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#31 | |||
Thailand Specials
Join Date: Aug 2009
Location: Centrefold Lounge
Posts: 49,028
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They were promising that here since the ash Wednesday bushfires with the power lines near Woodend, 40 years later they're still above ground and every time it rains or gets windy they have dramas and cause region wide power outages. |
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#32 | |||
Experienced Member
Join Date: Sep 2006
Location: Australasia
Posts: 7,537
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#33 | ||
Thailand Specials
Join Date: Aug 2009
Location: Centrefold Lounge
Posts: 49,028
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#34 | ||
Experienced Member
Join Date: Sep 2006
Location: Australasia
Posts: 7,537
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#35 | |||
FF.Com.Au Hardcore
Join Date: Aug 2005
Location: Melb.
Posts: 4,439
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#36 | ||||
Donating Member
![]() Join Date: Mar 2007
Location: Heading thru Hell (Corner)
Posts: 8,181
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As of this morning, all four units are back online. A pretty massive effort to have them back less than 48 hours after the trip. Quote:
Hence my scepticism that they'd have all four units back on line in the time frame they did. If anyone wants a good insight into the details of the events, this website provides some good data and interpretation. https://wattclarity.com.au/ From a personal perspective, we lost power at my house at about 4:30pm (about the time the storm front hit town) and were without power for around 18 hours. Parts of town were also out, whilst some still had power. It also seems as though power was restored in stages, as my mum, who lives up the other end of town from me, lost power at the same time as I did, but had her power restored later that night. We also lost all telecomms a couple of hours after power went out. I assume that is because tower back-up systems also ran out of juice. That was restored mid morning yesterday, around the same time as power was restored. Some of my work colleagues who live around Yarram, Boolara, Mirboo North, are still without power and have indicated it will take some time to have it restored simply because of the amount of tress and wires down, etc.
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Labels are for jars, not for people. Life is a journey, not a destination. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Daily: 2013 FGII EcoLPi in Winter White Play: 2015 FG X XR8 in Emperor Show' N Shine thread Gone, but not forgotten: 2015 SZII petrol Titanium Territory in Emperor |
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#37 | |||
FF.Com.Au Hardcore
Join Date: Nov 2005
Posts: 996
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Regardless, designed for TTHL (or not), boiler trips are bad news. The crew on site did well to return the plant to service so quick. Just to back up what you are saying, there is a SARS document on the AEMC web site that discusses some of the challenges with system restarting. It is a good read. https://www.aemc.gov.au/sites/defaul...21-%282%29.PDF We are certainly in an age where there are a lot of clueless folk, with little engineering understanding, in key positions demanding changes in the grid with little understanding of the consequences. Sigh ... |
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#38 | ||
Regular Member
Join Date: Sep 2007
Location: Western Riverina
Posts: 116
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This should be printed, in 40 point bold, in every newspaper in the land.
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#39 | ||
Regular Member
Join Date: May 2015
Location: Dandenong Victoria
Posts: 181
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The main problem has been the transmission lines rather than local connections. I am in Dandenong and my power and phone were only out for two hours.
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#40 | |||
FF.Com.Au Hardcore
Join Date: Nov 2005
Posts: 996
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Quote:
On a green field site (e.g. a new housing estate), the cost differential isn't so bad. Last time I saw actual costs (about +10 years ago), it was around $4k per lot for underground in a new housing estate and about $1.5 per lot for overhead in a new housing estate. Some local councils insist on undergrounding in new estates. Others, chasing population growth, don't. Undergrounding an old overhead network can get very expensive. Rule of thumb is about six times the cost to completely redo overhead for the low voltage and 11/22kV distribution network. But the costs don't stop there. A spot on the ground has to be found for the local distribution transformer. If there isn't enough space on the footpath, then it requires buying or compulsory acquiring about 15m2 off someone's front garden. This makes people very shirty. Next, all the houses with an overhead connection have to be converted to an underground connection. This means digging up lawns, cutting (or tunnel boring) driveways, etc. A certain (albeit small) percentage will have their water mains / sewerage / NBN / gas accidently cut in the process. Figure $5K for the average job. When it gets to higher voltages (like 66kV and above), long underground transmission lines have other unwanted technical characterises. The short version is they are highly capacitive and cause unwanted voltage swings and transients on the network. (Even underground transmission cables around town can cause issues.) Cost of underground transmission can be up to 16 times that of overhead transmission. It is usually only cost effective to underground transmission in heavy urban areas where it would be impossible to run a new overhead transmission line. Some other unexpected engineering issues can pop up as well. For example, underground cables don't like trees. Underground cables require some moisture in the soil, so that the soil wicks away heat loss in the cables. Obviously, trees require soil moisture to live, and during droughts, they will aggressively go chasing soil moisture. This dries out the soil near the underground cable, and dry sandy soil is more like a thermal blanket. The heat becomes trapped around the cable, which drives more moisture away. Cables run hotter and this shortens the cable asset life (under good conditions should be between 80-100 years). There is also technology change on the horizon to consider as well. It costs considerable money per household to go from overhead to underground. Effectively, the asset owner gets a massive loan and pays it back over the next 40 years. The cost of undergrounding is borne by everyone, regardless whether they can afford the cost or not, and regardless whether they want the extra reliability or not. So, there is this ongoing discussion inside the electricity industry. Instead of forcing customers, should we leave it to the customer to make their own decision on reliability? Or even should we go as far as disconnecting the grid at the fringes of the network and leave it to the customer to install their own power supply. Consider the cost of, say, a 5kW solar PV system, a 13kWh Tesla Powerwall, and a Tesla gateway is around $25k installed. The Tesla Powerwall and Gateway effectively gives the customer 13kWh UPS level resilience. And the 5kW solar PV gives them a chance to recharge the next day. Or an alternative solution, about $7K installed, one can get a 6kW standby generator with auto-start and auto-changeover. One final point, there are a lot of Australian based technical papers on the web that discuss the pros and cons of undergrounding, and the cost to the community. Worth having a read through them. |
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#41 | ||
DIY Tragic
Join Date: Apr 2018
Location: Sydney, more than not. I hate it.
