Wind and Solar vs Coal, Gasoline, Nuclear

Solar is great for places that need high daytime cooling in the summer. For baseload not so good. In winter all across many countries in Northern Latitudes above 40* they are covered with snow at worst and getting very poor sun at best. I will be back with new photos later. And it is April!!! Three weeks past Spring equinox. Give me a break!!!
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Also, in heating climates the electrical load decreases only slightly at night. Last night NY for example shows a reduction from a steady 19GW all day to 16GW and the lull is only from midnight until 6AM and then right back up even though it is Saturday.
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https://www.electricitymap.org/?page=country&solar=false&remote=true&wind=false&countryCode=US-NY
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If all heat in NY was converted to electric when heating oil (30 years) and gas (70 years) become remote, any lull would be even much smaller. And the load would be twice the19GW.
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And average capacity factor for solar in my area for the last three months would average a few percent of nameplate. It only does 15% on an annual basis. Germany does 11%. So yes. You need 8X the nameplate capacity of solar plus at least 8 hours of storage to even occasionally match 1 thermal plant. And would still come up 2/3 less than required for three months in winter. When will you guys finally let loose of your dissonant shock and begin to accept a wider view? This is good information that green magazines and economists will never tell you. People need to know the truth so that we can plan accordingly.

For me, I often look at wind/solar as a manipulative whacking stick that those who are in the wide circle of politics use to wield power on peoples minds.

When NSW government sold its electricity grid it seemed to be at the end of a years barrage from ABC media that solar panels are going to make the grid completely useless and everyone is going to be charging their electric cars and etrucks from their home solar roofs etc so we don't need the grid anymore and its stupid for the government to hold it. For me it was painful to listen to because it was repeated so often that it becomes really quite convincing.

Just like North Korea where everyone has a speaker in their kitchen that can't be turned off that pounds their minds with propaganda. It doesn't matter if the 'propaganda' is much more mild, if its repeated enough and manipulative enough the human mind becomes programmed by it in the exact same manner as what happens to North Koreans.

Wind/Solar are perfect to attack on the human mind because there are so many variables/red herrings/Chewbacca defenses. The starkest and recent one is Germany's solar capacity vs capacity factor, its just so bad its amusing and sad. But then people talk about costs in solar, I think Germany cutting down so many lovely forest trees to install Solar at %10 of its claimed capacity is the real cost, as they are throwing their real environment down a cliff for a crappy amount of power to fight against co2 levels that are move between %0.039 and %0.041 during the summer and winter.
The reason why I bothered finding and linking all those URLs on solar farms in Germany in googlemaps sat-view was due to the fact I found it fascinating and personal proof that Germany has lost its mind/way trying to fight co2. For some the German solar capacity factor might be proof of madness but I think the mass cutting down of trees for it is bigger proof of madness.

I came across this interesting article today that analyzes Energy Returned on Energy Invested (EROEI), EROI
https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2015/02/11/eroi-a-tool-to-predict-the-best-energy-mix/#dbd9c37a0270
EROI is the ratio of energy returned to energy invested in that energy source, along its entire life-cycle.* When the number is large, energy from that source is easy to get and cheap. However, when the number is small, the energy from that source is difficult to get and expensive.


As Bill Gates says frequently when talking about his TerraPower Nuclear Reactor, there is 1 million times more energy released from a molecule of urainium than a molecule of coal. So the return of energy is huge for the effort put in for Nuclear.
Like this chart suggests, I never ever see a day when all solar and wind-turbine products are made entirely (from mining/production/delivery/installation/disposal) from older installed solar and windturbine sources of energy because that is going to be just too much fking around.
I feel that way to much coal and oil is being wasted on renewable energy products as it is.

While I have at times used theconversation website as a source its really only been for its 151million tons of co2 annually from Australian coal-power stations. I have found it incredibly annoying that no other source on the total annual amount of co2 released from Oz coal power-stations exists anywhere on the internet or at least in a convenient clickable article URL.
That said I see theconversation website as a baloney website full of political nutjobs who want to push wind/solar for their tribal teams political power gain or they work in some arm of the renewable subsidy miners corporation.

Checking out their latest article that came out yesterday is a good example, its worse than the ABC.
Solar PV and wind are on track to replace all coal, oil and gas within two decades
https://theconversation.com/solar-pv-and-wind-are-on-track-to-replace-all-coal-oil-and-gas-within-two-decades-94033

Why is it I keep reading the results of peer-reviewed studies analysing historical (~100years) weather patterns against (all)energy demand and concluding that wind + solar with little or no storage is adequate up to 1/2 to 3/4 of the energy mix, while no such studies appear to exist demonstrating it won't work? All the climate deniers and coal enthusiasts seem to offer is "well of course it's impossible - there's no sun at night!".

