They flog our gas off for peanuts but we have no gas turbine generators on standby !!

Mains voltage is down from 244V to 219 V at my place. So much for PV systems generating too much power and raising the voltage like the scare mongering LNP keeps telling us !

It's what happens when you de-industrialize a country and replace a productive economy with a fake services economy that runs off a continual growth in debt and immigration.

Just take a look a what everyone is doing these days. All I see is rows of coffee shops with people sitting inside talking poo to each other ! What do these people actually do ? If they are not on a pension I bet they are not involved in making things.  I bet they are working in useless businesses like energy retailers and micky mouse marketing or real estate scumbags. Just sh.t that pollies like to boast about here.

For a country like Australia we should be building the biggest solar plants and feeding that power into the grid. It's not as though we are short of land or sunshine. Just crap rubbish lawyer scum governments people keep voting in that have no ambition.

It's what happens when you de-industrialize a country and replace a productive economy with a fake services economy that runs off a continual growth in debt and immigration.

Portland smelter, 60,000 Victorian homes face power cuts as AEMO hits brakes

Alcoa Australia's Portland smelter was hit with a second mandatory power curb in two days on Friday and about 60,000 homes and businesses faced two hours of rolling power cuts as Melbourne sweltered in 42 degree heat.

The Australian Energy Market Operator ordered mandatory load shedding of about 100 megawatts from the Portland smelter from 1pm AEDT and 200 MW from about 60,000 customers across a vast swathe of Melbourne suburbs from midday as the power system struggled to plug a supply gap of about 400 megawatts with about 2000 MW of thermal generation offline.

AEMO chief executive Audrey Zibelman told ABC Radio the market operator was banking on an early cool change coming in around 2.30pm to ease the power crisis but she said it was a "very dynamic situation" and "changing constantly".

During a second day of extreme heat in Victoria, two units of EnergyAustralia's Yallourn brown coal power station in Victoria, and units of AGL Energy's Loy Yang A brown coal plant in Victoria and Liddell coal plant in NSW were offline along with EA's Tallawarra gas plant n NSW

The power crunch entered a second day with demand in Victoria soaring above 10,000 MW during the extreme heat which was expected to reach 44 degrees in Melbourne and 47 degrees in Mildura in the state's arid northwest.

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Suburbs affected stretched right across Melbourne from Cranbourne in the city's southeast and Rowville in the east to Kalkallo in the north, Corio in southwest and the town of Castlemaine north of Melbourne.

A sweltering 24 hours has already seen more than 45,000 homes in Victoria and South Australia without power at some stage due to extreme heat stress on the electricity grid and other reasons. Temperatures in SA eased on Friday and the state wasn't expecting any further power cuts.

AEMO ordered "load shedding" - mandatory power cuts - just after 12pm AEDT after earlier activating its Reliability and Emergency Reserve Trader (RERT) program, under which it asks large power users and retailers to curb their usage and send power back to the grid to plug a shortfall in supply of about 400 MW.

Alcoa acknowledged it could again have to reduce the power to its potlines, a situation they can only endure for an hour or so before freezing up: "AEMO has asked Alcoa Portland Aluminium to be on standby under the RERT this afternoon. AEMO operational control will decide whether this request is activated."

Ageing plants

The failure of so many thermal power stations exacerbated the shortage of wind generation in SA on Thursday and underlined the vulnerability of ageing plants to extreme heat. A second 370 MW unit unit at EnergyAustralia's Yallourn plant went offline early Friday for repairs to a boiler tube.

The utility had kept the unit in operation at reduced capacity through the worst of Thursday's grid crisis after discovering the fault on Wednesday, but finally had to take it offline because the condition of the tube leak deteriorated, a spokesman said.

"We will be assessing the unit throughout the day," he said. "At this stage it's unclear when it can return to service". EA is working to return the other Yallourn unit to service next week. it is also struggling to return its 435 MW in NSW Tallawarra gas plant to service.

A spokesman for AGL said the company expected to be able to return the offline Liddell and Loy Yang A units to service within a few days.

On Thursday chief executive Audrey Zibelman said AEMO had about 400 MW of available capacity under the RERT, and could call on another 400 MW or so from the Portland smelter, which is Victoria's largest customer.

Portland Aluminium had been ordered to cut back for about two hours on Thursday evening as the power grid struggled to maintain supply during the heat, which saw record temperatures in Adelaide and surging energy demand, and faces the possibility of further outages on Friday.

It was the second day running that AEMO had to activate the rarely used RERT scheme to plug gaps in supply. Last week the market operator and market participants mobilised extra capacity to avert forced power cuts on three days of extreme heat across NSW, SA and Victoria.

On Thursday this week about 20,000 homes in Victoria lost power at some stage on Thursday and overnight as temperatures soared above 40 degrees during the day stayed in the mid-to-low 30s until the early hours of Friday morning.

Baronvonrort wrote on Jan 26^th, 2019 at 10:41am:


Simple solution is to build more solar !! What's the problem ?