Power Outage Grips Entire State of South Australia
September 28th, 2016Via: Stuff:
The entire state of South Australia is currently without power, with the region in the grip of what could be one of the most extreme weather systems to hit in 50 years.
A mass blackout began on Wednesday afternoon, with the a “weather event” behind the unprecedented outage.
Premier Jay Weatherill said the storm took down three transmission lines and nine towers in the Port Augusta region, forcing the electricity connection between South Australia and Victoria – known as an “interconnector” – to be shut down.
Wind turbines, which make up an estimated 40 per cent of the state’s power generation, were unable to operate as winds were too high.
Weatherill told a media conference it was the “usual protocol” to isolate South Australia from the National Electricity Market in a situation where there is a “large frequency drop”.