ERoEI of 4:1 for PV? I doubt it. 6-12:1 is given here, note other forms of solar are lower: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0301421513003856

ERoEI for tar sands is 4:1 yet it is done.
http://energyskeptic.com/2016/tar-sand-eroi-2013-poisson-and-hall/

If nuclear is awesome because uranium is 1 million times more energy dense than oil/coal, why is the ERoEI only 2.5 times that of coil and not a million times? Yeah, maybe it's not as simple as just looking at energy density

Punx0r said:

Why is it I keep reading the results of peer-reviewed studies analysing historical (~100years) weather patterns against (all)energy demand and concluding that wind + solar with little or no storage is adequate up to 1/2 to 3/4 of the energy mix,

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mainly because such studies are analyzing the wind and sun energy available without contemplating the vast scale of trying to impliment enough hardware to capture it at 4TW for the world.
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50% of electricity from wind and solar is doable with little storage if you maintain 100% dispatchable thermal capacity. Renewables (rebuildables) are fossil fuel extenders. Not replacements.

Punx0r said:

Your argument makes no sense. Assume Aus requires an extra 2GW of generator capacity. When? 24hrs a day? Doubtful.

You average the output of a PV plant over 24hrs to produce a claimed "real" capacity factor and then claim 10GW of PV is required to meet a 2GW demand.

Demand is clearly not flat. It is not a constant "extra 2GW" and that's in a grid heavily biased towards load shifting to increase demand at night to try and accommodate the shortcomings of thermal generators that like to run at constant, full output.

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Yes, constant 2GW, 24 hrs, 7 days a week , 365 days a year. Its calld base load. Australia needs 18 GW of it.
So solar, at a CF of 20% needs 5 times its nameplate rating..and a huge amount of storage to supply that.
Do the maths , and figure out how much solar is needed to supply 48 GWh per day, then tell us where in the world anyone has ever built a solar farm that size ?
Australia has enough Gas, and Hydro etc to provide the variable and peak demand requirements , but is getting critical on the 18 GW of constant base load it needs.

Hillhater said:

There are currently over 1000 new coal fired plants being constructed around the world.
Somebody must believe they are a useful investment ?

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..Where? The developed world is closing them at record rates and not building new ones. The developing world (India, China especially) are scrapping planned ones at a high rate.

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https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/01/climate/china-energy-companies-coal-plants-climate-change.html

....Over all, 1,600 coal plants are planned or under construction in 62 countries, according to Urgewald’s tally, which uses data from the Global Coal Plant Tracker portal. The new plants would expand the world’s coal-fired power capacity by 43 percent.

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This is the latest project plan to make a RE project that can supply 24/7 power..
The Genex, kidstone power hub..
https://reneweconomy.com.au/genex-seeks-holy-grail-of-renewables-wind-solar-pumped-hydro-19618/
In summary, a combined 270MW Solar farm, a 150MW Wind farm, and a 250MW , 1500MWh , pumped hydro storage.
Costs ( Au$)...
Solar $420 m
Hydro $300 m.. ( cheap because they plan to reuse existing mine facilities)
Wind $250 m
So approx Au$970 m (usd$750 m) all up
Assuming the weather cooperates, and the pumped hydro can be managed perfectly, this should be able tp supply approx 100 MW continuously.
So capital cost of usd $7.5/W.
If we expected this to replace the 2GW base load needed, Australia would have to repeat this plan 20 times over at a capital cost of Au$19.4 bn

Or... Maybe Just build that hele coal plant for $2 bn !

Hillhater said:

....Over all, 1,600 coal plants are planned or under construction in 62 countries, according to Urgewald’s tally, which uses data from the Global Coal Plant Tracker portal. The new plants would expand the world’s coal-fired power capacity by 43 percent.

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And even with all that - solar is growing faster than coal. In fact, faster than all fossil fuel new installs.

There's that old saying - lead, follow or get out of the way. Looks like it's time for coal to get out of the way.
====================================
Reuters
APRIL 5, 2018 / 6:08 AM / 3 DAYS AGO
Solar power eclipsed fossil fuels in new 2017 generating capacity: U.N.
Nina Chestney, Alister Doyle

LONDON/OSLO (Reuters) - Chinese solar power led a record 157 gigawatts (GW) of new renewable energy capacity added worldwide last year, more than double the amount of new generation capacity from fossil fuels, a U.N.-backed report showed on Thursday.

