Broken Hill Solar Plant | Photo by Jeremy Buckingham
By Jo Nova
The lights went out in Broken Hill. A storm blew over seven transmission towers connecting it to the national grid on October 17th. About 19,000 people live there, and with a 200MW wind plant, a 53MW solar array and a big battery, plus diesel generators it was assumed they’d be OK for a while without the connection to the big baseload plants, but instead it’s been a debacle. They’ve had nearly a week of blackouts with intermittent bursts of power, barely long enough to charge the phone.
The fridges in the pharmacies failed, so all medications had to be destroyed, and emergency replacements sent in. School has been closed. Freezers of meat are long gone… Emergency trucks are bringing in food finally and hopefully the schools will reopen today. But the full reconnection will not happen until November 6th.
Western NSW blackout ‘a green power warning’
By Joanna Panagopououlos and Alexi Demetriadi
Mayor Tom Kennedy said state and federal governments “needed to learn” from the experience, and how wind and solar energy are “almost useless” in a crisis without baseload power.
“(Wind and solar) are worse than useless (in a crisis like this), because it’s detrimental to having a consistent power supply,” he said. “I’d hate to see what happens in the capital cities in a similar crisis.”
The bad news is that when there is no reliable 50Hz baseload supplier of electricity, the solar panel inverters just don’t mesh well with the diesel generators. The frequency of the diesel generators varies slightly as the load changes, and these fluctuations cause issues with solar inverters, which need a stable frequency to synchronize properly.
Hence, in a blackout, the solar panels were not just useless, they were a threat to the system, so people were asked to switch them off:
Essential Energy on Friday was urging customers in Broken Hill to switch off their solar supply main switch to protect the 40-year-old backup gas-turbine generator providing power to the town and surrounds.
From within Broken Hill, a forlorn Jack Marx is dotting out his story in the Australian via his phone:
Broken Hill: Powerless and left to live like mushrooms
…Broken Hill, has been in blackout for five days.
The power comes on from time to time, but goes out just as quickly. It gives us just enough time to power our phones and read emails from energy providers sent the day before, alerting us to the fact the power was about to go out. They also warn we don’t have much time, and to avoid using unnecessary electrical devices – air conditioners, fridges or fans that need a power point.
The unreliable generators survived the storm but were still useless. Giles Parkinson suspects (fervently hopes) that this is just a bureaucratic issue, rather than a technical one:
Broken Hill has a wind farm, a solar farm and a big battery. So, why are the lights out?
Giles Parkinson, RenewEconomy
The fact that the wind farm and the solar farm aren’t operating with the transmission line is understandable. But the big battery is supposed to be – and that could in turn have allowed the wind and solar to produce. No one is saying what’s gone wrong, but many suspect it’s a matter of oversight rather than technology.
“You need to talk to Transgrid,” said one. “You should talk to Essential,” says another. “Ah, that’s AGL’s asset, you better talk to them.” And then. “No, Tilt Renewables own those. Give them a ring.” And finally, “we don’t have an official statement now, but we are trying to sort it.”
It certainly was mismanaged. But that’s just it, isn’t it? A decentralized grid has a million moving parts, and thousand agencies that can all screw up together. Complexity has a cost. But it’s not just mismanagement,a wind and solar system is not just expensive, but lacks inherent stability. Sure, eventually, if we hock the nation we can find a way, but why? To make storms nicer in a hundred years?
Solar power is not just superfluous, it’s toxic
The big Broken Hill battery finally restarted on Saturday to help the town cope with the evening peaks in demand for electricity. But the intrinsic problem remains in these remote communities, erratic solar power doesn’t work well with diesel, and everything needs to be fully backed up in any case. As we saw in Alice Springs, it didn’t take much solar power, for one big cloud to cause a blackout. The Northern Territory was so scarred by that blackout in 2019, they’ve left 4 solar plants sitting there idle ever since, in fear they’ll crash the Darwin Katherine grid.
