Bazz,
Not only are the SA wind turbines and, as far as I know, every other wind turbine in Australia, not technological leaders, they had undisclosed "features" which made matters worse.

AEMO have, in several reports now, indicated that the manufacturers and Generators (ie the owners) did not fully detail their operational shortcomings during the licencing process. This was a serious oversight. Hence, they were something of surprise packages. The critical issue is not lack of black start capacity or inability to provide their own frequency control or synthetic inertia. It was their extremely limited ability to ride through faults. Some were reported to have shut down after the first fault - often taking the whole wind farm down - despite having nominal capacity to ride through a number of faults - reportedly up to 12 for some turbine types.

(Continued)

...Continued (Pardon the delay - I had an appointment down town).

That is an issue which is being addressed by AEMO currently, along with the relevant manufacturers and owners. It seems that significant improvements are available, but were overlooked during commissioning, the result being that the turbines were subjected to the minimum risk. The risk to the system was consequently maximised.

Maybe during future wind storms that 400+ MW of wind turbines will not shut themselves down prematurely. The two transmission lines still collapsed very soon afterward but the wind would have remained on line via the surviving system without dumping additional load onto the interconnector. Future AEMO studies will provide details, including of preventative actions.

Summing up, the Heywood Interconnector didn't trip because of collapse of about half of the HV transmission system north of Adelaide. That would have resulted in local blackouts and loss of load (demand) and a reduced flow through the Heywood. It tripped because of loss of the wind turbines.

Secondary influences which extended the degree and timing of the islanding include the failure of the contracted standby gas turbines to kick in - hence the new requirement that at least two "large" GT's must be in service at all times.

Possibly also (I'm hypothesising here), the protection settings in the transmission system were too broad - the system should have isolated individual transmission and distribution line faults within SA before the interconnector disconnected... the branches should have been pruned in order to save the trunk, but they were not.

The wind farms stayed off-line instead of riding through the early faults, which could well have been lightning strikes or conductor clashes, etc and thus only fleeting events.

Wait till March for the final AEMO report.

One needs only one Fukushima to destroy South Australia's (or even Australia's) finances,

"The total cost of decommissioning the stricken nuclear power plant at Fukushima and providing compensation to victims has nearly doubled, with a new estimate placing the cost at $250 billion.

Five and a half years after the nuclear disaster, the painstaking work of cleaning up the radioactive disaster zone is progressing very slowly."

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-12-17/fukushima-nuclear-clean-up,-compensation-costs-nearly-double/8127268

Might I ask, what are the odds of that happening in SA or for that matter, anywhere else in south east Oz, with up to date designs of nuclear power plant. Don't be such a fraidy cat.

David

Replying to David, on the odds of a nuclear disaster. Yes, the probability of a nuclear disaster is very small indeed. However, one must look to the insurance industry for a reality check on this.

The insurance equation is to balance the probability of disaster against the consequences of disaster. That's why insurance companies won't touch nuclear power reactors.

And - We can expect more severe nuclear accidents - statistical analysis shows - Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists http://linkis.com/tandfonline.com/acti/kgNSn

ChristinaMac1 linked to an article which presumes that core meltdowns are the primary cause of nuclear power mishaps.

The answer is to stop constructing power plant such as LWR and PWR types which may have inherent tendency to do so. There are many alternatives. Google Gen IV Reactors for some possibilities, or consider some of the emerging SMR designs.

Since the presumption about the future of nuclear power is false, it follows that so is the conclusion.

Rule one of risk assessment: Design out the problem. That is a 100% solution.
Lowest priorities: Rely on insurance or erect a warning notice. That is not a solution.