Globally, a record 98 GW of solar power capacity was installed last year with China contributing more than half, or 53 GW, according to U.N. Environment, the Frankfurt School-UNEP Collaborating Centre and Bloomberg New Energy Finance.

The new renewable energy generating capacity, also including wind, biofuels and geothermal energy, dwarfed the 70 GW of net new capacity from fossil fuels in 2017, it said.

“We are at a turning point ... from fossil fuels to the renewable world,” Erik Solheim, head of U.N. Environment, told Reuters. “The markets are there and renewables can take on coal, they can take on oil and gas.”
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Ahhh Bill... !
You , like most of the RE enthusuasts, have conveniently ignored the CF issue again, and are only looking at "Nameplate" values.
Go do a little basic math, and then see what it looks like. :wink:

Hang on, so you propose gas and hydro should be used to meet intermittant peaks while PV should be expected to provide 24hr baseload? Please put down the crackpipe... That is quite obviously using all generation sources in their least optimised configuration.

I'd bet Aus doesn't actually need an extra constant 2GW. Just undo the existing night-time load-shifting, then start load-shifting towards daylight hours to take advantage of PV output. Australia is not short on sunshine.

~50GW of solar installed just last year and you claim 2GW is infeasible.

billvon said:

Hillhater said:

....Over all, 1,600 coal plants are planned or under construction in 62 countries, according to Urgewald’s tally, which uses data from the Global Coal Plant Tracker portal. The new plants would expand the world’s coal-fired power capacity by 43 percent.

Click to expand...

And even with all that - solar is growing faster than coal. In fact, faster than all fossil fuel new installs.

There's that old saying - lead, follow or get out of the way. Looks like it's time for coal to get out of the way.
====================================
Reuters
APRIL 5, 2018 / 6:08 AM / 3 DAYS AGO
Solar power eclipsed fossil fuels in new 2017 generating capacity: U.N.
Nina Chestney, Alister Doyle

LONDON/OSLO (Reuters) - Chinese solar power led a record 157 gigawatts (GW) of new renewable energy capacity added worldwide last year, more than double the amount of new generation capacity from fossil fuels, a U.N.-backed report showed on Thursday.

Globally, a record 98 GW of solar power capacity was installed last year with China contributing more than half, or 53 GW, according to U.N. Environment, the Frankfurt School-UNEP Collaborating Centre and Bloomberg New Energy Finance.

The new renewable energy generating capacity, also including wind, biofuels and geothermal energy, dwarfed the 70 GW of net new capacity from fossil fuels in 2017, it said.

“We are at a turning point ... from fossil fuels to the renewable world,” Erik Solheim, head of U.N. Environment, told Reuters. “The markets are there and renewables can take on coal, they can take on oil and gas.”
============================

Click to expand...

This is a perfect example of why this thread drags on and on repeating the same things. All of these green raving articles quote nameplate capacity and omit the fact that wind and solar will average only 25% of nameplate while thermal electric will make 90% and for twice the service life. Intentionally or ignorance?
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The real takeaway is that new fossil fired electrical generation is still leading rebuildable generation installs 2:1 which tells us that the majority of new capacity isn't replacing anything. It is being installed to keep up with GDP growth as the three Billion people that still burn sticks in order to cook claw there way up to a modern standard of living.
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I'm not pro fossil fuel. I'm not pro rebuildable. I am pro human civilization. Energy underpins everything. Every item or service starts with an energy input. Debt is a claim against future energy consumption. World banking has been operating on a fractional (nearly creationist) model. Loans are created from thin air with no actual money taken out of circulation to balance it. The virtual money anihlates itself as it is paid back but the interest becomes real added debt. The only way this has always worked through all time, and continues to work, is if GDP growth outpaces the interest rates. If energy growth outpaces the interest rates. But there is a limit to growth on a planet with finite resources.
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The free market also functions only from growth. Workers labor hard for a better tomorrow. What if tomorrow is always a little worse. 50% of Americans have been in that boat since 2000 due to inequity of wealth even with continual growth. Investors will stop if the best payback is 90% over 20 years. Our cornucopian economic model will cease to function as resources continue to get more remote. And then what?
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We need to find a different way.

Punx0r said:

Hang on, so you propose gas and hydro should be used to meet intermittant peaks while PV should be expected to provide 24hr baseload? Please put down the crackpipe... That is quite obviously using all generation sources in their least optimised configuration.

I'd bet Aus doesn't actually need an extra constant 2GW. Just undo the existing night-time load-shifting, then start load-shifting towards daylight hours to take advantage of PV output. Australia is not short on sunshine......

