Source: Windfarm operators taken to court over South Australian blackout | Australia news | The Guardian The Australian Energy Regulator has said a loss of wind generation after the voltage disturbances contributed to the the blackout. It alleges subsidiaries of the four companies – AGL Energy, Neoen SA, Pacific Hydro and Tilt Renewables – failed to ensure their windfarms complied with a generator performance standard requirement and had automatic protection systems to ensure continuity of supply. . . . The conservatives are suing the wind farm operators even though they had noting to do with the root cause of the power outage. Bob Wilson
Tesla, to the rescue? https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2017/12/26/teslas-enormous-battery-in-australia-just-weeks-old-is-already-responding-to-outages-in-record-time/ More battery backup - please. Keep it spreading - like a disease. .
The Hornesdale battery came online AFTER the 2016-2017 electrical grid collapse. Happily there are more battery storage systems planned for Australia. The lawsuit outrage is 'after the fact', the coal advocates are suing just the wind farm operators for not 'recovering' fast enough from this natural disaster. If there is any justice in Australia, the government will lose and hopefully pay all legal bills. Bob Wilson
Wait, you can sue your electricity provider for blackouts? Is this just an Aussie thing? Otherwise, I'm going to keep my phone charged to call a lawyer the next time my place goes dark.
My reading of Australia's 'open market' electricity quickly becomes confusing. Perhaps @alanclarkeau might share some insights. Bob Wilson
With the power in South Australia, I'm not certain - but they do give some supply guarantees here in Queensland - though that battery is in South Australia - which, I don't believe is connected (directly) to our grid here - Sth Aust and Qld share a border, but that whole area is desert - and nothing much happens there. My sister had power off for 3 or 5 days last year, and was able to claim the value of the ruined contents of her refrigerator. I see on ENERGEX's website (they're our local electricity generating company (owned by Govt) in Queensland): There are many limitations to claims - I didn't read the whole website. ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ I don't know any more than in the article above - and I'm sure there are 3 sides to the story. But it wasn't the "conservatives" suing as such. Yes, the Australian Energy Regulator is part of the Federal Government, which is presently conservative, but they act relatively independently of parliament. They were setup about 15 years ago to monitor and regulate - and since then, we've had quite a few changes in Government, and I believe both sides of Parliament give bipartisan support for the Regulator. Interesting - one of the biggest Wind Farms is operated by a company with about 5 times as much Coal Power. I wonder - how would the BIG BATTERY have reacted - would it's software have intervened similarly to protect itself?
Thanks! Upon further Google searching and another article, I found: Template for Generator Compliance Programs Review 2015 | AEMC The "Template" contains the high-level technical specs for grid generators. It is a Word document and reasonably understandable in spite of government style English. This article more clearly describes the Regulator's problem: Why is the Australian Energy Regulator suing wind farms – and why now? | The Mandarin . . . The case hinges on whether the wind farms failed to provide crucial information during the blackout which hindered recovery. In particular, the AER is arguing the software protecting the wind farms should have been able to cope with voltage disturbances and provide continuous energy supply. On the face of it, however, this will be extremely difficult to prove. . . . The regulator is arguing the operators should have let the market operator know they could not handle the disruption caused by the storms, so the operator could make the best decisions to keep the grid functioning. . . . The idea AEMO could have prevented the blackout if the wind farms had alerted it to the disruptive potential of their protective triggers is probably a little remote. . . . Based on this and personal experience with a four day power outage in North Alabama when tornados tore up the electrical grid, I still have a hard time seeing merit in this lawsuit. It has the odor of the regulator trying to cover their 'donkey'. Wind turbines are not immune to abuse: Bob Wilson
