alt.energy in South Australia

From The Sydney Morning Herald:

State in the dark: South Australia's major power outage
The entire state of South Australia was without power for several hours on Wednesday afternoon, with the region gripped by what could be one of the most extreme weather systems to hit in 50 years.

A mass blackout began about 3.30pm on Wednesday, plunging the Adelaide into darkness, grounding flights and causing havoc on the state's roads.

A bit more:

Premier Jay Weatherill said the storm took down three transmission lines and nine towers in the Port Augusta region, forcing the electricity connection between South Australia and Victoria - known as an "interconnector" - to be shut down.

Wind turbines, which make up an estimated 40 per cent of the state's power generation, were unable to operate as winds were too high, South Australian senator Nick Xenophon said.

And the storm?

By Wednesday evening, the highest gust had been recorded at Snowtown, which experienced 104km/h winds in the mid-afternoon and 26 millimetres of rain in an hour.

Only 104km/h? That is just 64.6m/h and we get gusts up to that routinely during winter storms. 26mm/h of precip? That is just under one inch of rain - again, routine. During some Pineapple Express patterns, we will get up to six inches in one day - now that is some rain!

So, South Australia's energy policy is to shut down the cheap clean coal burning plants and instead rely on the variable wind for baseload generation. Take away that capacity with either too little wind or too much and you go dark. Plus, your energy costs skyrocket - now where have we heard that before...