95 public posts in this discussion.
From about 3pm to 1-2am (10 hours!) power went down to most of the northern suburbs.
Seems a substation "blew up" was the call desks excuse.
Dont they have redundancy they can switch to, cause it seems the hospital was affected as well. I mean the wets not even here yet and this shit is going on?
Was back on at around 9.30pm where I was.
Yeah it was pretty crazy! I had power in Nightcliff but most of the other suburbs towards Casuarina and including the shops were without power.
The hospital would have been okay they have backup plans for no power, generators etc.
ah found this on nt news:
15,000 homes hit by power blackout - Northern Territory News
Private hospital generators failed... **** me thats bad.
Quote:
Royal Darwin and Darwin Private hospitals were also hit - Darwin Private was temporarily evacuated when its generators failed.
Also saying an oil filled circuit breaker caused the problem? maintence issue??
Quote:
Power and Water's power networks general manager Bertram Birk said the explosion - caused by an oil-filled circuit breaker - was "significant", but nobody had been injured.
15,000 homes hit by power blackout - Northern Territory News
cas is still having troubles now, i was there at 11 and most of the complex was suffering power interruptions and at 1230 they were evacuating.
I thought this thread was going to be about port adelaide
Quote from paladin;353835:
I thought this thread was going to be about port adelaide
Bahahahahah
but yeah had no power from 4:30 till 11:30.. arrggg. it was so hot too..
Just glad it didn't happen 7days earlier.
Quote from paladin;353835:
I thought this thread was going to be about port adelaide
Our season finished weeks ago.
was off for a ridiculously long time, for them to not have some sort of redundancy plan is terrible.
lol, i'm just going to take this time to say, laugh it up chumps, keep calling palmy 3rd world while you don't have any power ;P
I'd rather live in Darwin with no power. :D:D
Quote from lrinaldi;353852:
I'd rather live in Darwin with no power. :D:D
+1
One substation carks it and 15k people left without power.
Love PAWC's infrastructure ;)
Quote from Milenko;353855:
One substation carks it and 15k people left without power.
Love PAWC's infrastructure ;)
Yeh honestly, haven't they played sim city.. get little red electric bolts indicating no power! Build another substation or get riots!
Power went off again 11:30pm till 1:30am at cas.
screw you power water
Quote from lrinaldi;353852:
I'd rather live in Darwin with no power. :D:D
*nods
Dam you pwc. :( alawa right next to the substaion nothing from 11:30 ish till 2am.. arrgg cant sleep now
i love it im on a different substation so when everywhere else is down im not
Quote from snake coward;353827:
From about 3pm to 1-2am (10 hours!) power went down to most of the northern suburbs.
Seems a substation "blew up" was the call desks excuse.
Dont they have redundancy they can switch to, cause it seems the hospital was affected as well. I mean the wets not even here yet and this shit is going on?
Engineers will tell you that you can have as much redundancy ... as you can afford. PowerWater could lay in duplicate lines, duplicate substations and build a second power station if they had the money. Your electricity bill might have to quintuple, though.
The fact of the matter is: shit happens. Really, it does. And if you haven't stumped up the "costs as much as the original" price of proper redundancy, stiff shit.
Quote from Bucky;353904:
i love it im on a different substation so when everywhere else is down im not
the only time we can stand up and say we are proud to live in karama :D
looks like power was out for about 23 3/4 hours while I was on holidays if the amount my alarm clock is out is any indication.
Quote from Knight Of Nih;353911:
the only time we can stand up and say we are proud to live in karama :D
+1 to that
Felt good after talking to friends with no power to come home to an air conditioned house and watch tv :D
Quote from Bad Crispy;353922:
+1 to that
Felt good after talking to friends with no power to come home to an air conditioned house and watch tv :D
then you came home to no tv cause you remembered you live in karama and it was stolen...
:)
Quote from El Presidente;353910:
Engineers will tell you that you can have as much redundancy ... as you can afford. PowerWater could lay in duplicate lines, duplicate substations and build a second power station if they had the money. Your electricity bill might have to quintuple, though.
The fact of the matter is: shit happens. Really, it does. And if you haven't stumped up the "costs as much as the original" price of proper redundancy, stiff shit.
Redundancy is one thing.
Proper maintenance levels to make sure a ****ing substation doesn't BLOW UP are another.
