A recent New South Wales power supply scare has been found to have been caused – not by renewables – but by a series of gas and coal plant faults and failures that happened to coincide with record high electricity demand as the state sweltered through a February heatwave.
A report published on Wednesday by the Australian Energy Market Operator has found that, like in South Australia, renewable energy performed more or less as expected. But it was the sudden and unannounced failures of gas generators that put power supplies in peril.
The NSW report confirms – as revealed last week by RenewEconomy – that the state narrowly avoided mass blackouts on Friday, February 10, after a faulty gas turbine caused EnergyAustralia’s 480MW Tallawarra gas plant (below) to trip, taking it out of action at around 4.30pm for two hours, just as demand was reaching its peak.
Read Sophie Varath’s story on RenewEconomy - “NSW heatwave: Another catalogue of fossil fuel power failures.”
No comments:
Post a Comment