Still no power in my current home port , no fuel stations pumping fuel, Limited cash out, limited phone services. my mate has picked up my Honda 2kva. Power maybe back on at 10pm tonight.

in the meantime my ships all powered up ready to go!

Hey, it's those bloody spinning things that caused the blackouts. They create wind, or attract wind, or something like that. But it is their fault.

love,

Barnaby.

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FreeRadical said..
Hey, it's those bloody spinning things that caused the blackouts. They create wind, or attract wind, or something like that. But it is their fault.

love,

Barnaby.

I find onions create wind

Actually this is what caused the blackouts.

I wish I was on my yacht past few days as a lot of gusts at 50knots would have been interesting to see what amps my silent wind would produce.

probably not much southace most wind generators are designed to not work in high winds.

Really? So they work better in low winds? :(

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Bruski068 said..
probably not much southace most wind generators are designed to not work in high winds.

Wind turbines are designed for a maximum wind speed. Above that they can spin apart. Hope that did not happen to yours, Southace.
Now comes a storm, no sun, high wind. SA has 40% of its energy from wind. Major storm- there goes 40%

Oh, but there is a link from Victoria, bringing power from their dirty coal fired stations. Must be those nasty politicians who say shutting down our own power station had nothing to do with our failure. And of, course it has nothing to do with the failure of 40% of our capacity from renewables.

Silent wind is a 400watt Generator it peaks at 400watts in 122km winds then shuts down. I left my brake on when I left the boat 6 weeks ago to save the brake cutting in and out as I have solar and battery charger on.

Although the battery charger hasn't been on for 48 hours due to power outage. Today the phone towers have run out of back up battery's and tonight the water will be shut down. Nothing on news about this third world town!

I blame the green luddites who will not allow us to have nuclear power stations, even though they are the most environmentally friendly way to create electric power.

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Bruski068 said..
I blame the green luddites who will not allow us to have nuclear power stations, even though they are the most environmentally friendly way to create electric power.

Absolutely +1, done properly we could not only have reasonably priced power but vastly increased national wealth.

Fact check needed here - wind generation did NOT turn the lights out & was still producing the vast majority of SA's energy when the 'transmission spine' was destroyed: reneweconomy.com.au/dumb-politics-means-we-may-be-stuck-with-an-even-dumber-grid-33668/
If your looking for luddites, may I suggest a first look at vested interest, and the old carbon economy.
BTW - some of us yachties in SA did suffer damage, are still cleaning up our houses, and perhaps a small bit of sensitivity required to our circumstances before one gets on the bandwagon.

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Concepcion said..
Fact check needed here - wind generation did NOT turn the lights out & was still producing the vast majority of SA's energy when the 'transmission spine' was destroyed: reneweconomy.com.au/dumb-politics-means-we-may-be-stuck-with-an-even-dumber-grid-33668/
If your looking for luddites, may I suggest a first look at vested interest, and the old carbon economy.
BTW - some of us yachties in SA did suffer damage, are still cleaning up our houses, and perhaps a small bit of sensitivity required to our circumstances before one gets on the bandwagon.

Correct. Although SA's wind turbines shut down when wind speeds exceed 100 km/h, the outage problems were entirely due to failures of the transmission network, notably transmission towers getting blown over!

When a power system gets a break in current it trips the cirrcut breaker. They isolated the problem and re conected the circuit.but the people in the damage area are still in the dark 3 days on and still very little media covarge the help is only just arriving.

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Bruski068 said..
probably not much southace most wind generators are designed to not work in high winds.

My Aerogen 1.2m diameter wind generator has an in-built design safety feature...once the wind speed hits 60 knots the complete unit executes a full turn, this slows the unit down and it then builds speed back up until it needs to do the same again, etc, etc. At 60 knots it is pumping out something like 20 Amps. I don't have it mounted on my Careel22, its at my farm about 5 km from a nearby wind farm in the Southern Highlands of NSW.( Can just see a few blades peeping above the intervening ridge, thats OK). I think we can learn to live with the look of these large turbines, after all, don't we associate Holland with tulips and Windmills. Surely there was a time way back when Holland did not have these as a feature of their landscape…it gave them something they needed, an energy efficient way to grind grain.