So much money and so little to show for it:
Even with a price tag, our renewables future is already broken
Nick Cater, The Australian
The Silverton Wind Farm and Broken Hill Solar plant were supposed to produce enough electricity to power 117,000 homes. They’re supported by AGL’s 50MWh battery facility at Pinnacles Place, one of the largest in Australia. Yet Broken Hill, population 19,000, has been in a semi-permanent state of blackout since a storm brought down the transmission line connecting the town to the east coast grid.
Some $650m worth of renewable energy investment within a 25km radius of Broken Hill has proved to be dysfunctional. The technical challenges of operating a grid on renewable energy alone appear insurmountable using the current technology.
Instead of spending $650 million dollars on solar and wind and a battery, we could have bought two brand new useful diesel generators for every remote town in Australia, and then when transmission towers fall down, they won’t be left in the dark.
“the solar panels were not just useless, they were a threat to the system, so people were asked to switch them off”
And in other states, the energy company turns them off anyway.
So much for solar as backup power in an emergency. Or the absurdity of free money for solar. Your investment is worth zero if you are not allowed use your solar. And half that cost was paid by everyone else, who lost their money too thanks to STC certificates.
Meanwhile the country is building endless transmission lines to places where no one lives, another 30,000km of them, but Broken Hill relies on just one. And who pays for all these transmission lines? You do. Transmission lines we would not need without wind farms.
But you can sleep nights, knowing that spending billions a year on doubled electricity prices, Australia’s CO2 is within 1% of China which produces 60% of the world’s iron, with our coal. All thanks to our great sacrifices. We are saving the world. Even if the effect of emissions on world CO2 is absolutely zero.
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I guess you reap what you sow. Bowen take note.
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Unfortunately David, Bowen won’t take note, at least not until we have a major blackout in Melbourne, Sydney or Canberra.
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My commiserations to the people of Broken Hill who are the current crash test dummies as intermittent electricity generation demostrates its inherent weaknesses.
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The answer of course is more wind and solar , Bowen and the ABC will be already working out their talking points and will be blaming coal for the problem.
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Imagine if the staggering amounts of money Australia has thrown away on wind, solar and Big Battery plantations had actually been spent on something useful.
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Again if you can’t reliably supply a big town of thousands of people, then how do you supply big cities with millions of people at risk?
We must only build reliable base-load energy for our future and forget about unreliable, toxic W & S.
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Renewable energy is safe and effective.
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and reliable and cheap and scalable and commandable and adequate and safe for the bats and eagles, raptors and whales and dolphins and only requires 1000x the land and 30x the transmission lines and associated land and just looks great on our dramatic cliffs and sea vistas and an asset in huge clearings in National Parks. And of course every 20 years all has to be totally replaced. Which is why they are called renewables.
And the old extremely toxic panels and blades have to be buried, exempted as they are from our environmental laws which otherwise would make them illegal. But that’s an environmental disaster for another generation, a legacy if you will.
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TdeF
Re “And the old extremely toxic panels and blades have to be buried, exempted as they are from our environmental laws which otherwise would make them illegal. But that’s an environmental disaster for another generation, a legacy if you will.
Your riddle of the morning –
When is vegetation not vegetation?
When you are a wind or solar developer with a project in Qld who’s development clearing is outside the Vegetation Management Act
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Yes, Green projects are always exempted from environmental controls. The hypocrisy is astounding. After all, the sky is falling‘.
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Again, does any sane govt really think we should be wasting trillions of $ on unreliable toxic W & S + toxic batteries for decades into the future?
See Bloomberg expert group’s costings + their ABC + Aussie net zero donkeys.
After about every 15 to 20 years we’d have to replace the toxic mess again and again.
Don’t Aussies also have a right to ask why we’d want to destroy thousands of klms of our environments both onshore and offshore and for zero change to our climate or temp by 2050 or 2100?
Surely Aussies aren’t as insane as Labor, Greens and the Teals?
