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Meanwhile in Australia we suffer frequent brown outs year round and rolling outages in the summer because the majority of the power generated and made available

Meanwhile in Australia we suffer frequent brown outs year round and rolling outages in the summer because the majority of the power generated and made available to people is from coal and other unclean sources. https://www.iea.org/countries/australia/energy-mix https://www.iea.org/countries/australia/energy-mix

justinclift 2y ago
Which part of Australia are you actually in where that's happening? Doesn't seem like a thing in at least the capital cities.
- smcleod 2y ago
  It's been a problem here in Melbourne for at least the last 8-10~ years.
  - justinclift 2y ago
    That's weird. When I was living in Melbourne (inner western and eastern suburbs) from roughly 2019 through to 2022 it wasn't.
  - viraptor 2y ago
    The large issues (not the local failure) are listed at https://www.aemo.com.au/market-notices?marketNoticeQuery=&fromdate=&todate=&marketNoticeFacets=POWER+SYSTEM+EVENTS%2cLOAD+SHED&MarketNoticeList=2 https://www.aemo.com.au/market-notices?marketNoticeQuery=&fr... It's very rare to see the load shedding applied/recommended. Are you sure it's not just the local part of the grid being crap?
- davidbanham 2y ago
  In Sydney there’s so much rooftop solar generation that feed-in tariffs for grid connections frequently go negative. Ie: you have to pay the grid to have it take your excess power. From memory South Australia has had multiple occasions of being 100% powered by renewables with all their fossil generators shut down. Yeah we definitely have work to do in completing the shift away from coal. The natural gas export contract situation is a shambles which makes it difficult to use for the transition as planned. It’s certainly not doom and gloom, though, and apart from lines getting aced by trees falling during storms, the wall holes are always full of electrons at my place.
  - caf 2y ago
    The current operating requirements in South Australia mandate around 80MW of gas generation for system strength reasons. So even on last Saturday when "operational demand" in South Australia reached the ballpark of -200MW (that is, rooftop solar generation was exceeding the demand in the state by 200MW), there was still 80MW of gas in the mix. (The excess was being exported to Victoria).
stephen_g 2y ago
Note for anyone coming along - we don't actually experience frequent brownouts or rolling outages here in Australia, compared to almost everywhere else in the world... We have extrememly high grid reliability standards and the grid operator pulls out all the stops when a possible lack of reserve is forecast. There have been the rare cases of load shedding, usually when thermal generators are unexpectadely offline (one a few years ago was when a coal plant actually blew up).
- smcleod 2y ago
  We really do, they're very common here in Melbourne. Most summers we experience brown outs / load shedding and throughout the year the grid here struggles with changes in load (dimming lights, short-lived UPS activation etc...).
  - justinclift 2y ago
    That wasn't my experience when living in Melbourne, though I moved away in 2022.
    - blahlabs 2y ago
      It isn't my experience either, having lived in various suburbs in Melbourne since 2012. Power outages happen, but I've been through maybe half dozen in my time here. Same with brown outs. Not unheard of but far from common. Although I spend my days at the office so maybe I miss some things, but equally I get an email if my home UPS activates and that has happened perhaps twice.
  - jhealy 2y ago
    I live in Melbourne (on Jemena’s distribution network) and this isn’t my experience. Our power is very reliable and rarely goes out. Every few years a car hits a pole or something and we get a brief period of quiet time
    - smcleod 2y ago
patall 2y ago
Even if that is the case, shouldn't a bigger grid make those events less frequent/extreme? It is not a one-way cable afterall and usually those kind of projects want to make money when prices are high (as they should be in a brown-out situation). Edit: okay, maybe not at the other end of the continent. But then you have an insufficient grid and need to invest in that too.
Dalewyn 2y ago
I'm going to point out to you that insufficient power generation capacity and/or transmission infrastructure, the reasons behind brownouts and blackouts, has nothing to do with "unclean" energy sources. In fact, if the cause is insufficient generation capacity then renewables will exacerbate it because fossil fuels are much more energy dense and consistent.
- bryanlarsen 2y ago
  A grid set up to handle unreliable sources can deal with unreliable sources. A grid that depends on reliable sources is in trouble when reliable sources go off line.
- smcleod 2y ago
  It may not, but it also disgusts me how much sun we have and how willing we are to see our power off when so much of the country is powered by coal, oil and gas.

