Power outage - Transmission Tower Down

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#3252703 24-Jun-2024 17:22

sir1963:

You do one leg at a time.

It's like rock climbing, you always keep 3 points of contact. This is NOT rocket science.

Poster below you states one nut at a time.

Scott3

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#3252753 24-Jun-2024 17:43

sir1963:

Why were they simply not replaced with new ones one at a time and then torqued down properly...so this cost of this screw up vs the cost of new nuts...

The procedure was likely:

Remove one nut
Blast
Coat
Replace & torque to specification
Repeat on subsequent nut until all are done.

There would be a substantial time / effort saving to doing all nuts in the same batch at once. much less swapping between tools etc.

That is until you happen across a tower which has a leg under tension (or happens to transition into tension in a gust of wind).

Even with new nuts the motivation to take the same short cut would still exist, It's not just the nuts that would need blasted, it would be the bit of tower under them and their washers.

Should note this is just speculation, I have no idea if nut replacement was part of this maintenance.

sir1963:

It takes just as long to remove a set of nuts as it does to put them on. Bet you they only had one tool... and we told to reuse the old nuts to "save money"

It takes just as long to tighten a used nut as a brand new one.

On the criticism of saving money, lets remember saving money is a great thing.

Throwing away nuts that are acceptable from an engineering perspective is just wasteful (nuts of this size are unlikely to be cheap, a procurement and validation process would also need to be followed if they were to be replaced), and it presents a slippery slope argument: why were they maintaining the tower at all? Just swap it out for a new one...

And of course there is an environmental cost of throwing good stuff away.

And of course we as a country want to spend as little as possible on our power grid to get the job done to an acceptable level.

sir1963

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#3252754 24-Jun-2024 17:44

Scott3:
Poster below you states one nut at a time.

Oh, I am quite sure there was more than one nut involved here...soon to be unemployed nuts I suspect.

MadEngineer

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#3252758 24-Jun-2024 18:10

Off to boot camp for them No Nut Nigels where they'll learn lessons like not cleaning your rifle when everyone else is cleaning theirs.

You're not on Atlantis anymore, Duncan Idaho.

cyril7

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#3252792 24-Jun-2024 20:46

It's clear this is incompetence at its highest, the staff who did this must surely have had second thoughts of there actions.

Sorry I have little sympathy, it's clearly dumb dumb dumb, end of story.

Cyril

tweake

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#3252826 24-Jun-2024 21:34

https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/northland-power-cut-businesses-want-compensation-from-transpower/OMNTZTQEAJEC7CWTIM5T4ARFHU/

power generation at Top Energy’s Ngāwhā site wasn’t immediately able to work when the power went out, as it needed some power in the grid to synchronise to.

having generation that cannot black start is a issue thats getting bigger.

Ongoing investigations will look at whether the workers involved had the correct training and how much pressure they were under, he said.

i do hope they have their drug testing results available.

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Scott3

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#3252830 24-Jun-2024 21:50

cyril7: It's clear this is incompetence at its highest, the staff who did this must surely have had second thoughts of there actions.

Sorry I have little sympathy, it's clearly dumb dumb dumb, end of story.

Cyril

It's clearly a huge mistake, but it will still be interesting to see the outcome of the route cause analysis (if it is ever made public).

While tempting to blame the workers, the reality is they have been tasked with a laborious, repetitive task, and likely lacked the knowledge many technical people here take for granted.

I suspect they either never properly comprehended the correct procedure, of they didn't understand the importance of following the correct procedure, and decided to tweak it to improve their productivity.

Lets not forget it is the workers safety that ultimately gets put at risk in such incidents, very fortunate no body got hurt.

SomeoneSomewhere

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#3252831 24-Jun-2024 21:51

Generation not being able to black start is an issue that's been around for more than a century. We're unusually lucky in that most hydro plants need a backup diesel to operate control gates because the lake levels need managing even if you cannot generate, and hydro is about the easiest source to black-start, so most NZ plants can black start fairly easily, and if not can be quickly bootstrapped.

Start looking at coal, gas, nuclear, and you can need almost as much power as the whole of Northland pulls just to start the plant up.

It wasn't an issue for long; it sounds like minutes or tens of minutes to get the right lines energised from the remaining 110kV circuit.

Meridian's Ruakākā battery farm will provide more black-start capability in the area.

Scott3

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#3252832 24-Jun-2024 21:53

Scott3:

sir1963:

You do one leg at a time.

It's like rock climbing, you always keep 3 points of contact. This is NOT rocket science.

