September 29 2016
Canberra Times
South Australian blackout 'nothing to do with renewable energy': experts
Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has put Australia's renewable energy mix up for discussion as a political storm unleashed by the blackout in South Australia forced experts to insist the statewide electricity failure had "absolutely nothing" to do with that state's heavy reliance on wind power.
Energy market analysts compared the once-in-50-years storm that lashed SA on Wednesday night to a 2003 incident in the US when a single tree branch touching an overloaded power line turned the lights off for 50 million people in the US and Canada.
Political blame game
Politicians are pointing fingers after South Australia's state wide blackout with the PM and SA Premier attributing it to unprecedented storms and the Greens on climate change. Courtesy ABC News 24.
The cascading electricity outages that resulted plunged 50 million people into darkness and became the biggest blackout in North American history but the official investigation stressed that the mother of all blackouts had been a "grid issue" not a lack of baseload power generation capacity.
As politicians, including Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce and high-profile South Australian crossbencher Nick Xenophon used Wednesday's blackout to call into question the move to renewables, energy market experts dismissed any causal link to wind energy.
Renewables questioned in wake of SA blackout
Hugh Saddler, a senior principal consultant at infrastructure specialists Pitt & Sherry said the SA shout down has "absolutely nothing to do with renewable energy"
"It's a transmission system failure. It's a rare event but one that has happened in various places around the world, including much larger events in the US and Canada," he said.
South Australia was hit by more than 80,000 lightning strikes, including a direct strike on a power station, during savage storms that brought down 22 electricity transmission poles.
"It had nothing to do with wind generation. It's all very confusing for people and politicians are using it as an opportunity to get on their ideological hobby horses," said Mr Saddler.
South Australia's use of renewable energy faced questions following a statewide blackout on Wednesday, but experts say the there is no connection.
Bruce Mountain, director of carbon and energy markets at consultants CME said the state's power supply dipped by 40 per cent after the weather knocked out transmission lines from interstate and gas-fired generators close to Adelaide could not increase production quickly enough to make up the demand.
"The loss of so much capacity led quite quickly to the automatic disconnection of the interconnectors and hence the cascading failure of the South Australian power system," he said.
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Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce and Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull both raised concerns with South Australia's energy infrastructure on Thursday.
By Thursday evening there was still 75,000 properties without power in SA and numerous roads closed as 120 kmh winds continued to batter the state.
The unanimous expert view of the causes of the blackout did not prevent Mr Turnbull and senior colleagues focusing on the renewable Australia-wide, with Energy and Environment Minister Josh Frydenberg directed by the Prime Minister to gather state energy ministers to discuss the supply issue.
Mr Joyce blamed South Australia's rush to renewables for the blackout, saying: "The question has to be asked, is [South Australia's] overreliance on renewable energies exacerbating their problems and their capacity to have a secure power supply?"
Forty per cent of SA's electricity generation is from wind turbines.
Mr Turnbull criticised Labor governments in multiple states for setting "unrealistic" renewable energy targets.
"I regret to say that a number of the state Labor governments have over the years set priorities and renewable targets that are extremely aggressive, extremely unrealistic, and have paid little or no attention to energy security," he said. "This is not just focused on SA but the same observation can be made about Queensland or indeed Victoria."
Greens energy spokesman Adam Bandt described Mr Turnbull's position as "reprehensible".
"We need more renewable energy to tackle climate change, not less," he said.
"Using a severe storm to attack renewables is a reprehensible act from a Prime Minister who should know better.