Living in Darwin is like living in WW2, your lights always get turned out at night.
hehehe Evil sleeps with his lights on...
Quote from Milenko;353974:
Redundancy is one thing.
Proper maintenance levels to make sure a ****ing substation doesn't BLOW UP are another.
Sure, I'll agree with that. Even so, redundancy is the only way to reduce risk from any and all causes, including poor maintenance.
But likewise, maintenance costs money. As a government-owned enterprise, PowerWater is not governed by traditional considerations of profit and loss. It's governed by the political imperative to keep power costs as low as possible so as not to piss people off.
In private enterprise utilities are about the safest investment you can make, if they don't get fancy (see: Vivendi). They make low profits and things change on a decadal timeframe. But costs rise more or less in line with inflation -- wages, replacement parts etc. A properly run utility is raising electricity rates every year by a little bit.
Publicly owned utilities can be well run too, but they have the overriding problem that there is political pressure not to raise prices. The gap has to be made up somewhere, and usually it's made up by delaying upgrades, reducing redundancy, and cutting back on maintenance.
Of course, these are broad brushes. I'd say that a good utility has an engineer-first culture, and a poor one is run by MBAs and flunkies from the Minister's office. PowerWater is a victim of this, so too Telstra in the past 10 years.
I guess it comes down to blame, is my point. Poor maintenance --> the minister can blame it on PowerWater. Higher electricity prices --> voters blame it on the minister.
Maintenance doesn't guarantee that external factors won't lead to failure either. Possums in particular can be quite troublesome.
Large oil filled circuit breakers are very robust pieces of equipment that actually require very little in the way of routine maintenance. The protection in power systems is actually quite extensive.
Ever noticed how your lights usually flicker before they go off for good during a blackout? That's the protection checking to make sure the fault condition that causes that blackout is still actually there before tripping for a full outage to prevent big equipment failure. It re-closes the circuit to check, and then opens again if the problem is persistent, or restores the circuit for good if it was something quick like a brief short circuit.
Before working in the electricity industry I had no idea just how much effort went in to making sure there was power available when you flicked the switch, but it's actually quite a lot.
As El Presidente says, there's building in redundancy, and then there's making power so expensive no-one can afford to own a fridge - it's a balance. The other thing with the redundant capacity is that the electricity market in Australia is regulated, you have to prove to the regulator that the capital expenditure is required to get the money in the first place, and then actually get enough maintenance budget to keep it running.
(Please note my experience is specific to SA, with some knowledge of the eastern states - this may not all hold true for the NT)
That's all well and good but Darwin possibly has THE worst power reliability in the country, and when it goes out, it goes out hard. I never appreciated just how bad it was until I moved out, sure storms are unpredictable but ffs this is the dry season, I'm sure it wasn't a storm
Well given the fact it's Darwin, numerous factors that create a hostile environment for such things. As well as there being only a population of 90k or so has some affect on the limit of services.
Of course there is no excuse for the power going out every sunday for 5mins when they switch generators. Blown substation is one thing but a standard generator switch should not result in lost power every sunday.
Power in Cas just went out for another 2 hours
went out longer than 2 hours in nakara (7 hours screw you power water)
Quote from paladin;353984:
That's all well and good but Darwin possibly has THE worst power reliability in the country, and when it goes out, it goes out hard. I never appreciated just how bad it was until I moved out, sure storms are unpredictable but ffs this is the dry season, I'm sure it wasn't a storm
The big problems in Darwin are:
1. Above-ground powerlines. That's being fixed, starting with the most marginal northern suburbs seats.
2. Only one power station. That means power comes "from" one "direction". I'm out of my depth here, but that's how the old man explained it to me. When there's a glitch in the system it has to propagate everywhere because there's no power flowing from another direction to fill the gap.
The undergrounding is happening slowly, but it's happening. Don't hold your breath for a second power station, though.
Quote from Jay;353987:
Well given the fact it's Darwin, numerous factors that create a hostile environment for such things. As well as there being only a population of 90k or so has some affect on the limit of services.
then you'd expect places like alice springs and alyangula to have equally shit power, but they don't
A few things, demand and environment. As well as a slight reduction of stupid drivers ploughing into the power lines.
The constant electrical disturbances in the system, humidity, rain, ants, shitfaced teenagers, etc. If they were taking care of things to prevent those sorts of issues, NT residents would be paying out of the arse. Which doesn't exactly work given 90% of the population are shit-takers in life.