Poster below you states one nut at a time.

My apologies to sir1963.

Quote from "Omexom NZ chief executive Mornez Green"

"The normal procedure is to remove the nuts on one leg at a time but three legs of the tower had the nuts removed"

https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/northland-power-cut-businesses-want-compensation-from-transpower/OMNTZTQEAJEC7CWTIM5T4ARFHU/#google_vignette

raytaylor

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#3252833 24-Jun-2024 22:00

tweake:

power generation at Top Energy’s Ngāwhā site wasn’t immediately able to work when the power went out, as it needed some power in the grid to synchronise to.

I have never really understood compensation from government departments.

It ends up coming out of our own pockets so they will simply be charged more next time charges need to be put up to cover costs.

It would have been fascinating to watch the control rooms disconnect everything off the 110kv line so that Ngawha could start up using feed from Henderson and then bring the consumer loads back on

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johno1234

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#3252834 24-Jun-2024 22:00

Scott3:
cyril7: It's clear this is incompetence at its highest, the staff who did this must surely have had second thoughts of there actions.

Sorry I have little sympathy, it's clearly dumb dumb dumb, end of story.

Cyril

It's clearly a huge mistake, but it will still be interesting to see the outcome of the route cause analysis (if it is ever made public).

While tempting to blame the workers, the reality is they have been tasked with a laborious, repetitive task, and likely lacked the knowledge many technical people here take for granted.

I suspect they either never properly comprehended the correct procedure, of they didn't understand the importance of following the correct procedure, and decided to tweak it to improve their productivity.

Lets not forget it is the workers safety that ultimately gets put at risk in such incidents, very fortunate no body got hurt.

They’re working in a high risk area involving electricity and heights. Would have expected a very heavy safety and training emphasis to the point of being painful. The whole story is just crazy.

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SomeoneSomewhere

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#3252841 24-Jun-2024 22:10

johno1234:
Scott3:

It's clearly a huge mistake, but it will still be interesting to see the outcome of the route cause analysis (if it is ever made public).

While tempting to blame the workers, the reality is they have been tasked with a laborious, repetitive task, and likely lacked the knowledge many technical people here take for granted.

I suspect they either never properly comprehended the correct procedure, of they didn't understand the importance of following the correct procedure, and decided to tweak it to improve their productivity.

Lets not forget it is the workers safety that ultimately gets put at risk in such incidents, very fortunate no body got hurt.

They’re working in a high risk area involving electricity and heights. Would have expected a very heavy safety and training emphasis to the point of being painful. The whole story is just crazy.

The first two meters of the tower is relatively low-risk and probably higher maintenance. I wouldn't be surprised if it goes to a different contractor or different crews.

neb

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#3252851 24-Jun-2024 23:09

tweake: https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/northland-power-cut-businesses-want-compensation-from-transpower/OMNTZTQEAJEC7CWTIM5T4ARFHU/

power generation at Top Energy’s Ngāwhā site wasn’t immediately able to work when the power went out, as it needed some power in the grid to synchronise to.

having generation that cannot black start is a issue thats getting bigger.

That's something that Australia has been dealing with, moving to grid-forming inverters rather than grid-following ones.

Anyone know if NZ's plans are for GFM or GFL inverters? I just have this horrible feeling that once we get around to sinking a billion dollars or so into grid-scale solar it'll be GFL...

eracode

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#3252857 25-Jun-2024 05:19

Scott3:

[snip]

Quote from "Omexom NZ chief executive Mornez Green"

TL;DR: Omexom is not some fly-by-night local contractor - it’s a well-established multinational operator who are unlikely to take kindly to what happened here.

FWIW a search of the Companies Office website shows no entry for Omexom. However a search for Mornez Green shows connections with Electrix Limited and VINCI Energies NZ Limited.

A google search for Omexom NZ shows that Elextrix Linited is “trading as Omexom New Zealand”.

ONZ has been around for a long time:

“Electrix, trading as Omexom New Zealand, is a leading provider of engineering, construction and maintenance services to asset owners in the utility, industrial, commercial, resources, and infrastructure sectors. We have been in business in New Zealand since 1955 and became part of the multinational VINCI Group in 2014.”

Omexom global website.

Wikipedia page on VINCI SA.

Fun fact: Internationally VINCI has an annual turnover of EUR62 billion.

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SomeoneSomewhere

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#3252905 25-Jun-2024 10:28

62 billion, not trillion... they also own one part of the group that built Transmission Gully.

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