The day from hell: Why the grid melts down in hot weather | mbachelard
It's 48.7 degrees outside and unbearable. “Curse climate change,” you think as the radio announcer tells you it’s hotter than the previous record maximum and at least 2 degrees hotter than today’s forecast.
Electricity grids and cars both produce power. But unlike cars, you can’t simply start up a power grid when you need it, go where you want and then switch it off overnight and walk away. For one thing, coal-fired power stations take days to warm up and cool down. For another, the grid cannot store power. In a car, power is stored in your petrol tank, you just have to ignite it, control it, then stop it.Electricity grids don’t have storage yet, or not on a system-wide scale.
An array of government bodies administer the market, the most important of which is the Australian Energy Market Operator . They predict demand based on weather forecasts and other factors and run the bidding process. They engage in a fine-tuned juggling act to ensure supply and demand match each other within a tolerance of 0.002 per cent.
In its recent summer readiness report, AEMO says weather forecasts are “now the most important input into forecasting of demand and supply of generation for the [national energy market]”. When the weather is hotter than 35 degrees, every rise of a degree results in extra demand of about 100 megawatts in Victoria, says AEMO. That 100 megawatts is enough to power 100,000 homes.
Meanwhile, bushfires burn down power lines and create dangerous haze, as do dust storms. AEMO sometimes turns off power lines in bushfires and dust storms as the particulates in the air can act as conductors, causing sparking between the lines and causing line failures and more fires. High wind blows poles and wires over and droughts can make it difficult to find the water that hydro and coal-fired power stations need to operate.
A post-mortem showed the problems started days earlier when AEMO, banking on a 37-degree day, allowed a big coal generator to shut down for overdue maintenance. The power taken offline by that maintenance would have been the difference between a normal day and the “load shedding” event that eventuated.More planning would help. AEMO’s summer readiness report outlines a “four-pillar plan for summer”.
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