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Science Blog
Electricity Supply. Crunch time is here In the next ten years Australia must build about 12 GW of new base load power stations if the safety margins on supply in the electricity system are to be preserved. This is a huge new capacity representing 30% of the existing capacity. Meanwhile, the existing capacity is aging and much of it is now being questioned on the basis of efficiency and carbon dioxide production. One problem is that a project of this size does not take 10 years – it takes more than 20, and many of the carbon dioxide reduction strategies are only in early development. There is only one way to postpone the decisions: we have to give up our safety margins on supply. The events of Tuesday (16 January) in Victoria show what happens when a system looses its single largest component. The interconnector to New South Wales was the biggest component at around 2 GW of supply into Victoria on a day when the demand was at its highest because of the use of air-conditioning. Despite what has been said, the events of January 16th were to be expected. Electricity systems have to be based on the assumption that the largest supply component can be lost suddenly; indeed perhaps the largest two can be lost simultaneously and at the time of maximum demand. This concept is part of what can be termed the supply margin, and the size of the supply margin determines the reliability of supply. Having a very reliable system with a large supply margin is very expensive. It involves building and maintaining generators that are only sometimes used and reinforcing the grid to deal with rare distortions. The result of these facts is that we may have to make a decision which is unusual for our community. Interventions may have to occur on the demand side of the equation: we may have to control consumption. In this case Tuesday’s blackouts will not be rare events, but they will become increasingly common, as we learn to live with a constrained electricity system. Mr Bracks’ assertion that the supply outage was an “Act of God” will certainly now be tested.
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