50C Australia ... will they get a clue?

Source: Record-breaking heatwave triggers power cuts on Australia's stressed grid | Reuters

. . .
Transmission links from the states of Tasmania, New South Wales and South Australia were transferring power to Victoria at full capacity, Zibelman said.
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Temperatures in the South Australian capital of Adelaide rose to just shy of 50 degrees Celsius (122 degrees Fahrenheit) on Thursday, a record high. Melbourne, the capital of Victoria, was set to hit 44C on Friday, before a drop of about 15 degrees expected mid-afternoon.

Victoria Energy Minister Lily D’Ambrosio said it was clear Australia’s summers were getting longer, hotter and more extreme because of climate change.
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In South Australia, where power capacity has been beefed up with diesel generators and gas-fired plants over the past two years following a state-wide blackout, 30,000 homes lost power on Thursday after transformers on local power lines overheated and switched off.

“After days of heat, we were in some uncharted territory yesterday with record heat and record load sustained well into the night,” said Paul Roberts, a spokesman for SA Power Networks, the South Australian local distribution network operator.​

Curious there was no mention of South Australia's Hornsdale Power Reserve.

Bob Wilson

 

Google found: More Blackouts In South Australia–Where’s Elon Musk? | NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT

It appears the Aussi have opinions that mirror what we find in the States. But technical data still seems sparse. Regardless:

• "over promise" - some of the anti-wind and anti-Hornsdale want to claim more performance from wind and the power reserve than they were designed.
• "traditional power" - these want a return to coal or adoption of nuclear.
• 3200 GW, South Australia capacity with load shedding to keep service
• a lot of power distribution, power transformers, protected by fuses induced local failures

More facts and data: Heatwave weather: Blackouts hit South Australia and Victoria

The electricity transmission company has confirmed about 25,000 properties were blacked out when infrastructure began to buckle in the extreme conditions.
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Ninety transformers crashed across the state’s transmission network while a substation at Fulham Gardens tripped, leaving 15,000 western suburbs customers without power late yesterday.
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“We understand customers would be inconvenienced by these outages. Given the number of outages affecting small localised groups of 50 to 170 customers, the crews did a great job to restore most people’s power before first light today.

“In terms of what happened, equipment like humans is affected by heat. A number of transformers overheated and their fusing operated as it should to prevent a catastrophic failure,” Mr Roberts added.
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“We had enough electricity in South Australia to meet our needs. It was close but we had enough,” Mr Van Holst Pellekaan said.
. . .​

Bob Wilson