How South Australia’s Excessive Reliance On Wind Power Is Destabilising Its Power Grids

Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull conveyed to the state energy officials on Friday that South Australia’s excessive emphasis on generating electricity from wind farms is ruining Australia’s power grid and undermining its energy security. The Turnbull administration called a meeting for state energy ministers following “violent fluctuations” in the supply of wind power which caused a blackout affecting 1.7 million people in South Australia.

The Australian Energy Market Operator blamed the blackout on a wind farm in Snowtown which caused the state power grid to become extremely unstable. This, in turn, forced other Australian power grids to shut off their links to South Australia, leading to the complete collapse of the state’s power grid. South Australia is facing a similar power crisis since July this year, when its last reliable coal power plants were closed in favour of wind.

This crisis has caused the price of electricity in the country to spike to 200 cents per kilowatt-hour of power. As expected, power prices in Australian states with a lot of wind power are almost double the rates when compared to other states.

Specialists believe that the ability of an electrical grid to absorb erratic green energy becomes progressively more difficult. South Australia’s dependence on wind power makes blackouts more likely because the amount of electricity generated by a wind turbine is very sporadic and makes power grids more fragile.