SA power: Energy market operator warns of blackout risk across festival weekend
Updated
As Adelaide prepares for one of its busiest weekends with the Festival, Fringe and motor racing events crowding the city, South Australians have been warned of an increased risk of load shedding blackouts.
The Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO) has issued a forecast "lack of reserve" notice to the electricity market for Saturday and Sunday because of planned maintenance work on a high-voltage transmission line in Victoria.
"On the occurrence of a credible contingency during these planned outages, [the] South Australia region could separate from the rest of the NEM (National Electricity Market) and is likely to result in interruptions to power supplies in South Australia," the notice said.
"There are sufficient capacity reserves in the South Australia region to meet electricity demand, but following the next credible contingency it may not be possible to bring the required additional capacity into service in time to avoid automatic under-frequency load shedding causing interruptions to power supplies."
The maintenance work is on the Moorabool to Mortlake No. 2 line, an important link which feeds one of the two circuits to the Heywood Interconnector, which provides the majority of Victorian power exports to South Australia.
South Australia's grid separated from the national market twice last year.
The first event in September resulted in a catastrophic state-wide blackout.
The second, in December, saw 200,000 electricity customers "load shed" or intentionally blacked out.
AEMO has come under criticism for failing to prevent load shedding during a heatwave in the state last month.
An error by power distributor SA Power Networks meant the load shedding was three times larger than ordered, with 90,000 customers cut.
Topics: electricity-energy-and-utilities, industry, emergency-planning, adelaide-5000, sa, australia
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