These mass outages would have been avoided,or their impact dramatically reduced with a shortened recovery period,if we’d had large-scale investment in transitioning the electricity grid to renewables.
Victorian Energy Minister Lily D’Ambrosio described it as “one of the largest outage events in the state’s history” after a storms flattened transmission towers and knocked out the state’s largest power station.
Stawell resident Peter Greenberger said he had spoken to friends from Pomonal on Tuesday evening,and it seemed likely a number of families had lost their homes.
Residents and towns across northern Victoria say they’ve been left without power for 80 hours in just two months,which has forced businesses to shut and raised safety fears.
More than 16,000 homes and businesses were without power and traffic lights were down on Victoria Road after an unplanned outage.
On Sunday morning,there were about 2850 customers without power,down from 3800 on Saturday afternoon.
The state could have acted in advance to avoid much of the suffering thousands of people are now suffering for days on end,says the opposition energy spokesman.
Premier Roger Cook said on Friday that the storms were unprecedented in both ferocity and focus,and had crumpled 50-metre transmission towers “like tinfoil.”
Supplying the demand for power in homes can be a high-intensity balancing act. Why aren’t renewables making our bills cheaper? What’s behind the cost of our power?
WA Police allege the men,aged 31 and 32,tampered with the wiring on a Western Power pole that caused a blackout which impacted a person on life support.
The only thing that upsets climate and energy ministers more than the risk of climate change is the threat of blackouts,so get used to more coal.