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Neville,
No they are not insane they have just swallowed the BS their ABC and fellow propagandist have been feeding them for the last 20 years.
Until the chickens come home to roost and it effects them and a major city they will keep their collective heads in the sand with their fingers into their ears going la la la
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To paraphrase BB King’s mournful song:
“The Hill has gone,
Broken Hill has gone, blacked-out again”
Free power causes rotten meat, save the planet and lose your fridge: all the school children with time on their hands could be out protesting Climate Justice Now! Save Our Freezers! My Phone Is Dead… help.
Talking of ‘October Surprises’, your veritable high priests are forecasting ‘snow to 1,000m’ for Tasmania 31 Oct, aka Halloween, and for the following day, 1 Nov (the official commencement of Cyclone Season), more snow with below-freezing overnight temps.
Do not feel alone, however, as on the same day, the beginning of Cyclone Season, NZ’s Mt Cook is in for ‘snow showers’ with a max of -11 and windchill down to -27. Thank you Broken Hill, your action has spared us the horrors of a mild, pleasant, Spring day.
PS. Oh no, the UN has sanctified 1 Nov as ‘World Vegan Day’ – you’ve got to be choking!
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better get some more diesel in to power my generator – the big blackout is coming
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A debacle it certainly is but not one without precedent! Even before copious wind and solar intermittent power the lower half of Queensland suffered a similar fate! Adelaide too! power stored in expensive batteries is no panacea. Only electricity generated 24/7 can provide the required juice of normal life.
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Power in SA was only restored after the transmission line from Victoria was started again. It required several days to get each separate “capacity” to start up.
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Old town gas network of pipes posing a lethal threat to construction crews in Hobart and Launceston
And we think obsolete wind towers and solar arrays are a problem! At least they are visible. Ugly but visible. Old gas is both lethal and invisible.
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Presumably when the wind generators and solar panels reach the end of their working life Australia will at least have the coal and iron ore to send to China to make the steel which they can buy to build their replacements.
I can’t see wind and solar powering the manufacture of their replacements or the batteries, or of any of the goods that people need for a modern lifestyle.
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Not just industrial production.
How would you feel, taken by ambulance to hospital for urgent cardiac surgery, at midnight with no wind blowing?
And with diesel rationed because of shipping problems.
Can a quadruple bypass, or repairs to a torn aorta, be done by candlelight?
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“Can a quadruple bypass, or repairs to a torn aorta, be done by candlelight?”
The answer is “Yes”
The next question is “Will it be successful?”
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Power to the people! “https://www.breitbart.com/2024-election/2024/10/27/watch-live-donald-trump-holds-historic-rally-in-madison-square-garden/” Real people support RFK Jr., Elon Musk, Tucker Carlson, Tulsi Gabbard, Melania, Trump Family, Dana White, Dr. Phil
Off track I know but worthy all the same. This is history making stuff that, if fruitful, will short circuit Leftwing politicians everywhere and drag the Western World back from the brink of catastrophe!
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The NY mayor was chastised for enabling Trump to use Madison Square Garden for this rally.
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This terrible situation has occurred in the wrong town.
Canberra promotes itself as “100% renewable” powered.
It’s a great pity that the transmission towers connecting Canberra to the grid weren’t the ones that failed.
If the power went out in Canberra we could hope that the politicians, bureaucrats and public serpents wouldn’t be able to inflict any more stupid ideas on the gullible public.
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Solar power is not just superfluous, it’s toxic
The solar panel inverters just don’t mesh well with the diesel generators was not taught at primary school . I spent nearly 60 years with a screwdriver and multimeter but it did not click in my head until I read it here this morning.
I do not know what David Crisafulli did before 2012 but I suspect he had interests in humanities.
Maybe it is a good chance for more active bloggers here to start educating him on link between technology and economy… Nowadays you do miracles with software but there $$$ attached to any sophisticated solution to simple problems.
