5 October 2016, The Guardian, SA blackout due to ‘transmission system faults’ in extreme weather, report finds. Energy economist says preliminary report makes clear South Australian event was ‘a transmission failure, not a generation failure’. The Australian Energy Market Operator has pointed to South Australia’s extreme weather last week as the prime cause of “multiple transmission system faults”resulting in a statewide blackout. In a preliminary report the regulator cites severe weather as the factor triggering the transmission system failures “including, in the space of 12 seconds, the loss of three major 275kV transmission lines north of Adelaide.” In addition to the transmission lines, Aemo notes in the late afternoon, after “multiple faults in a short period”, 315mW of wind generation disconnected, which affected the region north of Adelaide. It says that uncontrolled diminution in power generation “increased the flow on the main Victorian interconnector [Heywood] to make up the deficit, and resulted in the interconnector overloading”. The overload of the Heywood interconnector tripped the system, which caused the blackout. Read more here
Category Archives: Australian Response
5 October 2016, Renew Economy: Australia on the outer again as Paris climate treaty comes into force. Australia will find itself again on the outer in global climate change efforts, excluded from key decision-making processes because it is one of a minority of major polluters that has yet to ratify the Paris climate accord. The European Union on Tuesday voted overwhelmingly on Tuesday to ratify the Paris treaty, a day after India announced it would also do the same thing. The ratification is expected to be formally voted by ministers later this week, taking the total well past the trigger point of 55 countries and 55 per cent of total global emissions. The speed of the ratification – less than a year after the Paris treaty was voted to general acclimation last year – compares with the eight years it took to get its predecessor, the Kyoto Protocol, into force after it was adopted in 1997. The move will impact Australia in two ways. Firstly, only those countries who have ratified the treaty can vote in negotiations for the next step in the treaty’s implementation. That means Australia will be excluded from these processes, although it may have observer status. It also means that Australia will reinforce its status as a climate outlier, a reputation it earned when former prime minister Tony Abbott and former Canadian prime minister Steven Harper were branded “climate villains” because of their opposition to action on climate change. Read More here
4 October 2016, The Conversation, South Australian blackout: renewables aren’t a threat to energy security, they’re the future. In the wake of South Australia’s wild weather and state-wide blackout, both Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull and Energy Minister Josh Frydenberg have emphasised the importance of energy security. Turnbull stated that the blackout was a wake-up call, suggesting that reliance on renewables places very different strains and pressures on a grid than traditional coal-fired power. The assumption that these politicians and others are working off is that South Australia’s wind industry has reduced the state’s energy security. But do these politicians really know what energy security means in a modern energy landscape? The baseload question. Baseload power is an economic term that refers to power sources that consistently generate electrical power, therefore meeting minimum demand. The minimum demand for electrical power from an electrical grid is referred to as the baseload requirement. The underlying assumption is that the only way of supplying baseload electricity demand is by means of power stations, such as those fired by coal, that operate at full power all day and night. This is a widely held belief in Australia. A former Australian industry minister, Ian Macfarlane, claimed at a uranium industry conference that the only serious alternative way that baseload power can be produced is by hydro and nuclear. But this is not entirely true. In 2014 South Australia got 39% of its electricity from renewable energy (33% wind plus 6% solar). Consequently, the state’s coal-fired power stations have become redundant. Read More here
29 September 2016, The Conversation, Putting carbon back in the land is just a smokescreen for real climate action: Climate Council report. Just as people pump greenhouse gases into the atmosphere by burning fossil fuels, the land also absorbs some of those emissions. Plants, as they grow, use carbon dioxide and store it within their bodies. However, as the Climate Council’s latest report shows, Australia’s fossil fuels (including those burned overseas) are pumping 6.5 times as much carbon into the atmosphere as the land can absorb. This means that, while storing carbon on land is useful for combating climate change, it is no replacement for reducing fossil fuel emissions. Land carbon is the biggest source of emission reductions in Australia’s climate policy centrepiece – the Emissions Reduction Fund. This is smoke and mirrors: a distraction from the real challenge of cutting fossil fuel emissions.Land carbon Land carbon is part of the active carbon cycle at the Earth’s surface. Carbon is continually exchanging between the land, ocean and atmosphere, primarily as carbon dioxide. In contrast, carbon in fossil fuels has been locked away from the active carbon cycle for millions of years. Carbon stored on land is vulnerable to being returned to the atmosphere. Natural disturbances such as bushfires, droughts, insect attacks and heatwaves, many of which are being made worse by climate change, can trigger the release of significant amounts of land carbon back to the atmosphere. Changes in land management, as we’ve seen in Queensland, for example, with the relaxation of land-clearing laws by the previous state government, can also affect the capability of land systems to store carbon. Burning fossil fuels and releasing CO₂ to the atmosphere thus introduces new and additional carbon into the land-atmosphere-ocean cycle. It does not simply redistribute existing carbon in the cycle. Read More here