Wind power output collapse the culprit.

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Whichever way you slice it (and it’s been cut from every possibly exculpatory angle), South Australia’s infamous Statewide blackout on 28 September 2016 was due to the inability of its 18 wind farms to tough out a typically vigorous spring storm front.

Where conventional generators have no difficulty chugging away in bad weather, ‘systems’ that depend entirely upon the vagaries of nature will always struggle. Tinkering with wind turbine software settings doesn’t make the wind blow fast enough to get these things up and running or to stop blowing too hard: at 25m/s – or 90km/h turbines shut down for reasons of self-preservation.

In its final report – available here: Integrated Final Report SA Black System 28 September 2016 the AEMO (which pushes wind power because its members do) went to extraordinary lengths in its attempt to exonerate SA’s wind farms, but the…