The biggest blackout has hit South Australia since the statewide crash of 2016. It’s due to a weather calamity, but the renewables state is struggling to keep the frequency stable for a whole week without the rest of the national grid to lean on. This time they have the backup generation, but they’re going to great lengths now to stop the surges from solar and wind — there’s nowhere to dispose of excess electricity…

On Saturday afternoon a storm system blitzed out 423,000 lightning strikes and brought down some 500 lines, including the Heywood interconnector that joins South Australia (SA) to Victoria. That is out of action until Friday, so for a whole week the Star Renewables State of South Australia is on its own — Islanded from the national grid. The test is here, and right now at 6am they’re running on 80% fossil fuels and 18% wind, plus millions of dollars has been spent on frequency control, and they’re trying to turn off the solar panels.

The storm caused blackouts affecting 163,000 customers or roughly 18% of the state. Power was restored for most within hours, but there were still 35,000 properties without electricity on Monday, and some still out tonight (late Tuesday).

So, the fragile grid teeters on. But the first thing the renewable energy star state had to do was dump their solar power because it threatened to push the system over. The highest risk moment they are worried about now is midday Thursday, because it looks like being a sunny day. Oh, the woe!.

At the time the tower fell about 400MW of electricity was flowing out of SA into Victoria. But afterwards there was suddenly an oversupply of energy in SA that couldn’t go anywhere, and the frequency surged far outside the normal range.

Not only did SA Power Networks (SAPN) cut off all the panels that they could remotely control, but they even put out a facebook plea for South Australians to manually disconnect their own panels — something Paul McArdle of WattClarity doesn’t think he has ever seen before.