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Read my posts again.
Australia has a minimum power demand (base load) of 18 GW, . Thats as 4 am in the morning, and represents just the load from industry HVAC on buildings, street lighting, chiller plants, etc. Peak demand is 30GW +.
Some of that current base load generation capacity (coal) is 50+ yrs old and is in need of replacement with modern low emmision facilities. That will be a continuous demand load.
So the choices are obvious ..Solar, wind, hydro, coal, gas, etc. ( Nuclear is currently outlawed in Au)
Hence the above debate over the solar or coal options.
So what would you propose for a 2 GW continuous base load generation plant ?

~50GW of solar installed just last year and you claim 2GW is infeasible....

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..not infeasible, anything can be done, but impractical and as yet never done in one single installation.
......also ludicrously capital intensive for such a low capacity output.
And remember i mean 2GW actual continuous output.

Solar works great to offset the mid-day summer cooling peak for California from the nearby desert. It's pretty useless all winter long in the North East USA, Germany, Russia ect. I'm still getting whiteout snow conditions here off and on all week. And it is three weeks past Spring equinox. All of the panels in my area have seen such conditions more often than not for 4 months. Many, many days near zero output. It has been a very cold, snowy winter.
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So apparently since it doesnt solve everything, its useless or what??!?!

Solar works great to offset the mid-day summer cooling peak for California from the nearby desert. It's pretty useless all winter long in the North East USA, Germany, Russia ect.

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You know biomass, biogas for peaking, wind et. al exists also.
And then there is energy mountain: https://youtu.be/McByJeX2evM

[youtube]McByJeX2evM[/youtube]

sendler2112 said:

billvon said:

Hillhater said:

....Over all, 1,600 coal plants are planned or under construction in 62 countries, according to Urgewald’s tally, which uses data from the Global Coal Plant Tracker portal. The new plants would expand the world’s coal-fired power capacity by 43 percent.

Click to expand...

And even with all that - solar is growing faster than coal. In fact, faster than all fossil fuel new installs.

There's that old saying - lead, follow or get out of the way. Looks like it's time for coal to get out of the way.
====================================
Reuters
APRIL 5, 2018 / 6:08 AM / 3 DAYS AGO
Solar power eclipsed fossil fuels in new 2017 generating capacity: U.N.
Nina Chestney, Alister Doyle

LONDON/OSLO (Reuters) - Chinese solar power led a record 157 gigawatts (GW) of new renewable energy capacity added worldwide last year, more than double the amount of new generation capacity from fossil fuels, a U.N.-backed report showed on Thursday.

Globally, a record 98 GW of solar power capacity was installed last year with China contributing more than half, or 53 GW, according to U.N. Environment, the Frankfurt School-UNEP Collaborating Centre and Bloomberg New Energy Finance.

The new renewable energy generating capacity, also including wind, biofuels and geothermal energy, dwarfed the 70 GW of net new capacity from fossil fuels in 2017, it said.

“We are at a turning point ... from fossil fuels to the renewable world,” Erik Solheim, head of U.N. Environment, told Reuters. “The markets are there and renewables can take on coal, they can take on oil and gas.”
============================

Click to expand...

This is a perfect example of why this thread drags on and on repeating the same things. All of these green raving articles quote nameplate capacity and omit the fact that wind and solar will average only 25% of nameplate while thermal electric will make 90% and for twice the service life. Intentionally or ignorance?
.
The real takeaway is that new fossil fired electrical generation is still leading rebuildable generation installs 2:1 which tells us that the majority of new capacity isn't replacing anything. It is being installed to keep up with GDP growth as the three Billion people that still burn sticks in order to cook claw there way up to a modern standard of living.
.
I'm not pro fossil fuel. I'm not pro rebuildable. I am pro human civilization. Energy underpins everything. Every item or service starts with an energy input. Debt is a claim against future energy consumption. World banking has been operating on a fractional (nearly creationist) model. Loans are created from thin air with no actual money taken out of circulation to balance it. The virtual money anihlates itself as it is paid back but the interest becomes real added debt. The only way this has always worked through all time, and continues to work, is if GDP growth outpaces the interest rates. If energy growth outpaces the interest rates. But there is a limit to growth on a planet with finite resources.
.
The free market also functions only from growth. Workers labor hard for a better tomorrow. What if tomorrow is always a little worse. 50% of Americans have been in that boat since 2000 due to inequity of wealth even with continual growth. Investors will stop if the best payback is 90% over 20 years. Our cornucopian economic model will cease to function as resources continue to get more remote. And then what?
.
We need to find a different way.

