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Wind farms lost power due to safety settings during SA blackout

Wednesday, 19 Oct 2016 09:09:39

A wild storm that smashed through SA damaged vital infrastructure, contributing to a state-wide blackout. (ABC News: Dean Faulkner)

Safety settings that kicked in during SA's wild storms caused a number of wind farms to disconnect or reduce their output in the lead up to the state-wide blackout, the Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO) has said.

But it said the most well-known characteristic of wind power — variation of output with wind strength — was not a material factor in the blackout.

South Australia was plunged into darkness with some parts losing power for days — after a mid-latitude cyclone smashed through SA in late September, damaging vital infrastructure.

A preliminary AEMO report said severe weather, including high winds, thunderstorms, lightning strikes, hail and heavy rainfall, resulted in multiple transmission system faults.

In an update of the report released today, AEMO said it was now known that five system faults occurred within a period of 88 seconds on September 28, leading to six voltage disturbances.

It said nine of the 13 wind farms online at the time did not ride through the disturbances, which resulted in a loss of 445 megawatts of generation.

"Preliminary discussions with wind farm operators suggest this inability to ride through all disturbances was due to 'voltage ride-through' settings set to disconnect or reduce wind turbine output when between three to six disturbances are detected within a defined time period," the report said.

Wind farms alter safety settings: AEMO

AEMO said several wind farms have already changed their settings to allow them to ride through a higher number of faults.

At the time of the power disturbances, thermal generators remained connected up until the SA system disconnected from the remainder of the National Electricity Market.

The Heywood Interconnector remained connected up until the sudden increase in electricity flow, resulting from the loss of generation, caused the automatic protection mechanism to disconnect the lines.

The report said the two contracted electricity suppliers had difficulties restarting services due to separate faults.

It said both facilities successfully tested their restart capabilities earlier this year, so AEMO would further explore the nature of the faults.

AEMO will release another update ahead of the December COAG Energy Council Meeting, and said a detailed report into the blackout, including final recommendations, will take up to six months to complete.

AustraliaPlus


 

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