Yesterday afternoon we saw an email alert triggered by the ‘Notifications’ widget in ez2view letting us know that the GB01 unit (the back-up diesel generator called on in Broken Hill) had switched off in the 5-minute period to 16:41 (NEM time, so 17:51 local time in NSW):
This morning, however, there’s (still) been no matching email to say that the unit’s back online. Here’s a zoomed in and updated view of the ez2view ‘Trends Engine’ chart (previously posted here) focused on the output of the backup generator:
Note that there was planned maintenance overnight on Sunday night noted in this update from the Government on Sunday 20th October (and there was another maintenance outage noted there for Wednesday evening), but what’s happened from Monday afternoon was not planned.
Here’s an update this morning from Essential Energy on their outage map at 07:01:
The notice says (all times here are NSW time):
‘INCD-216714-q
Time Off:21/10/2024 17:40:51
Est. Time On:
No. of Customers affected:2061
Reason:Transgrid Generator Trip
Additional Information:Transgrids investigations continue into what caused the generator to trip. Next update 22 Oct mid morning
Last Updated:22/10/2024 00:06:46’’
Morning news suggests TransGrid is moving in more diesel generators to augment the backup.
PS1 reporting in ABC Media
One of our team members noted the ABC reporting ‘Generator powering Broken Hill since severe storm overheated and shut down’ also on Tuesday morning.
Very interesting to me that the wind farm (199 MW) and solar farm (54MW) cannot synchronise with the diesel generator.
Yes, it seems unfortunate that they can’t at least use the windfarm and BESS alongside the diesel generator, which would seem helpful in the evening peak.
The locals keep to SA time.
You can see why.