Renewable Energy Failure

A massive, once in five decades storm hits South Australia, and destroys several parts of the grid infrastructure. What didn't lose power right away, lost it as power was cut to the state to protect equipment from the then unstable grid. Power was starting to be restored 4 hours after it went out, and it may all be back on by now.

Renewables had nothing to do with this. Just like they had nothing to do with my coworker and thousands of others being without power for over a week when Sandy hit.
State in the dark: South Australia's major power outage
South Australia's blackout explained (and no, renewables aren't to blame) | Australia news | The Guardian

 

I know better than to read mojo's posts. But it's like looking at a car wreck.

 

how many days were they without power? we have lost it for a week, after a big storm, and all fossil fuels.

 

The most vocal state supporters of renewables CA/NY/New England are those areas which are able to import cheap hydro from other states and Canada. Then we get and earful for not doing same on our own nickel.

 

Sounded like it was only going to be a day for most in the state, but then they got hit with a another storm Thursday with some of the highest winds seen in the state.

 

would they be happy paying 24 cents per kWh?

 

i don't understand how renewables fit into the picture. if the grid is down, what matter the source?

if we are talking about turbines that can't run and no solar every time there's a storm, and no backup plan, that would be shortsighted.

 

no way I am hoping Virginia can get all the businesses to move here. Given I assume hydro from Canada is very cheap (not sure about that) I wonder how MA manages jack it up to 24 cents.

 

They had a massive cost spike in July. Sounded like standby fossil plant couldn't be spun up fast enough. SA might just need some newer peaker plants.

 

it's just my service area. no idea where the electrons come from. eversource is the company, and i always assumed the rate hikes were to pay the notes on the 5 different takeovers in the last 20 years.

 

It would be inefficient and unnecessarily expensive for California or most States to be electrical grid independent.

Regulations to prevent export/import price manipulation are important. But the ability to move hydro, solar, wind, and other renewable energy power, even peaking fossil power, over State lines is important.

 

Presented above a notion that renewable E could provide some trouble, quite apart from +CO2 issues. I do not work that side; instead I wonder about global populations in countries with different % of renewable E. How many might be at risk of renewable E frailties? Or, considered another way, how have we all progressed towards this popular (some would say sensible) goal?

I combined two wiki pages:
List of countries by electricity production from renewable sources - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

List of countries and dependencies by population - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Less than 7.2 billion people could be accounted, and % renewable data are a few years old. We see that most folks are in 10 to 30% renewable electricity range. Australia, US, and China are 13, 14, and 24%. The distribution has a second high group of about 1.1 billions. If renewable E is ‘frail’, it will be first seen by them (I suppose).

I think that much more could be done with such analyses; by regions and by countries’ stated future energy plans.

 

Tom Steyer was mentioned in first post, and I don't know much about him. This organization was founded/funded by him, so may give some insights. Form your own opinions:

Home — NextGen Climate

 

That's tricky...a subscriber only link. So, maybe I do know.