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posted by CoolHand on Thursday October 20 2016, @03:55PM   Printer-friendly
from the hardware-over-software dept.

The Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO) says wind-powered electricity generation's "intermittency" had nothing to do with the blackouts following South Australia's catastrophic storms in late September.

In its ongoing investigation of what caused the "system black" event on 28 September, the AEMO says the storm caused a loss of 445 MW of wind output (out of a total loss of 900 MW), rather than the 315 MW of its original estimate.

However, AEMO's updated preliminary report (PDF) makes it clear that the political assertions made about wind energy were false.

"The most well known characteristic of wind power, variation of output with wind strength (often termed 'intermittency'), was not a material factor in the events of 28 September 2016", the report states on page 21.

Only 20 MW of wind power disconnected due to excessive wind speed. Instead, most loss of wind output was down to how the wind farms' control systems were configured – in particular, the settings for "voltage ride-through" events, which the report notes are proprietary settings in the control software.

For more information on the storm, see coverage by CNN, The Guardian , The Conversation and ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation).

"Bad Bespoke Software." Software shouldn't have spokes. That's the problem right there.


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  • (Score: 2) by LoRdTAW on Thursday October 20 2016, @11:28PM

    by LoRdTAW (3755) on Thursday October 20 2016, @11:28PM (#416983) Journal

    Before he quit, my predecessor swore that a computer controlled glove box (we no longer have) had a time bomb in it. Every year during autumn it would inexplicably just stop working. No physical problems. No bad sensors, loose wires, broken anything. The DOS (yes, that DOS) application would just freeze up and stop responding. Reboots didn't fix it, scan disk, different I/O card, nothing. So they had to call the only tech for that machine, a guy who worked for the manufacturer, to come in and fix it. He would run a "diagnostic" tool from a floppy, type in a few things, and magically the machine would come alive again. All for the low price of a $2000 service call. When asked if the diagnostic software could be purchased we were told it his was proprietary software he would not sell it. When also asked about the error he gave some lame BS answer about program memory corruption or some nonsense. They scraped that machine before I started working there thankfully.

    Oddly enough, that machine which replaced it also runs DOS and still does. Written in QBasic and ISA I/O cards. That guy also wouldn't sell the source code after he told me we were the last people in the world he knows of using that machine (yea right). He instead would charge us $10k to build a new system using visual basic and PCI I/O cards. No thanks. He also sold us a replacement part he said he had lying around in his garage for $500 which didn't work. He then had the nerve to make us pay for the return shipping and refused to ship it over night out of pocket as were behind on work. Those niche service techs have a nice scam going. I have already eliminated another guy who charged a $1500/month retainer. He was in every 3-4 months fixing the same fucking problems because he never actually fixed them. Just band aided it until it failed again warranting his retainer. Scam artists.

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  • (Score: 2) by butthurt on Friday October 21 2016, @02:38AM

    by butthurt (6141) on Friday October 21 2016, @02:38AM (#417054) Journal

    a related comment:
    /comments.pl?sid=15695&cid=406548 [soylentnews.org]