[smcleod]

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

[stephen_g]

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]

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...).

[jhealy]

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]

Interesting! May I ask what area you lived in (not due to the power distributor, but the age of the infrastructure in the area). The areas I've had issues are Brunswick, Thornbury and Footscray. Folks at work (we're a bit spread out but mostly Melbourne based) often talk of minor outages etc...

I actually had some electronics fail quite recently after a number of minor outages and speaking with insurance they were saying it's very common in certain areas where the infrastructure is aging or has recently been struck by lightening.

I have noticed the operating voltage in the inner north seems to vary between as low as 217V to 246V, but it's quite frequent you notice the lights dimming in houses round here. I don't think there were any last summer (if you could call it a summer) but usually I'd experience 2-5 (ish) complete outages on hot days, when I spoke to someone in know they said this is normal as they load shed you can experience short outages.

[caf]

Load shedding is quite rare, I believe the only instance recently in Melbourne was on the 13th of February when several transmission towers carrying the Moorabool-Sydneham 500kV circuits were destroyed in the severe storms that day, and load-shedding was required to keep the system in a secure state.

Outages are almost always due to faults in the local distribution network.

[seb1204]

Who's operating the grid in Melbourne?

[caf]

There are 5 different businesses that own and operate the distribution network in different parts of Melbourne (AusNet, Jemena, Citipower, Powercor and United Energy).

AusNet owns & maintains the transmission network in Victoria, but it is under the operational control of AEMO.

Dispatch of generation and FCAS instructions is NEM-wide and the responsibility of AEMO.

[justinclift]

That wasn't my experience when living in Melbourne, though I moved away in 2022.

[blahlabs]

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.

[andyferris]

I feel like this must be a Melbourne thing. I haven’t experienced any such issues since the 90’s (apart from local lightning strikes causing brief outages).

[notachatbot123]

Can you point to at least 10 different trustworthy sources about this?

[smcleod]

Can you point to at least 10 different trustworthy sources that show the reliability and quality of power? Specifically in Thornbury, Footscray and Brunswick.

[seb1204]

Thanks, NSW resident, I was going to write the same.

The Australian grid is at the forefront %age of renewable energy in the grid. This brings new challenges with it to which the answer is more batteries and more wind and solar.

[feisty0630]

But the NT (where the cable is running to) isn't connected to the Australian grid (which is effectively the East Coast, SA, and Tasmania), and there are no plans to do so. The Darwin grid is currently ~4-10% renewables depending on the day.

[smcleod]

~4-10% ! Jesus that's bad!

[dzhiurgis]

> when a coal plant actually blew up

Is that when entire states power (2gw) went from being produced to being consumed as a massive electric motor to 50k rpm and shooting into sky?

[stephen_g]

Yes, that one! They made a whole video about how it happened:

https://youtube.com/watch?v=vbLvjFohK9g&pp=ygUJQ2FsbGlkZSBj

[grecy]

You also pay extremely high prices for electricity because the big coal plant operators are in bed with the government

[seb1204]

Please check your facts. AEMO and others are tightening the thumb screws on coal plants more and more. Replacing the rotation mass for frequency stability is another challenge.

[senectus1]

No outages like that here in Perth either.

[justinclift]

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]

It's been a problem here in Melbourne for at least the last 8-10~ years.

[viraptor]

The large issues (not the local failure) are listed at 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?

[justinclift]

That's weird.

When I was living in Melbourne (inner western and eastern suburbs) from roughly 2019 through to 2022 it wasn't.

[davidbanham]

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]

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).

[patall]

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]

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]

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]

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.