The complexity of the system in both places is significantly reduced due to a population sprawl close to ****all. (Well compared to Darwin anyway). You could have a decent system in Darwin, but as mentioned - $$.
As well I'd doubt they'd want power to go down if it is shared with the mining zones.
edit: Oh and lack of skilled workers working for PW.
Quote from paladin;354054:
then you'd expect places like alice springs and alyangula to have equally shit power, but they don't
Storm unleashes 120km/h winds on town | NEWS.com.au
Both Darwin AND Alice both out yesterday... good times, good times...
Yeah dropped out at Coconut Grove for an hour or two this morning.
Grrr.
Hey don't say it like that ^_^ Gave me a chance to wake up properly before I had to actually start working this morning
Looks like my pig sacrifice to the god of Thunder has sorted our problems. If any of you come across an irate farmer with 1 eye and half an ear asking where I live, send him snake cowards way.
F u c k you PAWA! from about 10pm to 8:30am power was off again.
I heard on the radio 15,000 homes without power and we can continue to expect problems. :(
i guess Darwin doesnt have a power grid as such? more of a power straight line
My power was off from 8:45pm on the 2nd till 3rd at 9:00am
Off for a very long time!
12 hours my power was off.. i couldent sleep last night wayyy too hot.. arrggg. need sleep..
13 fkn hours....just got it back on.
what a fukn joke
All good here in Woodleigh Gardens, sorry to the rest.
12+ hours without power and not a cyclone to be seen. Hate to see what happens when we get hit by one.
According to all the Power/Water apologists here it's perfectly acceptable and expected.
once again i am deprived of much needed sleep
Hate
Blackouts
Darwin power crisis continues - Northern Territory News
Quote:
Power and Water said the outage was caused by a failure at the Casuarina substation.
It is the fourth time in two weeks a failure at the substation has caused a major blackout.
Yep. For fudge sake this is really getting irritating. If it happens again I will not hesitate to riot!! We should write to Power Water and claim the amount of time lost in $$.
yeah just finished intalling a new MB and put a fresh copy of vista then went to get something to eat (lucky vista was finished) then pow
trying to sleep with no fans on i was pissed off. so i went out side to try and have a sleep.thou i saw some nice shooting stars
oh what makes me shitty was that i had a copy of Warhead
Power not a problem in palmo ^_^
i guess power makes palmy twice as good as the suburbs now.. we're closest to the paintball fields AND we have almost uninterrupted power =)
Quote from Aegis;354671:
i guess power makes palmy twice as good as the suburbs now.. we're closest to the paintball fields AND we have almost uninterrupted power =)
That's like bragging about living next door to the cleanest garbage tip...at the end of the day you still live next to a garbage tip.
So what you're saying is, at the end of the day Darwinians still live next door to Palmerslumians?
Power went off from 11:10pm till sometime after 7am here in Wagaman.
Couldnt believe it was still off in the morning. Cant remember the last time it was off for anywhere near that long. Pretty horrible sleeping without a fan, let alone an airconditioning, luckily I was quite tired.
And there hasnt even been a storm yet :B
Quote from paladin;354673:
So what you're saying is, at the end of the day Darwinians still live next door to Palmerslumians?
:p
Quote from Wrathlon;354672:
That's like bragging about living next door to the cleanest garbage tip...at the end of the day you still live next to a garbage tip.
I wasn't saying darwin was a garbage tip but hey if that's the way you want it seen.
I'm still waiting for someone to tell me why palmerston's such a bad place =)
here's one reason:
http://www.gamers-underground.com/forum/354685-post1.html
yeah i saw taht post and was hoping no-one else did.. how much are houses in Karama these days?
Quote from YoGi!;354669:
thou i saw some nice shooting stars
Yep saw about 2-3 of those as well, cheered me up a little.
Also see the high altitude jet going by? Had about 4 flashing lights, 3 white and 1 red. Looked like a UFO till you hear the roar of the engine as it went by.
Quote from paladin;354659:
According to all the Power/Water apologists here it's perfectly acceptable and expected.
Is that me?
It's becoming apparent that there's more than a 'black swan' event going on. The NT News are pumping out stories about internal reports identifying a use-to-failure approach to parts replacement, shortage of spares etc.
I stand by my remarks though that you can have more reliable power if you're prepared to pay for it. But if, however, a government corporatises a utility in order to suck money out of it ... well ...
