Guest essay by Eric Worrall

Wind farm operators are facing a lawsuit over alleged failure to meet performance requirements.

Energy regulator launches legal action against wind farm operators over SA statewide blackout

By Daniel Keane
Updated Wed at 12:29pm

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“The AER has brought these proceedings to send a strong signal to all energy businesses about the importance of compliance with performance standards to promote system security and reliability,” AER chair Paula Conboy said in a statement.

“These alleged failures contributed to the black system event, and meant that AEMO [Australian Energy Market Operator] was not fully informed when responding to system-wide failures in South Australia in September 2016.

The blackout occurred on September 28, 2016, when extreme weather — described at the time as “twin tornadoes” — caused major damage to electricity infrastructure, knocking down huge transmission lines.

The AER said a subsequent loss of wind generation then triggered the blackout, which left 850,000 customers without power.

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Read more: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-08-07/regulator-legal-action-against-energy-companies-over-sa-blackout/11390400

If wind farms cannot be made more resilient against severe weather or instability caused by grid component failures, and if we assume for the sake of argument that future climate change will bring more severe weather and disruption and damage to infrastructure, there probably isn’t a lot of point building wind farms.