South Australia’s fleet of more than 2,500MW of large scale wind and solar farms will soon be free to operate at full capacity as four new synchronous condensers finally join the grid and begin operations. The first of the four syncons – big spinning machines that do not burn fuel, but which can provide key system services such as system strength – were supposed to join the grid a few months ago, but were finally switched on last week at the Davenport sub station near Port Augusta. Another two syncons at the Robertstown sub-station should be switched on in the coming week, and while constraints on wind and solar could be relaxed within a few weeks, it could be months until new combinations that will effectively allow the output of wind and solar farms to double come into force.
“At this stage there will be no change to the non-synchronous limits and generator combinations in South Australia,” AEMO said in a notice late last seek. (Non synchronous is a reference to inverter based technologies such as wind and solar). “AEMO will transition to the new limits and generator combinations following the commissioning of the Robertstown synchronous […]