News: North West shelf fault reduces WA's power supplies

Post by **vk6hgr** » Wed Jan 02, 2008 7:18 pm

A fault at North West Shelf Venture's Karratha Gas Plant today has dramatically cut gas supplies to WA's power generators.

Woodside has stated to the Australian Stock Exchange that it is investigating the cause of the incident and has informed power generators that there will be no gas available tomorrow.

Western Power, the electrical system operator of the main grid, says the gas shortage is expected to lead to a shortage of power available to it to distribute to businesses and homes.

http://www.westernpower.com.au/subConte ... plies.html

Good chance of power blackouts tomorrow, folks

Post by **meg** » Wed Jan 02, 2008 8:59 pm

ugg - and a 40 degree day to boot...

Fastlane · Post by **Fastlane** » Wed Jan 02, 2008 9:06 pm

my sympathy to you all...

Chicky · Post by **Chicky** » Wed Jan 02, 2008 11:29 pm

Fastlane wrote:my sympathy to you all...

Oh... says someone enjoying a beautiful white sandy beach...

Post by **Bonez** » Thu Jan 03, 2008 8:08 am

My employer has been ordered to shut down half of the processing facilities just outside Perth, as there's not enough gas to run the plant.

That brings us down to about 35% of normal production!

Post by **vk6hgr** » Thu Jan 03, 2008 9:29 am

Has anyone lost power today...?

Post by **meg** » Thu Jan 03, 2008 9:39 am

Not yet, though I imagine as the temperature goes up it could happen!

Post by **vk6hgr** » Thu Jan 03, 2008 10:22 am

Looks like (so far) we've avoided rolling blackouts.

Western power have 2-hourly updates here:

http://www.westernpower.com.au/subConte ... rtage.html

And a nice graph of WA's south-west grid power consumption, here:

http://www.westernpower.com.au/subConte ... k_out.html

Post by **Zebedee** » Thu Jan 03, 2008 4:29 pm

I've heard from a couple of friends that they've had power cuts, but nothing much here from me.

Sometime just after about 4:30pm the lights flickered and the UPSes at home made a couple of indignant beeping sounds, but power didn't actually go out.

Lost the ADSL connection though - even though everything at my end is UPSed, I don't think the stuff at the exchange is

Post by **vk6hgr** » Thu Jan 03, 2008 4:32 pm

Zebedee wrote: Lost the ADSL connection though - even though everything at my end is UPSed, I don't think the stuff at the exchange is

It should be. All exchanges will at least have battery power, and Beechboro also has a nice big genset sitting in the carpark

Our lights flickered here, as at work and at my parent's place (yay for monitored UPSes!), and Iinet have just issued a notice about authentication issues which always happens after large-scale power problems. So, it's safe to say it was Perth-wide.

Post by **Zebedee** » Thu Jan 03, 2008 4:55 pm

Well most of the time when there's one of these Perth-wide flickers, I lose ADSL. I know the modem's on UPS power, so I can't understand why the connection drops.

I did read on Whingepool that in some exchanges, not everything is connected to the UPS/generator. Perhaps that's what's happening at the Beechboro exchange.

Post by **yorky** » Thu Jan 03, 2008 5:20 pm

Amnet also had an outage them self apparently. Also your phone cable/lines could pickup interference from the sudden drop and then power spike. I know with my Digital TV it will splutter if theres a power issue (DTV on the PC, which is UPS'ed).