Click to expand...

Great post, very deep.
I was listening to a Stefan Molyneux video on energy and global warming, I can't remember which one it was.
https://www.youtube.com/user/stefbot/search?query=warming
And he or the person he was interviewing was constantly bringing up the claim that the fight against fossil fuel power-stations is killing about 2 million children in the 3rd world per year due denial of rising living standards via electricty etc.

Looking at the whole 1600 coal power-stations underway, I was looking at one of the most sourced site on these numbers endcoal.org and its amazing to look at this website/sister sites and see all the coal-power stations being built.
While I may be big on copying and pasting URLs and looking at this stuff via google-sat view there is just way too many places urls for me to look at, my head will fall off before I done going through all this. I suspect the people that funded this research are well funded because there is a lot of work done here.

You can click on various countries and types of coal power-stations development levels.
https://endcoal.org/tracker/
You can click on a pretty obscure area and still bring up a coal power-station half built or having extra units being added to it.
If you click on extra detail it sends you to the sourcewatch website. Some of the coal stations say they are being "proposed" but look like they are being in fact being currently built as far as the google-satellite view suggests.
https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Lara_Integrated_Thermal_Power_Project
https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Kusile_Power_Station
https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Barauni_Thermal_Power_Station
^Like this Barauni power-station, says its been shutdown but a new one has been "proposed" but you go down about 500meters to 1km and you see a new one there that looks like its close to being completed https://goo.gl/maps/5YSuqtTm8TC2
https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Jawa-7_power_station
https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Kudgi_Super_Thermal_Power_Project
https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Cilacap_Sumber_power_station

You can see ones are being built deep inside India https://goo.gl/maps/32tRx84jkU62

Still Google maps sat view is not that up to date, there is a solar farm in NSW that is basically non-existent on googlemaps but is in fact fully completed.
If you dont see much around some sites just look around the area a bit on googlemaps and you see things like this,
I think I have looked at enough coal power-stations in sat view to spot new ones/nearby upgrade-extensions being built
https://goo.gl/maps/4rzgqbSpzEH2

*EDIT*
While a lot of work has gone into this endcoal website its also clear there are a lot of errors.
Looking at Dubia's coal power-station it listed, I simply couldn't find it using Endcoals or Sourcewatch coordinates.
I manually googled around and found it manually.
The actual site of this coal power-station (which happens to be a clean-coal station) and where Endcoal.org claimed it was located was about 40km of distance off the mark, so pretty far off the mark. https://goo.gl/maps/k694ZAE9czG2
Actual UAE coal power-station under construction https://goo.gl/maps/iCaXrPXRCGT2 (and another one 1km away of some type https://goo.gl/maps/L85kwGsmpd82 )
https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Hassyan_Clean-Coal_Power_Project (nothing here on their official location but some housing https://goo.gl/maps/faisJdDcrDs ) Half the reason I went manually looking was due to the fact this location didn't make sense as it was highly populated and a considerable distance from the sea-water, you would want to place it near a sea shipping port where you could conveyor-belt the coal into the power-station.

These "clean coal" power-stations claim to reduce CO2 by 25% of regular coal power-stations and 40% less than old coal power-stations by running at higher temperatures/pressures, gas is typically 50% less co2 than normal coal, so maybe as much as half way there to a gas power-station levels. The other thing behind clean coal is they have advanced scrubber technology in them that filters out just about everything other than the co2
http://www.minerals.org.au/file_upload/files/publications/Coal__A3_Newsletter.pdf
http://www.minerals.org.au/resources/coal/climate_change_and_low_emissions_coal_technology
http://www.minerals.org.au/news/delivering_a_low_emissions_coal_future
http://www.minerals.org.au/file_upload/files/reports/JOGMEC_media_tour_press_coverage_Feb_2015.pdf
http://www.minerals.org.au/file_upload/files/publications/Why_HELE_is_part_of_Australias_energy_solution_FINAL.pdf

Looks like the state of South Australia were having a lovely morning from about 3am onwards when the powers not really needed with the wind generation at a rather high capacity compared to its average, but it looks like there was a significant drop that caught them off guard as the price per MWh went up to $5000 per MWh.