I think country areas need a mix of power generating items and rather rely on a power lines over long distances if they could used a mix of wind gens solar and like the unit above which runs off methane from the local tip or natural gas powered up when other natural sources are limited such as wave wind and solar. There is a Hugh amount of power lost from a long distance power station to a city consumer just from the high power power lines and as well as there up keep and possible bush fire problems created from them which has happened a few times in Victoria.
They could be a stand by unit or add to the local grid

Trust the politicians to try to get some political mileage (using entirely illogical rhetoric) out of this power failure.


Instead of blaming renewable energy for the power problems, maybe an independent engineering assessment of the mechanical and electrical design of the towers with respect to their ability to withstand the inclement weather they were exposed to......

Seems to me the conditions they failed to withstand, should have been well within any conservative design.
This is what the politicians should be talking about.

regards,
allan

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Datawiz said..
Trust the politicians to try to get some political mileage (using entirely illogical rhetoric) out of this power failure.


Instead of blaming renewable energy for the power problems, maybe an independent engineering assessment of the mechanical and electrical design of the towers with respect to their ability to withstand the inclement weather they were exposed to......

Seems to me the conditions they failed to withstand, should have been well within any conservative design.
This is what the politicians should be talking about.

regards,
allan

I agree with that statement they all have there own agenda and a chance to stand a a fruit box to get air time
That's about it these days.
If these grids were still Government owned no mater what state. Id say there would not have been so many power outages or fires
I still would prefer the old 60s Australian Gov mixed economies ,power, ports and lots of other things owned by the public . Before they sold every thing off and still doing it
Like every thing you get what you pay for.

Just plug one of FreeRadicals turbines into the grid. It worked for Auckland..

There is a good case that a more distributed and locally based power grid with less reliance on a grid is more robust. Can also provide more local jobs. However these are discussions for later. Lets make sure everyone is ok and with power back, look after the emergency service folk and all those volunteers and THEN carry out a sensible, non biased review. In the meantime, the Federal Government should stop slinging ignorant, insensitive comments to make cheap political points and support their donor mates.

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Toph said..
Just plug one of FreeRadicals turbines into the grid. It worked for Auckland..

Or just plug into one of the Collins boats.

What is so INSENSITIVE about having an opinion that doesn't match yours.
Give up on trying to become victims when a contrary view to yours is posted.
It really is the most pathetic excuse for rational debate to plead NOT FAIR.
Being offended is what adults feel when they don't agree on a point of view.
Being hurt is what is implied by someone being insensitive to your feelings.
Really children, its not about your feelings of hurt over insensitive comments.
Sometimes the truth hurts, get over yourselves.

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boofta said..
What is so INSENSITIVE about having an opinion that doesn't match yours.
Give up on trying to become victims when a contrary view to yours is posted.
It really is the most pathetic excuse for rational debate to plead NOT FAIR.
Being offended is what adults feel when they don't agree on a point of view.
Being hurt is what is implied by someone being insensitive to your feelings.
Really children, its not about your feelings of hurt over insensitive comments.
Sometimes the truth hurts, get over yourselves.

So ................ crap weather lately A ........

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SandS said..

So ................ crap weather lately A ........

Yep had last week off to paint the hull was lucking it didn't wash off sands two coats on one to go

Well done HG ..... Good effort ! I'm very interest in this roll brush techNic ...... Looks like it works a treat !

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Bristolfashion said..
There is a good case that a more distributed and locally based power grid with less reliance on a grid is more robust. Can also provide more local jobs. However these are discussions for later. Lets make sure everyone is ok and with power back, look after the emergency service folk and all those volunteers and THEN carry out a sensible, non biased review. In the meantime, the Federal Government should stop slinging ignorant, insensitive comments to make cheap political points and support their donor mates.

