<
https://reneweconomy.com.au/broken-hill-fiasco-shows-why-we-need-to-rethink-the-grid-and-turn-it-upside-down/>
"The iconic mining town of Broken Hill should have everything it needs to
provide electricity to its residents and industries.
Once, it did. The Central Power station supplied the region’s famous silver and
zinc mines for half a century before being closed when the town was connected
to the main grid. The facilities have since paid host to George Miller’s
Mad
Max: Fury Road, where finding fuel and power might have seemed as hard as it
did in Broken Hill this last fortnight.
Broken Hill is now dependent on the long transmission line that connects it to
the rest of the main grid, and it even has a huge wind farm, a large solar farm
and a big battery to complement the diesel generators – themselves half a
century old – that sit (supposedly) on standby.
But two weeks ago, everything went wrong. A huge storm blew down seven
transmission towers, cutting the town off from the grid and leaving it to its
own resources – which didn’t come up to scratch.
One diesel generator was out of action, the other one wouldn’t work, and the
big battery had its settings altered so it also had to sit idle, which meant
the wind farm and the solar farm could not help either. Households, unless they
had their own battery, couldn’t even use their own solar.
Power finally came back on after 48 hours, but it was off and on for most of
the week because the diesel generator was unable to cope with the scale of
demand on the local grid, and the changes of both demand and the variability of
PV.
It finally settled down once the battery had been enabled, some 10 days after
the storm hit, but in outlying towns the emergency gen-sets kept on tripping.
Homes and businesses were told to keep their rooftop solar turned off.
Transgrid, the company that owns the transmission line and is responsible for
the back-up supplies, has been the centre of attention and has copped most of
the flak. It has been racing to rebuild the fallen transmission lines and
reconnect the town, which it managed to do on Thursday night, almost a week of
ahead of schedule.
That’s a fine achievement. But many locals think the whole thing has been a
fiasco – causing immense frustration and stress, huge losses of food-stock and
other perishables, and bringing local industry to a halt.
No doubt the blame will be sheeted down to a series of bad decisions, some of
them individual. But for many in the energy industry it is much more than that,
and symbolises what is fundamentally wrong about the energy market in
Australia: It doesn’t much care about the consumer.
They argue it is time for a complete rethink of the grid – not just the
tinkering at the edges that are the product of endless inquiries. They say we
should start over by focusing on what the consumer actually needs and wants,
and work upwards from there, rather than the top down approach favoured by
regulators, rule makers, market operators, utilities and retailers."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
