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News: North West shelf fault reduces WA's power supplies
Posted: Wed Jan 02, 2008 7:18 pm
by vk6hgr
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
Posted: Wed Jan 02, 2008 8:59 pm
by meg
ugg - and a 40 degree day to boot...
Posted: Wed Jan 02, 2008 9:06 pm
by Fastlane
my sympathy to you all...
Posted: Wed Jan 02, 2008 11:29 pm
by Chicky
Fastlane wrote:my sympathy to you all...
Oh... says someone enjoying a beautiful white sandy beach...
Posted: Thu Jan 03, 2008 8:08 am
by Bonez
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!
Posted: Thu Jan 03, 2008 9:29 am
by vk6hgr
Has anyone lost power today...?
Posted: Thu Jan 03, 2008 9:39 am
by meg
Not yet, though I imagine as the temperature goes up it could happen!
Posted: Thu Jan 03, 2008 10:22 am
by vk6hgr
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
Posted: Thu Jan 03, 2008 4:29 pm
by Zebedee
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
Posted: Thu Jan 03, 2008 4:32 pm
by vk6hgr
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.
Posted: Thu Jan 03, 2008 4:55 pm
by Zebedee
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.
Posted: Thu Jan 03, 2008 5:20 pm
by yorky
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).