From the “it’s a 50 year storm I tell you” department, comes this interesting find by Larry Hamlin. While apologists rush to blame “climate change enhanced severe weather” for failure of the grid in South Australia, Hamlin finds that this problem with wind turbine farms maintaining frequency and causing a blackout was foreseen and published. If only some people had the sense to pay attention.
Guest essay by Larry Hamlin.
In a 2014 report issued by the Australian Energy Market Operator Ltd (which operates the national energy market) & Electranet (which operates the national electricity transmission grid) these agencies examined the credible events that could occur in South Australia (SA) with loss of electrical system control that could lead to a state wide black out.
The report noted (https://decarbonisesa.com/2016/07/15/the-unfolding-energy-crisis-in-south-australia-was-foreseeable-and-foreseen/) that the continuing and growing use of wind turbines (which do not have synchronous generators that stabilize the electric system) to meet SA electrical load combined with a loss of interconnection would result in:
This finding clearly should have provided caution to SA government and political leaders that their head long rush to push ever greater use of wind energy in the state to reduce CO2 emissions (given that SA population is more than 20 times below that of California the CO2 emissions reduction here is absolutely trivial) was creating increased risks of electrical system price and supply upheavals.
Now that price upheavals and a state wide electrical black out have occurred SA government officials and politicians along with renewable energy media supporters are trying to conceal the clearly foreseeable and foreseen outcomes that flawed climate change energy policy have created.
These wind energy SA renewable energy use issues were also clearly identified in an article published in the Transactions of the Royal Society of South Australia where the significant electrical system reliability problems created by renewable wind energy in SA are addressed in detail.
This study specifically addressed the black out concerns noted by the Australian Energy Market as follows:
This analysis exposes the extraordinary energy market distortion that the politically mandated use of renewable energy has created.
Renewable energy cannot be reliably used without placing demands on electric system stability that can only be provided by dispatchable fossil power plants.
Yet renewable energy is given preference in use over fossil plants based on political policy mandates even though the costs associated with electric system stability must be provided by fossil plants which experience lower operating hours thus increasing fossil plant production costs.
Additionally these electric system stability costs climb as more and more renewables are placed in use. Renewables energy projects however are never held accountable for these increased electric system stability costs that occur and in fact these increased system costs are concealed from view by renewable energy advocates.
The extraordinary distortion of energy market prices created by the mandated use of renewables is further addressed in the Royal Society study as follows:
With the huge worldwide attention now focused on the state wide black out event in SA perhaps the significant reliability impediments and huge energy market distortions that use of renewables has crated for integrated electric systems can be brought into the light and finally dealt with in the open instead of being hidden from view through the deception utilized by renewable energy advocates.
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