If you're one of them, then yes! you!
Egads!
My point would more be that while sure, paying more SHOULD give a better service, current rates should be sufficient to give a better goddamn service than darwinians are currently getting.
OMG how do i buy shares in generators??
Go buy a generator - Northern Territory News
So lets see...generators dont get here till mid next week. Lets say friday knowing how ****ing useless these guys are. Its monday now... So we got nearly 2 weeks. In the previous 2 weeks we've had 4 outages... Yeah we're screwed.
Quote from paladin;354892:
My point would more be that while sure, paying more SHOULD give a better service, current rates should be sufficient to give a better goddamn service than darwinians are currently getting.
One of the neat things about turning PAWA into PowerWater Corporation is that most of it moves off the budget books. It becomes much easier to hide underfunding etc behind the corporate veil -- and to invisibly strip out money as a 'dividend' to fritter away on wave pools and supercars.
Of course I could be blowing smoke here.
Anyway, I got curious and looked into the 2007 Annual Report. Capital spending on new stuff is going up this financial year, for a new station at Weddell (good news). But maintenance funding has not really climbed at all. In the report it says that 03-04 had $44.43 million spent on maintenance; in 06-07 it was $40.851 million. The total revenues -- money recovered from customers -- rises year on year, so proportionally the maintenance-per-customer ratio has been falling.
In 05-06 the Corporation paid an after tax profit of $20 million into Treasury, as the NTG is the sole shareholder. Now 06-07 is way down, but that's borrowing to pay for the new power station.
As sole shareholder the Government have the ability to set the policies of the firm, including pushing for better maintenance policies. Say they returned maintenance to 03-04 levels, that's about $4 million less profit for Treasury. A look at the most recent budget shows that the Department of the Chief Minister is budgeted to receive $44 million in the 08-09 financial year, which is less than something actually important like the data centre at $20 odd million. So Hendo could fire a few well paid flunkies and use it to replenish inventory and add a few more maintenance crews.
Just a thought.
Sources:
http://www.nt.gov.au/powerwater/docs/annrep/2007/Main%20Report_lr.pdf
http://www.budget.nt.gov.au/papers/bp3/chief_mins.pdf
http://www.budget.nt.gov.au/papers/bp3/data_centre.pdf
Nakara is down as of right now.. been since 4:30ish. MOFO's!
Update: PAWA automated msg said power should be back 8:30pm
The power in Nakara came back on about 10 mins ago. And this latest blackout KILLED MY ****ING PC! Time to start shopping for new parts. :(
get decent surge protection gear too man
Ouch, time to invest in a good UPS also. I just did the other day, used it to charge my work light the other day after the power went out...haha
Lost power from 4:30 till 7:30.. PWC recorded message changed to "No this is not the big outage we were talking about just a simple line fault. The substation is fine"
Some panic around i heard. least it wasnt too long this time
Well my surge protecter turned out to be useless, so I guess I'm going to have to get a decent UPS now. That's an extra $300 on top of my pc replacement :(
Should ask for compensation ;)
In Darwin you need an ups always. It has saved me many times.
Got insurance?
general rule if your surge protector weighs less than a hard drive its crap.
Had power go out twice today for a couple of minutes in stuart park. First time power wasn't out for long enough as our main server was still shutting down when it came back on so had to sit around and wait to restart it.
Attached is PDF file sent to government employee's, interesting read, don't ask where I got it.
There is two generators being placed outside rapid creek shops.
Not sure if they are for the shops or for rapid creek?
Any more sightings? hear there a 6 gens up here atm.
Hope they park one in my back yard, so i may leech :D
2 big gensets dropped at Pirates oval at CDU. Possibly being hooked up tuesday 14th
Saw one on the weekend on Temple Tce, Palmerston, at the turn-off to Farrer.
lol must be keeping up appearances :)
karama was just out for about an hour
yes i believe marrara, berrimah and winnellie were all off.
anula too since my computer was shut down when I got home.
power went out twice in nightcliff yesterday, one around 7pm and the other around midnight. despite having a generator a few hundred metres up the street.
also went out in berrimah for about an hour today.
just gettting beyond a joke.
bought a 2kva ups and used it to run my portable aircon last night.
twice in less then 12 hours for karama
not to mention brown water for the last half a week
Yes brown water here in Woodleigh Gardens as well. What next gastro outbreak for darwin?