Power System Frequency Disturbance 13:00 15 February 2011 - Information Flyer 8 March 2011

Power System Frequency

Disturbance 13:00 15 February
2011 - Information Flyer

8 March 2011

Copyright of Western Power

Any use of this material except in accordance with a written agreement with Western Power is
prohibited.

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Power System Frequency Disturbance 13:00 15 February 2011 - Information Flyer 8 March 2011

Introduction

This flyer is produced to inform customers of the effects on the South West
Interconnected System (SWIS) during this event. The information is provided by
System Management in its role the Power System Operator of the SWIS. Frequency
and voltage disturbances in the SWIS may have lead to disruptions in the operation of
equipment in use at that time.

Pre Event

The SWIS was supplying approximately 3600MW of demand, which is normal for the
prevailing weather conditions with a daily maximum temperature of 36 degrees
Celsius. System Management had sufficient generators in reserve to prevent
involuntary customer loadsheding in the event of losing a generator of up to 330MW.
This is normal practice as any generator may fail without warning.

Event Start

At 13:00:08 a generator in the Collie Area failed with the loss of 215MW of
generation.

At 13:00:28 (20 seconds later) another generator failed with the loss of a further 165
MW.

At 13:00:52 (another 24 seconds later) another generator failed with the loss of a
further 24 MW.

At 13:02:08 the system frequency declined to 48.75hz due to the exhaustion of the
generator reserves. At this point the SWIS is nearing entering an unsafe operating
mode and customers started to experience involuntary load shedding. Customers
were shed which brought the demand back to the level of generation available.

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Power System Frequency Disturbance 13:00 15 February 2011 - Information Flyer 8 March 2011

Event Finish

At 13:07:40 the system frequency returned to the normal 50.00 hz

A graph of the system frequency during this event is shown in the Graph 1

Commentary

System Management caters for the instantaneous failure of generators in the SWIS.
The largest generator at any time is generally 330MW. Loss of this generator is
generally a one in three year event. To cater for a larger loss of generation, that is
simultaneous failure of multiple generators at once, is expensive.

During this event approximately 400MW of generators was lost and the online reserve
generation was not sufficient, but in accordance with the SWIS Technical Code and
Wholesale Electricity Market requirements. As a result involuntary load shedding was
required to prevent the SWIS entering an unsafe operating state

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 Frequency (hz)

48
48.5
49
49.5
50
50.5

12:58:00
12:58:16
12:58:32
12:58:48
12:59:04
12:59:20
12:59:36
12:59:52
13:00:08
13:00:24
13:00:40
13:00:56
13:01:12
13:01:28
Power System Frequency Disturbance 13:00 15 February 2011 - Information Flyer

1st generator failure

13:01:44
2nd generator failure

13:02:00
13:02:16
3rd generator failure

13:02:32
13:02:48
Time 13:03:04
13:03:20
13:03:36
Involuntary loadshedding

13:03:52
13:04:08
13:04:24
13:04:40
Graph 1 : Frequency Disturbance 13:00 15/2/2011

13:04:56
13:05:12
13:05:28
13:05:44
13:06:00
13:06:16
13:06:32
13:06:48
13:07:04
13:07:20

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8 March 2011

13:07:36
13:07:52