The transmissions lines were blown over. Wouldn't of mattered if the electricity was generated by coal, gas,solar, wind or rubbing two sticks together, there still would of been a blackout.
However as one denier told me. Wind Turbines are nothing more than a big fan. The bigger the fan the more wind it produces. Therefore all those Wind Turbines created a lot of wind which blew over the transmission line supports. :)
I could be wrong but I think S/A relies on renewable energy for a fair chunk of its power supplies. ,so when the real power stations comes back on line the system is up and running swiftly,the solar and wind power are much slower to bring things up to speed as they rely on whether conditions sun and wind,so that means a percentage of the population is without power for much longer.
The "real" power stations are already up and running. The solar and wind is up and running. The problem is the broken lines and poles that transport the electricity to the users blacked out. Once the poles and lines are fixed there will be no more people without electricity.
The real question is WHY did all the towers crumble. Surely they should be made to stand greater winds than what we had in the last two days.
it was not just one or two it was lots of them. Saw a video on facebook with the towers playing skipping trouble is they slipped OOOPPPSSSS.
SA is in trouble as they sell most of their power interstate then have to buy it back. Cant see the economics of that but then the government is run by politicians so that would perhaps explain it.
There would not be any hands in anyone's pockets would there.
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Not sure it was that severe. It was windy but here at Mannum it was not that bad to be extra special.
I think it may have been worse further north but I dont watch TV or listen to wireless so only see whats on the net.
I njust think that when they build those towers there should be some guideline to withstand the worst storm ever on record plus perhaps 50% to 100% more.
In industry you never built to minimum as it is a recipe for disaster. Every thing is over specked to allow for the event that cant happen but always seems to come just after the job is finished.
Be interesting to see if they buckled or they were pulled from the ground but then I suppose that will be swept under the carpet.
Also are these towers very old ones (I dont think so) or if newish how were that not built to withstand the 50 year storm. When was that storm last year or fifty or seventy years ago.
If I was the boss someone would get their but severely bruised so be interesting to see how it pans out.
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11 Mtr house Boat based at Mannum hoping to travel up the Murray as far as I can get then drift back again
Power from Victoria . Most systems have Atleast another back up feed for continual supply .. All done through control room and mostly on auto switching .,
One in fifty is nothing and if they can not handle that then god help them when it comes to the one in one hundred the rest of the country plans for.
Still remember 2012 when we had no power for 5 1/2 days due to high transmission lines being down. Not just local but a wide are of the SEQ. I think we were the longest without but still managed ok.
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Is there only one set of transmission lines feeding every part of SA or did the towers get blown over on all the different major supply lines ? Surely each type of generating system whether renewable or not has it's own feed to the grid and can be used as a backup - how can you lose the whole state ? We get some pretty intense east coast lows with cyclone like wind speeds here in Newcastle just look at the ships that have ended up on our beaches. Usually if we lose power it's because trees have brought the lines down not that the transmission towers have been blown over. Maybe I'm missing something here but surely there is more to the story than just the loss of these towers. I recently retired from an aluminium smelter which to prevent freezing has transmission lines coming in directly in from 2 different coal fired power stations just in case one is lost - maybe SA needs to have a similar backup arrangement with either NSW or WA.
Here is an article that pretty much confirms what most of you are saying.
Sorry...the link no longer works but it was an article from The Australian newspaper with a picture of the concrete footings on one of the towers that toppled over......
Honestly, I have more concrete holding my letterbox up than what they had on the feet of the power pylons.
-- Edited by Dickodownunder on Monday 3rd of October 2016 11:10:13 AM
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I guess build it to a price combined with the unusual extreme wet softening the ground and then extreme wind events whipping the power lines adds up to situation the engineers hadn't fully thought through. More along the lines of "these other towers have been up for yrs so a bit more load with slightly bigger cables will be fine.... oops, must have been the way they were built, wasn't my lack of design that caused it.
The time must surely be here for back up power and decentralised power, store the excess and use it for the peak load periods so the system isn't so reliant on these main feeder lines. store the wind/solar/what ever in battery banks within the grid substations and at home, when the power goes out the substation has back up power and so does each house, then at least the fridge and freezer doesn't go off and thee can be some basic lighting. Doesn't make sense to me that you have solar on the roof but give the power away for peanuts, yet have to buy it back at top $$ and then they can't actually guarantee the supply.
T1 Terry
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I believe 3 of 4 major HV lines were taken out by tower failure.
THE MAJOR ISSUE IS - the system shut down to protect itself - imagine the short circuit at 166000 or higher volts. So in one way the system worked.
PS One of the feeder lines from Vic was also off for maint but would not have affected the outcome it seems. Also the very sensitive switching on wind farms appears to have tripped a bit early and they are looking at this.
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