
The entire state of South Australia (1.7M people) lost power last night - teapot01
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-09-29/south-australia-storms-residents-cope-with-blackout-wild-weather/7887120
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tonteldoos
There is actually a whole political thing developing around this between
renewable energy opponents and proponents. Ostensibly, the blackout was caused
by a main transmission line (interstate feeder) being knocked over, disrupting
frequency synchronisation, and activating failsafes.

However, because SA gets 40% of its energy from wind farms, it's now being
suggested that having more local baseload capacity in the form of fossil fuels
may have prevented this.

Ironically, the severity of the storm itself (it's being a called the worst
storm in 50 years) is being blamed on climate change.

I guess we'll see what's true and what's not in due course.

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teapot01
Yep the Right wing has come out and blamed it on renewables, the left wing has
blamed it on climate change and the centrists are just calling for blood.

The reality is with 22 Main transmission towers which feed the state collapsed
in high winds, even additional coal/gas stations would not have saved the day.
At the time of shutdown, wind energy was producing close to 1000MW, it was the
loss of transmission towers that caused frequency events leading the National
Energy Market operator to Isolate the state from the rest of the Country. The
cascading safety systems then caused all generators to shutdown.

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pbarnes_1
Reality is inconvenient when you're trying to score political points though.

Sometimes bad shit just happens and there's no one to blame.

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sirchuckalot
and no one gave two hoots

