An interesting connection - from the Australia First Party website:
SA Blackout caused by China and cheap shoddy chinese steel dumped in Australia
So, a spring storm off the Bight blew over 23 electricity transmission towers south of Port Augusta, which caused the SA Blackout.
Cold fronts are a weekly occurrence over southern Australia. Sure, lightning strikes will trigger auto-tripping and isolation protocols as a safety precaution to the electricity network. But 23 steel towers blown over? Why?
Dodgy towers not rated to a maximum of 120 km wind? You’re kidding! But that was the reported maximum wind gust during the storm of September 28, 2016 this week. Yet south of Port Augusta where the ElectraNet transmission towers blew over, the Bureau of Meteorology recorded only a maximum wind gust of just 83 kph!
A bit more:
Welding Technology Institute of Australia (WTIA) says 80% of fabricated steel from China is shoddy and not safe and fails Australian standards.
A lot more at the article. They were spending so much money on alt.energy foolishness that they had to use the lowest bidder for their transmission towers. Now, who will they use to replace them? The Chinese again? Here is another article on the blackout pointing out the silliness of windmills - from the Australian Broadcasting Company:
SA storms: Rushing to renewable energy targets puts sector's reputation at risk
The last time an entire state blacked out was on the night the Beatles arrived in Sydney in 1964.
So what happened in South Australia yesterday was rare and the repercussions could be vast.
The key question is whether that state's heavy reliance on wind turbines might have increased the risk of a state-wide blackout. More broadly, the event will supercharge concerns over how renewable energy is being integrated into a national grid that was not designed to cope with it.
Wind presents two problems. First, it is intermittent, so all of it has to be backed up by baseload power for those days when the wind does not blow.
The second is a diabolically tricky engineering problem. For an electricity network to function, demand and supply have to be kept in the perfect harmony of 50 hertz every second of every day. If the frequency gets out of tune, the system identifies a fault that could destroy it and that trips the shutdown switch.
This electrical harmony is called synchronous supply, and thermal power is very good at delivering it to the grid.
Thermal power being coal or gas. Finally, it is not just Australia getting bad steel - here is a story from the New Zealand website stuff:
Chinese steel fails strength test
Roading bosses are defending their quality control standards after 1600 tonnes of Chinese steel destined for a major Waikato project was found to be below standard.
The substandard steel piles were to be used on four bridges along the Huntly section of the Waikato Expressway.
Memo to self - check for the country of origin...
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