Looking at the SA Tesla battery thats been in the ABC news lately again lately saving the world somehow, http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-04-06/tesla-battery-outperforms-coal-and-gas/9625726
I don't know if they're trying to steal page views from renewecomy or just its quiet campaigning for the Greens party. Its manipulative words suggest the big Tesla battery put in 600MW or so when the coal power wasn't available when we all know it was about 8MW as discussed back here https://endless-sphere.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=89002&start=1725#p1367950 . ABC news is more of a manipulative cancer on peoples ability to have an accurate view of the world

The thing is this power demand/loss like the Victorian unit 3 coal power-station trip where everyone celebrated how the big Tesla battery saved everyone by discharging 8MW of power into the grid but ignored the fact SA is hopeless addicted to Victorian coal power, this current $5000 MWh spot price need for power produced 25MW for a short period of time from the Tesla/Hornsdale power reserve battery, which as far as I am concened was a record, everyone imagined (including me) that we would see the big Tesla grid battery frequently discharging up to 100MW but this really looks like this is never ever going to happen unless something biblically bad happens like the interstate grid power-lines to SA go down.


I think the ABC article near the bottom points out the real reason why, if its overused too much then its end of lifecycle could be met too quickly and not end its life as a profitable project, considering how insanely supporting the news articles are about this Tesla battery there could be a lot of truth to this statement then we imagine, because ABC and renewecomy are very big fans of this RE.
Energy Synapse's founder Marija Petkovic says the battery's operators will need to be careful to avoid needlessly cycling it for little financial gain.
"This is an important consideration because the lifetime of a battery is strongly related to how many times it is cycled," she wrote.

This coal power plant is being reopened for blockchain mining

The now shuttered coal-fired power station on Australia's east coast will offer cheap power prices to blockchain operators.

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https://www.cnet.com/news/australian-coal-power-plant-reopened-blockchain-bitcoin-applications/

Come on, really!?!?

While I initially thought this news would have TheBeastie and HillHater dancing for joy at the thought of burning mountains of coal to power what is effectively a dumpload, it seems it's not really the case:

According to a spokesperson from Hunter Energy, it expects roughly 5% of the energy from the power plant will be used for blockchain related processes.

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Best guess is they're trying to increase the profitability of the plant by creating a captive market they can sell a portion of the power to at a price below retail but presumably above wholesale.

Whether it pans out or not, it'll likely be killed soon by carbon taxing or lower-cost renewable power.

The state of affairs in South Australia is quite interesting. They had a huge state-wide blackout in 2016 that was blamed on the unreliability of renewable energy but was actually caused by the worst storm in 50 years knocking over 22 high-voltage pylons, causing a cascade of safety disconnects to kick in: https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2016/sep/29/south-australia-blackout-explained-renewables-not-to-blame

Then in 2017 there was a smaller blackout during a heatwave, again blamed on the unreliability of RE, but was caused when the market operator deliberately chose to disconnect customers instead of starting up a gas plant sat ready: http://www.news.com.au/national/south-australia/rolling-blackouts-ordered-as-adelaide-swelters-in-heatwave/news-story/13394f19db1ee94a59f4036fccdc1ba7

From that it's hard to conclude SA is genuinely short of generating capacity.

You dont have to look hard to see SA has plenty of generating capacity....1700MW of Wind, 1200 MW of Gas, 200MW of Diesel, and at least 500MW of rooftop solar.
...All to support a typical demand of 1500 MW with peaks of 2000MW.
Its problem is the wind often does not blow (less than 100MW is common) , and their Gas and diesel is very expensive so they dont like running them unless desperate.
So its normal for SA to be relying on importing cheaper coal generated power from other states.
That situation is not going to change no matter how much more wind generation , or thermal Solar , or batteries, etc etc ,.they sponsor in the future!
Oh yes, and by the way , ..those safety disconnects that tripped out during the 2016 storm ?...
Many of those were on the wind turbines, which tripped out due to the excessive wind and turbine speed, resulting in the shortage of wind generated power available when the interconnector link was damaged.
And the storm also pretty much blacked out any useful solar production too.

The article I linked has a very different account of what occurred and what was to blame. Do you have anything to support your argument that it was the wind turbines themselves that caused the blackout?

When the 22 high-voltage power pylons were blown over, a huge chunk of power generation was cut off from the rest of the network.
...

To protect generators and equipment in SA, the whole high-voltage power system was cut, which in turn removed supply from the local distribution networks.

In addition, to stop the voltage and frequency fluctuations affecting Victoria, the lines connecting SA to Victoria (the “interconnectors”) were also shut down.

The result was that at about 4.20pm, the entire state of South Australia lost power.

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What did wind power have to do with it?

Nothing. Nick Xenophon, Barnaby Joyce and others have been out blaming wind power for the blackout. But it is simply not true.