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If you are not making your own electricity then this paragraph sums up why you should be placing it at the top of your to-do list:
Of course Blackout Bowen is not even given a mention.
On my second stint involved with Broken Hill after it was connected to the grid with a line the mines paid for, my boss of the day would be on the phone with the States Mines and Energy Minister asking when would power be up in these circumstances and how much royalty would the State forego for their lack of supply. He never missed an opportunity to seek compensation from suppliers for their lack of service.
You can bet that household insurance premiums in Broken Hill are going to increase again.
Have the HSC exams started yet?
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There was also a backup to the emergency generator, but it wasn’t repaired from a year earlier….
And “they” forgot that Broken hill keeps to Croweater time.
Maybe “they” will realise that stocks of components to assemble emergency transmission towers should be held, plus suitable craneage.
But it is just a mining town….
West of Bourke.
A bit like Kalgoorlie.
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On a Wednesday page (23/10/24) I posted “Looking at the AEMO ” Price and demand” prediction for South Australia today.” “So what happens if there is way too much generation? That is the battery is charged, the gas and diesel generators are off, the interconnectors are at max, then the wind suddenly blows extra hard and the sun gets active as the clouds part.”
The result was several helpful comments with good clues from people who obviously have good electrical theory but still did not see the problem. Possibly unaware that i studied analogue electronics engineering and worked for an electrical utility for 8 years. After some research and watching what happens, it seems S.A. aims for a minimum gas generation of around 80MW and also avoids the other two situations. The gas fired state does not ever seem to turn it off.
Joanna Panagopououlos and Alexi Demetriadi answer well.
“(Wind and solar) are worse than useless (in a crisis like this), because it’s detrimental to having a consistent power supply,” he said. “I’d hate to see what happens in the capital cities in a similar crisis.”
S.A. is again looking interesting at minimum demand, exporting and importing for stability 28/10/24
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The linked chart will give you a better understanding of what is happening in SA:
http://nemlog.com.au/graphs/co2e_sa_yesterday_today.png
You will see yesterday that rooftops (yellow line) peaked at just under 2000MW. There was a bit of wind. A minuscule amount of gas and a bit of grid solar at midday all being notionally exported as the pink line shows. The black demand curve went negative a few times but the export to Victoria maintained local grid power generation.
SA has the synchronous condensers that provide sub-second frequency control. The problem with Broken hill is that there are no synchronous condensers and the two 25MW gas turbine probably lack the required inertia for stability. Batteries are good for 6 second surges but no rotating inertia for the sub-second requirements. It may be that the gas turbines are just not suited to frequency stabilising.
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The interconnector to Tasmaina has been at zero a long time. Wonder if today is not typical.
https://nemlog.com.au/graphs/co2e_tas_yesterday_today.png
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The other query is what quality transmissions towers are they building these days? We’ve had transmission towers ( extremely large ones) in place in Australia for probably at least 60 years. None of them seem to fall over in storms. But the towers built recently, maybe in the last 30 years, appear to be substandard.
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The towers to supply Broken Hill were paid for by the mines of the day. They were not gold plated. They outlasted the mines they were built for.
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Say after me: “the only way people wake up is the hard way”.
Yes, bring it on to capital cities, let the great green energy lie wakeup begin.
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Ruinables need a nuclear/coal/gas powered grid to be able to operate.
Battery vehicles are charged from the Grid.
Hydrocarbons are the energy storage molecule of life.
Carbon Dioxide is essential for life.
All energy is intrinsically nuclear energy.
Sun worship is prescient- all thank the giant hydrogen fusion reactor.
my 6c worth
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FWIW – and elsewhere
“Cuba Remains Paralyzed by Energy Crisis, Despite Partial Restoration of Electrical Grid”
https://hotair.com/headlines/2024/10/27/cuba-remains-paralyzed-by-energy-crisis-despite-partial-restoration-of-electrical-grid-n3796351
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The preppers were right … 😁
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