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All Of Argentina, Uruguay Without Electricity After Massive Outage

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Re: All Of Argentina, Uruguay Without Electricity After Massive Outage

#21

Post by mjevans »

hfkajshfaks wrote: post #8
kasperni wrote: post #3

Argentina is world’s eighth largest country. I find it mind blowing that you can have a power outage that covers the whole country (+ some more).

It isn't really though. A cascading failure can knock out an entire grid. The Northeast blackout is an example. A line goes out. while (there some lines are still live): The current redistributes itself among neighboring lines. Neighboring lines trip end BlackStart() BlackStart() is fun. Having your plants and grid down is like having a dead battery (plants use ~30% of the electricity they gen on themselves) and no o…

The renewables depends on how they're connected to the grid. If they're DC charging a battery bank then presumably said bank can be treated as a single source so they'd be useful. Though it might be more efficient if they were also able to synchronize and direct-connect to the grid as AC.

Re: All Of Argentina, Uruguay Without Electricity After Massive Outage

#22

Post by paulvs »

cesarb wrote: post #5
mromanuk wrote: post #2

I was going to post this. Thanks. Looks like Uruguay, Paraguay, south of Brazil, Bolivia are also affected. Several million people. It’s raining, no internet, this will be a long Sunday. Also today is father’s day, will be a celebration with candles like in XIX :)

> south of Brazil That sounded strange to me, since Brazil imports power from Uruguay and Argentina through somewhat small DC links, and if only them failing is enough to cause a blackout in Brazil, something was probably not configured correctly. So I went looking, and according to https://g1.globo.com/mundo/noticia/2019/06/16/apagao-deixa-m... "deixou sem energia toda a Argentina, Uruguai, Paraguai e sul do Brasil"…

According to Paraguayan news [1] (Spanish), the failure was on the Argentina side of the Yacyretá hydroelectric (which is shared by Argentina and Paraguay), not at the plant itself. Only a few Paraguayan towns close to the hydroelectric itself were affected, while Argentina and countries it resells electricity to were out of power.

Re: All Of Argentina, Uruguay Without Electricity After Massive Outage

#23

Post by lostlogin »

hfkajshfaks wrote: post #8
kasperni wrote: post #3

Argentina is world’s eighth largest country. I find it mind blowing that you can have a power outage that covers the whole country (+ some more).

It isn't really though. A cascading failure can knock out an entire grid. The Northeast blackout is an example. A line goes out. while (there some lines are still live): The current redistributes itself among neighboring lines. Neighboring lines trip end BlackStart() BlackStart() is fun. Having your plants and grid down is like having a dead battery (plants use ~30% of the electricity they gen on themselves) and no o…

How is grid phase synchronised?

Re: All Of Argentina, Uruguay Without Electricity After Massive Outage

#24

Post by toomuchtodo »

lostlogin wrote: post #23
hfkajshfaks wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It isn't really though. A cascading failure can knock out an entire grid. The Northeast blackout is an example. A line goes out. while (there some lines are still live): The current redistributes itself among neighboring lines. Neighboring lines trip end BlackStart() BlackStart() is fun. Having your plants and grid down is like having a dead battery (plants use ~30% of the electricity they gen on themselves) and no o…

How is grid phase synchronised?

https://hackaday.com/2017/07/05/how-do-they-synchronize-powe...

Phase is monitored on both sides of the connection, and high voltage contactors complete the circuit when tolerances are met.

Re: All Of Argentina, Uruguay Without Electricity After Massive Outage

#25

Post by techas »

Scoundreller wrote: post #15

How resilient has the cellular phone network been in this outage? How resilient is the municipal water system in an outage like this? Do most people in Argentina and Uruguay cook with (piped/tank) gas or electric ranges?

My family at the metropolitan area of Buenos Aires run out of water during Sunday. Cell phones where working intermittently.

Re: All Of Argentina, Uruguay Without Electricity After Massive Outage

#26

Post by apthnz »

hfkajshfaks wrote: post #8
kasperni wrote: post #3

Argentina is world’s eighth largest country. I find it mind blowing that you can have a power outage that covers the whole country (+ some more).

It isn't really though. A cascading failure can knock out an entire grid. The Northeast blackout is an example. A line goes out. while (there some lines are still live): The current redistributes itself among neighboring lines. Neighboring lines trip end BlackStart() BlackStart() is fun. Having your plants and grid down is like having a dead battery (plants use ~30% of the electricity they gen on themselves) and no o…

What do you do for a living, and how can I learn more about it? This stuff fascinates me and you've explained it really well.

Re: All Of Argentina, Uruguay Without Electricity After Massive Outage

#27

Post by amelius »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #24
lostlogin wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is grid phase synchronised?

https://hackaday.com/2017/07/05/how-do-they-synchronize-powe... Phase is monitored on both sides of the connection, and high voltage contactors complete the circuit when tolerances are met.

But if you have a grid with a large number of nodes, how do you impose which node is running at the correct (reference) frequency and phase? Do the edges of the grid impose a master-slave relationship?

Re: All Of Argentina, Uruguay Without Electricity After Massive Outage

#28

Post by alins »

niftich wrote: post #10

CAMMESA administers the Argentinian electricity market, and they have data on demand [1] and grid flows. Compare the graph of flows on the 500 kV lines from 2019-06-16T07:00 local [2] to one hour later at 08:00 local [3]. For reference, see the prior day too, at 2019-06-15T08:00 local [4]. [1] http://portalweb.cammesa.com/Pages/ADemandas.aspx [2] http://www.cammesa.com/uflujpot.nsf/FlujoW?OpenAgent&Flujo%2... [3] htt…

[2] and [3] refer to June 15; [4] refers to June 16. Is your text correct? What can be learned from the numbers on the 500 kV lines?

Re: All Of Argentina, Uruguay Without Electricity After Massive Outage

#29

Post by agumonkey »

cronix wrote: post #14
lugg wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

USA isn't in much of a better position. Large scale transformer blowouts are a nightmare scenario due to how long they take to replace / repair.

Even worse when a generator goes out (or is destroyed). It can take months to get a new one. Hope we don't have multiple generators go out at once. They're not just sitting on a shelf somewhere waiting to be picked up.

how much redundant capacity does the grid have ?

Re: All Of Argentina, Uruguay Without Electricity After Massive Outage

#30

Post by agumonkey »

kabwj wrote: post #20
floatrock wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the UK, this phenomenon is called the TV Pickup: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TV_pickup Basically a commercial break comes on, everyone turns on their tea kettle and flushes their toilets, and bam: 200-400 MW spike in demand. There's some blogs out there charting this during big world cup games.

>There is a common misconception that the number one driver of TV pickup is the boiling of kettles. In fact, this only creates a pull on the local network for a short period of time until the water has boiled, and can therefore be managed relatively easily, whereas flushing the toilet causes a longer surge at the water and sewerage pumping stations, and opening the refrigerator lets the chilled air escape, causing th…

dry toilets and solar concentrator kettles, yesterday
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