Super-cell thunderstorms have been lingering over much of Eastern Australia this week. In the early hours of Tuesday morning, we saw severe storms hit Adelaide and surrounding towns, impacting parts of the electricity network and leaving thousands of customers with power outages.
Weather
Tuesday’s early morning thunderstorms brought 20+mm of rainfall in Adelaide and surrounding areas. The ABC reported that the storms caused flash flooding and 43,000+ lightning strikes across the state. Weatherzone Journalist, Anthony Sharwood, published an article yesterday where he stated that Tuesday was the wettest November day for Adelaide in 18 years.
Rainfall over Adelaide and surrounding areas through the early morning of Tuesday 28th November 2023
Source: WeatherZone
Customer impact
SA Power Networks tweeted that roughly 30,000 people in South-East SA were affected by power outages related to the storms.
Paul Roberts from SA Power Networks later told the ABC that by 6:30pm yesterday evening there were 1,000 remaining customers still experiencing outages.
Market Events
In addition to the outages noted by SA Power Networks, the thunderstorms caused multiple trips and unplanned outages in the state’s network. Below is a table of notable market-related events that occurred in the SA region yesterday:
| Time* |
Event |
| 05:01 AM | Unplanned outage of Templers-Waterloo 132 kV line. As per AEMO Market Notice 111777.
This invoked the constraint set ‘S-X_WTTP+CB’. |
| 05:35 AM | Tungkillo-Roberstown No.1 and No.2 275kW lines trip simultaneously. As per AEMO Market Notice 111778.
This invoked the constraint set ‘S-RBTU’. |
| 05:36 AM | Robertstown No.1 and No.2 Syncons both tripped. As per AEMO Market Notice 111779. |
| 05:47 AM | Tungkillo-Roberstown No.1 and No.2 275kW returned to service. As per AEMO Market Notice 111780.
This revoked the constraint set ‘S-RBTU’. |
| 07:43 AM | Unplanned outage of North West Bend – Roberstown No.1 132 kV line. As per AEMO Market Notice 111785.
This invoked the constraint set ‘S-NWRB’. |
| 11:30 AM | North West Bend – Roberstown No.1 132 kV line returned to service, with the constraint set ‘S-NWRB’ revoked for the 11:35 dispatch interval. |
| 12:00 PM | The SA ENERGY price spikes to the price cap $16,600/MWh for the 12:00 dispatch interval.
This spike coincided with the first dispatch interval of the invocation of the ‘S-SETB_N-2’ constraint set (and specifically the ‘V::S_SETB_TBSE_2’ constraint equation), which: (a) Relates to ‘Loss of both South East – Tailem Bend 275kv lines reclassified as credible contingency.’ (b) Had the effect of clamping exports from VIC into SA: i.e. from +237MW (i.e. west) at 11:55 to -34MW (i.e. east) at 12:00 (c) Is similar to the ‘V^^S_SETB_TBSE_2’ constraint equation we have written about before.
|
| 12:35 AM | Templers-Waterloo 132 kV line returned to service, with the constraint set ‘S-X_WTTP+CB’ revoked for the 12:40 dispatch interval. |
* All times are NEM time (i.e. UTC+10)
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