Posts: 21,843
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Another great read - thank you!
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#42 | |||
Regular Member
Join Date: May 2015
Location: Dandenong Victoria
Posts: 181
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You also need to have geologically secure land when burying cables - look at what happened in Christchurch from the earthquake. Fortunately this is less of an issue for Victoria and other Australian States. |
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#43 | ||
Cabover nut
Join Date: Aug 2015
Location: Onsite Eastcoast
Posts: 10,827
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Eerr, my key word was domestic street poles, don't think I mentioned the large overhead transmission wires between substations.
After the 2009 bushfires caused by poorly maintained crappy wooden poles falling over into bushland, (where there was no large trees) we had the power companies agreed (well forced to by an inquiry) to start installing most domestic services underground at around the same time NBN was digging up the towns here. It was also around the same time the $ydney to Melbourne pipeline was being repositioned and upgraded along with ARTC butcher of the rail line. And this is through mountainous and granite belt country. As stated before this town is one of the earliest settled inland towns in Vic and most of the power is underground, not that I use it. These companies agreed to do this stuff, then usually throw their hands in the air and say its all to hard, just like the country telecommunication fiasco inquiry we had after several deaths from no cell service. Still NOT fixed. Dear greedy (poor) power companies, stop gambling on the stock market and get out and actually upgrade the network. Yes we know how much profit you made in the last couple of years and its time to re invest in the grids capacity and safety.
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heritagestonemason.com/Fordlouisvillerestoration In order that the labour of centuries past may not be in vain during the centuries to come...... D. Diderot 1752
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#44 | |||||||
FF.Com.Au Hardcore
Join Date: Nov 2005
Posts: 996
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Quote:
Domestic street poles include low voltage (240/415V), the medium voltage network (11,000 volts or 22,000 volts as the case may be), and occasionally the sub-transmission voltages (33,000 volts). Back in the 1990's, I project coordinated one overhead to underground project as part of a beautification works in conjunction with Main Roads. What an awful mess that was. The result looked great (still does). But, along the way were shirty business owners (digging up their footpath), one crew accidently taking out a 2,400 pair Telstra cable (no phones for some for a week), other services not on their assigned alignment resulting in re-design and re-approvals, complaints about where we located a certain 11kV/415v padmounts, high-voltage switching constraints, complaints about the traffic jams when we had a lane closed, cost overruns due to poor estimating, etc, etc. I was drowning in paperwork and please explains. After that, I made sure that I made myself scarce when similar projects were handed out. Quote:
http://royalcommission.vic.gov.au/Co...used-Fire.html First, in the 2009 bushfire failed electricity assets caused five of the 11 major fires. Not all of them. Second, since 1997 an average of 4,800 fire starts have occurred each year on private property in the SP AusNet distribution area. Of all these fires, SP AusNet assets had been associated with 52.8 fire starts (1.1 per cent) each year. Bulk undergrounding of the network is not going to remove even a majority of the ignition sources for bush fires. Third, the fires at Kilmore East fire (which killed 119 people), Coleraine fire, and Horsham fires were all caused by electrical faults on SWER lines. Just a small digression about SWER lines. SWER stands for Single Wire Earth Return. SWER is installed where it is uneconomic to install normal three-phase power. It is built as cheaply as possible to extend the fringe of the electricity network. Even done on the cheap, SWER is so un-economic to install that the system we have today was funded by government policy in the 1950’s through to the 1980’s. Funded basically by charging city electricity consumers a surcharge to subsidise country consumers. Even so, the government had to stop the practice when it was costing (in 1980 dollars) over $100,000 to extend the SWER network. Just to give an idea of the expense involved in the 2020’s, recently Essential Energy (NSW) was granted a special exemption to remove the SWER lines and replace it with a SAPS (Stand Alone Power System) for just one property. The reason for the exemption was that a like for like replacement of the SWER with a new SWER line to this isolated property was going to cost over $1M. It was cheaper to put in a SAPS. But because a SAPS is a “generator” and Essential Energy (as a distributer) cannot by law hold a generator licence, they had to get an exemption. More about SAPS is https://www.essentialenergy.com.au/o...-power-systems Since the Royal Commission there have been further research into other ways to prevent SWER lines causing bushfires. Specifically, the Powerline Bushfire Safety Taskforce. They have a full report available here and is worth the read. https://www.esv.vic.gov.au/sites/def..._30Sep2011.pdf Quote:
Reading from the Royal Commissions report is interesting … Quote:
So, the greedy power companies have previously applied for approval to spend money underground the network in targeted locations to reduce bush fire risk, and this approval was declined by the Victorian Government. Quote:
But here in Queensland, both the distribution companies (Energex and Ergon) and the transmission company (Powerlink) are owned by the Queensland Government. Even government owned power companies are not undertaking widespread undergrounding projects. |
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#45 | ||
Thailand Specials
Join Date: Aug 2009
Location: Centrefold Lounge
Posts: 49,028
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Interesting, I'm in Powercor region, maybe thats why near Woodend is still poles and wires fiasco that shits the bed every time there's a gentle breeze.
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