justinclift 2y ago

Which part of Australia are you actually in where that's happening? Doesn't seem like a thing in at least the capital cities.

smcleod 2y ago
It's been a problem here in Melbourne for at least the last 8-10~ years.
- justinclift 2y ago
  That's weird. When I was living in Melbourne (inner western and eastern suburbs) from roughly 2019 through to 2022 it wasn't.
- viraptor 2y ago
  The large issues (not the local failure) are listed at https://www.aemo.com.au/market-notices?marketNoticeQuery=&fromdate=&todate=&marketNoticeFacets=POWER+SYSTEM+EVENTS%2cLOAD+SHED&MarketNoticeList=2 https://www.aemo.com.au/market-notices?marketNoticeQuery=&fr... It's very rare to see the load shedding applied/recommended. Are you sure it's not just the local part of the grid being crap?
davidbanham 2y ago
In Sydney there’s so much rooftop solar generation that feed-in tariffs for grid connections frequently go negative. Ie: you have to pay the grid to have it take your excess power. From memory South Australia has had multiple occasions of being 100% powered by renewables with all their fossil generators shut down. Yeah we definitely have work to do in completing the shift away from coal. The natural gas export contract situation is a shambles which makes it difficult to use for the transition as planned. It’s certainly not doom and gloom, though, and apart from lines getting aced by trees falling during storms, the wall holes are always full of electrons at my place.
- caf 2y ago
  The current operating requirements in South Australia mandate around 80MW of gas generation for system strength reasons. So even on last Saturday when "operational demand" in South Australia reached the ballpark of -200MW (that is, rooftop solar generation was exceeding the demand in the state by 200MW), there was still 80MW of gas in the mix. (The excess was being exported to Victoria).

stephen_g 2y ago

Note for anyone coming along - we don't actually experience frequent brownouts or rolling outages here in Australia, compared to almost everywhere else in the world... We have extrememly high grid reliability standards and the grid operator pulls out all the stops when a possible lack of reserve is forecast. There have been the rare cases of load shedding, usually when thermal generators are unexpectadely offline (one a few years ago was when a coal plant actually blew up).

smcleod 2y ago
We really do, they're very common here in Melbourne. Most summers we experience brown outs / load shedding and throughout the year the grid here struggles with changes in load (dimming lights, short-lived UPS activation etc...).
- justinclift 2y ago
  That wasn't my experience when living in Melbourne, though I moved away in 2022.
  - blahlabs 2y ago
    It isn't my experience either, having lived in various suburbs in Melbourne since 2012. Power outages happen, but I've been through maybe half dozen in my time here. Same with brown outs. Not unheard of but far from common. Although I spend my days at the office so maybe I miss some things, but equally I get an email if my home UPS activates and that has happened perhaps twice.
- jhealy 2y ago
  I live in Melbourne (on Jemena’s distribution network) and this isn’t my experience. Our power is very reliable and rarely goes out. Every few years a car hits a pole or something and we get a brief period of quiet time
  - smcleod 2y ago

patall 2y ago

Even if that is the case, shouldn't a bigger grid make those events less frequent/extreme? It is not a one-way cable afterall and usually those kind of projects want to make money when prices are high (as they should be in a brown-out situation). Edit: okay, maybe not at the other end of the continent. But then you have an insufficient grid and need to invest in that too.

Dalewyn 2y ago

I'm going to point out to you that insufficient power generation capacity and/or transmission infrastructure, the reasons behind brownouts and blackouts, has nothing to do with "unclean" energy sources. In fact, if the cause is insufficient generation capacity then renewables will exacerbate it because fossil fuels are much more energy dense and consistent.

bryanlarsen 2y ago
A grid set up to handle unreliable sources can deal with unreliable sources. A grid that depends on reliable sources is in trouble when reliable sources go off line.
smcleod 2y ago
It may not, but it also disgusts me how much sun we have and how willing we are to see our power off when so much of the country is powered by coal, oil and gas.