Safety settings caused South Australian wind farms to reduce output during blackout

• 8 years ago (2016-10-19)
• David Flin

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The Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO) has reported that safety settings that kicked in during South Australia’s wild storms caused a number of wind farms to disconnect or reduce their output in the lead up to the state-wide blackout. However, it said that variation of output with wind strength was not a material factor in the blackout.

South Australia lost power – for days in some places – after a mid-latitude cyclone smashed through the state in late September, damaging vital infrastructure.

AMEO’s preliminary report said severe weather resulted in multiple transmission system faults. In an update of that report, AEMO said it was now known that five system faults occurred within a period of 88 seconds on 28 September, leading to six voltage disturbances. It said nine of the 13 wind farms online at the time did not ride through the disturbances, which resulted in a loss of 445 MW. The report said: “Preliminary discussions with wind farm operators suggest this inability to ride through all disturbances was due to ‘voltage ride-through’ settings set to disconnect or reduce wind turbine output when between three to six disturbances are detected within a definite time period.”

AEMO said several farms have already changed their settings to allow them to ride through a higher number of faults.