I'm confused first you complain about the federal government making cheap political comments, then you go ahead and make cheap political comments yourself, a little hypocritical of you don't you think.

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Bristolfashion said..
There is a good case that a more distributed and locally based power grid with less reliance on a grid is more robust. Can also provide more local jobs. However these are discussions for later. Lets make sure everyone is ok and with power back, look after the emergency service folk and all those volunteers and THEN carry out a sensible, non biased review. In the meantime, the Federal Government should stop slinging ignorant, insensitive comments to make cheap political points and support their donor mates.

Unfortunately the design of the SA power grid is all about expensive political points. Shut down your own power stations so you can claim a high percentage of renewables, and then buy-in coal fired power from interstate. Renewables (other than hydro or nuclear)= unreliable. Yes, a number of pylons came down, that is semi-normal, but a properly designed grid system should be able to cope with the loss of a small percentage of pylons, or at least be able to be re-started in a couple of hours. Thats not politics, its engineering.

Ohhh dear, I know I shouldn't be baited by this, but given that I work in energy policy, a few facts for you all. Please note from the Commonwealth regulator (I.e the experts here):

"Bare bones are when a large load drops off the grid there is more generation than supply. That can cause huge problems (think catastrophic explosion of power generator) so it trips a series of safety measures. Several large transmission pylons were flattened in the north west, dumping a significant load off the network. A couple of generators in SA then tripped because of the abrupt load loss, and the interconnector was also tripped to ensure other base load generators stayed up (Once one of those babies goes down it takes 3 or 4 days to bring each one back on line, not 3 or 4 hours).So, the grid island the section of network with the problem until they can safely work around the downed section of network (imagine a Complex maze of thousands of kilometres of wire and you have to find the right path) and I think they probably brought the peak generators (gas fired) on line and start to resynchronise the tripped base load.It is then a process of gradually restoring load, this started a mere 3 hours after the event. It was a fantastic job really and the network operator, transmission provider and peak load plants ought to be congratulated.Power generation gets complex when you start having to factor in the way load and supply are entwined and frequency synchronisation. It's not just a matter of turning on a generator and Ta-da the lights return.So in all, it had zero to do with generation in SA, and everything to do with a freak storm that no one can control and no amount of locally produced base load would have avoided."

Please a few facts before conviction bias - SA both imports and exports energy, the Port Augusta power station was old and inefficient and privately owned - it closed this year because it could not compete against cheaper available sources. SA with both wind, diesel, gas (x4) and solar generation and 2 interconnectors to the national grid has little generation issues ... but we may have transmission ones.

PS...I have no interest in renewables, but as a Sailor I LOVE WIND

Always interested in other opinions, but not sure I agree with your criticism. My suggestion of a non biased review is the opposite of a political point. This review should look at the facts and make recommendations irrespective of which political party or interest groups are supported.

My comment on distributed energy supply was based on a very interesting talk i went to by the Chief Engineer of a UK town where they introduced local generation by a mix of conventional and renewable technologies plus a grid connection. During a widespread power outage in the region they were able to keep local power going. Again, not a political point but a suggestion as to a way to improve energy security. This approach does spread out the employment in the sector a bit and allows earlier grid shut down in extreme weather events.

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Bruski068 said...

Bristolfashion said..
There is a good case that a more distributed and locally based power grid with less reliance on a grid is more robust. Can also provide more local jobs. However these are discussions for later. Lets make sure everyone is ok and with power back, look after the emergency service folk and all those volunteers and THEN carry out a sensible, non biased review. In the meantime, the Federal Government should stop slinging ignorant, insensitive comments to make cheap political points and support their donor mates.

I'm confused first you complain about the federal government making cheap political comments, then you go ahead and make cheap political comments yourself, a little hypocritical of you don't you think.

Oh, the comment about donor mates was a crack, but i was grumpy!