, but surely 'national infrastructure' sized solar farms would ease (completely satisfy?) your daytime peak grid load. Our solar only works during (sunny) days too, but it feeds into the National grid with all the other generating sources.