Just before the blackout occurred, windfarms were producing about half the state’s electricity demand – they were not shut down as a result of the high winds. And ElectraNet, the owner of the downed high-voltage lines, made clear (https://www.electranet.com.au/power-to-adelaide-cbd-restored-after-severe-weather-event-but-restoration-efforts-remain-ongoing) the blackout was caused by the storm damage to their network.

If the recently closed Port Augusta coal power station was still operating, it would have been cut off by the downed distribution lines too. And that would have likely made the disruption worse, since it would have created an even bigger sudden change to the network.

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There is much politics , hidden agendas , and many people with credibility to loose over that episode, hence many different "twists" on the cause and sequence of events.
I didnt say the Wind turbines "caused" the blackout, ...but they were certainly a major factor. If the State had still been using coal or gas generators, the same circumstances would not have occurred and a blackout most likely avoided.
But the official Australian Energy Market Operator has issued this report....

AEMO releases final report into SA blackout, blames wind farm settings for state-wide power failure
Renewable energy mix played role in SA blackout: third report
Overly sensitive protection mechanisms in some South Australian wind farms are to blame for the catastrophic statewide blackout in September last year, the Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO) says.

Key points:

AEMO has released its fourth and final report into SA's September blackout
It said overly sensitive settings in some wind farms resulted in the statewide blackout
.

How the weather event tripped the system

On Wednesday September 28, two tornadoes with wind speeds between 190 and 260 kilometres per hour tore through a single-circuit 275-kilovolts transmission line and a double-circuit 275kV transmission line, about 170km apart.

The damage to these three transmission lines caused them to trip, and a sequence of faults in quick succession resulted in six voltage dips on the SA grid over a two-minute period at about 4:16pm.

As the number of faults on the transmission network grew, nine wind farms in the mid-north of SA exhibited a sustained reduction in power as a protection feature activated.

For most of them, the protection settings allowed the wind turbines to withstand a pre-set number of voltage dips within a two-minute period.

When the protection feature kicked in, the output of those wind farms fell by 456 megawatts over a period of less than seven seconds.


When the wind farms unexpectedly reduced their output, the Heywood Interconnector from Victoria tried to make up the shortfall.

About 700 milliseconds after the last wind farm powered down, the flow in the interconnector reached such a level that it activated a special protection scheme that tripped it offline.

The sudden loss of power flows across the interconnector sent the frequency in the SA grid plummeting.

South Australia has an automatic load-shedding system designed to kick-in in just such an event.

But the rate of change of the frequency was so rapid, the automatic load-shedding scheme did not work.

Without it, the remaining generation was much less than the connected load, and as a result, the entire system collapsed.

The SA power system then became separated from the rest of the national grid.

AEMO said its "analysis shows that following system separation, frequency collapse and the consequent black system was inevitable"......

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Full report (270 pages)
https://www.aemo.com.au/-/media/Files/Electricity/NEM/Market_Notices_and_Events/Power_System_Incident_Reports/2017/Integrated-Final-Report-SA-Black-System-28-September-2016.pdf
Readable summary..
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-03-28/wind-farm-settings-to-blame-for-sa-blackout-aemo-says/8389920

Whatever happened with the solar chimney Australian idea?https://www.treehugger.com/renewabl...t-single-tower-solar-thermal-power-plant.html

I don't see how that means wind turbines were an inherent contributor to the blackout. If those wind farms had been coal plants instead but with the same fault-detecting control gear then the blackout would have occured just the same.

One difference ought to be the ease of restarting a grid with a good proportion of solar or wind.

Either you dont bother to read the links, or you have trouble comprehending what is printed.

.....AEMO said unforeseen separation and complete loss of the Heywood Interconnector has occurred six times in the past 17 years.
But in every other instance, the system stayed alive.

"The key differentiator between the 28 September 2016 event and the other three events is that there was significantly lower inertia in SA in the most recent event, due to a lower number of on-line synchronous generators," the report said.

"This resulted in a substantially faster rate of change of frequency compared to the other events, exceeding the ability of the under-frequency load-shedding scheme to arrest the frequency fall before it dropped below 47Hz."

Synchronous generators include coal, gas and hydro.

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wineboyrider said:

Whatever happened with the solar chimney Australian idea?https://www.treehugger.com/renewabl...t-single-tower-solar-thermal-power-plant.html

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From that article....

....planned for super sunny South Australia it will be the world's largest single solar thermal tower power plant when it's completed in 2020.....

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It will require 40 of these "worlds largest" solar thermal plants to replace the generation capacity of the one coal generator SA distroyed last year !

