A collection of some articles written to explore different aspects of what happened on Friday 31st January 2020, where extreme winds uprooted transmission towers around the Moorabool – Mortlake 500 kV Line and the Moorabool – Haunted Gully 500 kV Line
A different type of market notice today (speaking of potential curtailment of embedded generation in South Australia) points to the future … accelerated by Heywood repairs in this instance.
Read MoreAEMO Market Notice 83206 today notifies the broader market of the rectification work on the Heywood transmission (damaged 13 months ago) to be conducted from Friday morning this week.
My participation in yesterday’s session about ‘Energy Technology – performing under (heat) stress’, organised by the Australian Institute of Energy, was an opportunity to reflect on what I saw as the Four Headline Events that gave example to a great many challenges we will have to grapple with as this energy (and climate) transition gathers pace.
Another islanding event separated the SA region from the rest of the NEM yesterday (Monday, 2nd of March). Allan O’Neil investigates what happened before the event and possible causes.
As time has permitted, I’ve invested some time to prepare this first stage of a review of what went on during the period from 31st Jan 2020 to 17th Feb 2020 – a period during which the South Australian region formed its own frequency island following the transmission line damage. A period we’ve called an ‘accelerated accidental experiment’.
Two weeks ago (Monday 17th February) a ‘temporary fix’ was put in place to reconnect SA with VIC following the transmission line outage that began on 31st January 2020. Well, we’ve islanded again today….
Guest author, Allan O’Neil, takes a look at what’s happened in the (islanded) market for FCAS services in South Australia over the past two weeks with Heywood out of service. He notes:
“generators in SA as a group would have paid out roughly twice in contingency raise FCAS costs what they earned from selling energy”
Investing some time over the weekend with a some higher-speed data on output of rooftop solar PV systems across VIC and SA reveals some interesting observations about what happened on Friday 31st January 2020 in conjunction with the transmission damage and Heywood trip.
Guest author, Allan O’Neil delves further into understanding what happened in response to the transmission tower failures on 31st January 2020 that sent system frequency in South Australia and led to a large reversal of flows.
Cautioning readers that I am a novice at reading frequency data in this manner, I take a first look at how the frequency in Melbourne and South Australia varied at the time of the transmission outage at 13:24:30 on Friday 31st January 2020.
In order to help us (internally) map out all the different threads to explore in terms of what happened on Friday 31st January 2020 on a remarkable day in the NEM, I’ve identified a few of the key threads here over the weekend. More articles to follow as time permits….
Today (Fri 31 January 2020) saw NEM-wide demand reach levels never seen before (excepting 29th January 2009). This was just the start of the white knuckle ride.
Published at 12:02, this is a view looking forward to the expected (very high) peak in electricity demand across the NEM this evening.