Hillhater said:

Either you dont bother to read the links, or you have trouble comprehending what is printed.

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Funny enough, I skipped the 720 page report and focused on the passage you quoted, erroneously believing it would contain the information to support your assertions.

Hillhater said:

AEMO said unforeseen separation and complete loss of the Heywood Interconnector has occurred six times in the past 17 years.
But in every other instance, the system stayed alive.

"The key differentiator between the 28 September 2016 event and the other three events is that there was significantly lower inertia in SA in the most recent event, due to a lower number of on-line synchronous generators," the report said.

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Well, at the highest level, the systems to maintain grid stability clearly aren't fit for purpose if they do not work with the generators (RE) now connected. Maybe some kind of hydro or battery storage might be useful to provide this function instead of spinning inertia? Oh, wait, that's exactly what is currently being done...

Also, your assertion that a comparable situation has occurred in the past (in the good ol' pre-RE days) without causing a blackout appears false. The summary from Wikipedia of the event describes it was not just the Heywood interconnector that was lost and that it was, in fact, the last in a long line of dominoes to fall before the lights went out:

The wind damaged a total of 23 pylons on electricity transmission lines, including damage on three of the four interconnectors connecting the Adelaide area to the north and west of the state.

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The preliminary report from the Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO) identified that problems started 90 seconds before the eventual failure. The first line to trip was a 66 kV line near Adelaide, and it was automatically reset. The first major fault was 47 seconds later when two phases of the 275 kV line between Brinkworth and Templers grounded. The Davenport–Belalie line tripped with one phase to ground, was automatically reset, but tripped again nine seconds later, so was isolated for manual inspection, with the fault estimated to be 42 km (26 mi) from Davenport. One second later (7 seconds before the state went dark), the Hallett Wind Farm reduced output by 123 MW. Four seconds later, a third 275 kV transmission line showed a fault, the Davenport–Mount Lock is on the other side of the same towers as Davenport–Belalie, and the fault was estimated to be 1 km (0.6 mi) further on. The damaged power lines caused 5–6 voltage glitches which stressed the ride-through capability of most of the wind farm capacity, causing nine of them to shut down:[10] Finally, all within one second, the Hornsdale Wind Farm reduced output by 86 MW, Snowtown Wind Farm reduced output by 106 MW, the Heywood interconnector flow increased to over 850 MW and both of its circuits tripped out due to the overload. Supply was then lost to the entire South Australian region of the National Electricity Market, as the Torrens Island Power Station, Ladbroke Grove Power Station, Murraylink interconnector and all remaining wind farms tripped.[11]

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Quite the perfect storm. And, as they said, a once-in-50-years event.

So, does this mean wind turbines are inherently unsuitable? Nope. It seems a simple change in software settings is all that would have been required to avoid the blackout:

AEMO identified software settings in the wind farms that prevented repeated restarts once voltage or frequency events occurred too often. The group of wind turbines that could accept 9 ride-throughs in 120 seconds stayed on line through much of the event before the system went black. The rather larger group of turbines that could not accept this many repeated ride-throughs dropped out, instigating the overload and shutdown of the interconnector, and hence the electricity supply. AEMO has suggested better fault ride-through capability for the wind farms. The high wind speed caused 20 MW of wind power to disconnect to prevent overspeed.[10]

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Note, 20MW of wind generators were forced to disconnect due to high wind. Before that point, they were generating HALF of the entire state's electricity. Quite at odds with your earlier assertion that the blackout was caused by the wind-turbines shutting down due to over-speed en-masse.

Note, again, the wind conditions were exceptional: a once-in-50-years storm that was sufficient to bring down transmission pylons. Yet the vast majority of the wind turbines continued to function properly (and it seems, rather well).

So, what about restarting the system? Thankfully there was a plan:

AEMO had contracts with two "System Restart Ancillary Services" (SRAS) providers to help bring the network back up

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Well, there was a diesel plant, that proved useless:

The Mintaro Emergency Diesel Generator had suffered storm damage, including a cloud-to-ground lightning strike in very close proximity, but would not have been useful anyway due to its location in the network and downed transmission lines.

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Then there were the gas-turbine plants on Torrens Island that didn't work either:

The Quarantine Power Station was unable to start the larger Unit #5 required to provide enough power to restart any of the Torrens Island Power Station units, so Torrens Island needed power from the Victorian interconnector to be restarted.

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Great, a large power station that requires another power station to start it, but that itself didn't have enough power to start.

How much auxillary power does it take to start a PV panel or a wind turbine? I don't know exactly but I bet it's either zero or very small (onsite commercial diesel generator small).