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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

#71

Post by WrtCdEvrydy »

L_Rahman wrote: post #66
kragen wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I haven't tracked the cellphone network status continuously, but here in Buenos Aires, I had a VoIP call from 8:30 to 9:00 which worked fine. Until it didn't, at about 9:00, but that's par for the course with fucking Movistar. I was using cellphone data because the power was out in the house. I didn't realize it was out in the entire country. Here in Argentina, municipal water is totally reliable (I've never heard of…

Not OP, but deeply interesting to me and especially so as I travel around South America. I am completely fascinated by the home infrastructure choices in different parts of the world. I'm currently in Sao Paulo and the hot water setup is a little scary. There's no hot water reserve or hot water plumbing at all. The only hot water source is in the shower. It's heated electrically in real time by a 5000W appliance that…

Yes, suicide showers... Cuba has those too.

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

#72

Post by mulmen »

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…

Thanks for this, it is very informative and not something I had considered before.

I'm curious about the statement about renewables though because it seems that with wind or solar the production is very irregular even in normal operation. Doesn't that mean there has to be some technology to balance individual generator differences which would make re-starting those installations easier?

Re: Nuclear, how much energy is required to start up a nuke plant? If decaying toxins are a risk shouldn't those be prioritized? I might misunderstand what you mean by toxins, does that reduce production for some time?

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

#73

Post by niftich »

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?

The following videos from BTCInstrumentation demonstrate this succinctly.

[1] Synchronizing AC generators -- Part 1 (introduction and sync lamps)

[2] Synchronizing AC generators -- Part 2 (strobe light view)

[3] Synchronizing AC generators -- Part 3 (sync and unsync)

[4] Synchronizing AC generators -- Part 4 (phase deviation)

The first video explains all the concepts and shows a sync, but the later videos bring additional conditions and detail.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RGPCIypib5Q [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sFohkp2aaU4 [3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GRk_qJxaxh8 [4] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RT1ySBc-Bls

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

#75

Post by pdonis »

L_Rahman wrote: post #66
kragen wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I haven't tracked the cellphone network status continuously, but here in Buenos Aires, I had a VoIP call from 8:30 to 9:00 which worked fine. Until it didn't, at about 9:00, but that's par for the course with fucking Movistar. I was using cellphone data because the power was out in the house. I didn't realize it was out in the entire country. Here in Argentina, municipal water is totally reliable (I've never heard of…

Not OP, but deeply interesting to me and especially so as I travel around South America. I am completely fascinated by the home infrastructure choices in different parts of the world. I'm currently in Sao Paulo and the hot water setup is a little scary. There's no hot water reserve or hot water plumbing at all. The only hot water source is in the shower. It's heated electrically in real time by a 5000W appliance that…

5000W seems like a very low power draw for heating on the spot. Heating water requires about 4000W per degree Celsius for a flow rate of 1 liter/sec; a typical shower flow rate is maybe a third of that, so call it 1000W per degree Celsius of heating. So 5000W would only give about 5 degrees Celsius of heating, which doesn't seem like much.

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

#76

Post by ics »

ethbro wrote: post #52
ics wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I work on one of the densest power grids in the world (NYC) on the team which does emergency transformer replacements and can possibly answer questions about this. From failure to in service for a single transformer in Manhattan is down to 2-3 weeks. That includes design and engineering (my part), permitting, and construction. For fast transformer replacements we rely on two paths, either system spares (identical uni…

Are transformers like these standardized, or are they generally built as one-off customs for the specific site? (I'm not an EE, so not sure how many variables one needs to contend with in grid-scale transformer design)

We have purchasing standards which are particular to our system, though specs may match others' by coincidence. Most of these are electrical, e.g. how the primary and secondary windings are configured (delta-wye in most cases) but also what gets mounted to the outside (bushing potential devices, current transformers, gas monitoring units, etc. These are not unique to each site which is why there can be so much work to replace one.

Older stations were actually designed around the transformers in some cases and the physical configuration of a 50+ year old failed unit is rarely like those produced more recently. We might have a unit on hand that is electrically equivalent but impossible to install without essentially rebuilding the entire station.

To give a rough overview of the range of transformers on our system, the first thing we care about is the voltage and MVA rating, then whether the bushings are open air or gas insulated, what the winding configuration of the primary and secondary are (delta-wye being most common), whether the unit it is replacing has a tertiary winding (sometimes at transmission voltage, other times distribution or for light and power to the station), and then maybe what accessories it comes with such as current transformers for protective relaying.

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

#77

Post by cryptonector »

da_chicken wrote: post #47
throwaway5752 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They had massive physical damage from a powerful hurricane, their grid didn't just fail. Transmission lines and substations had to be repaired. That is ignoring issues like Whitefish Energy among other things. Very different situation. edit: yes, we know that nothing anywhere near comparable to hurricane Maria hit them.

Do we know that there's been no grid damage in Argentina? It is the middle of winter.

Most of the population and the grid are in temperate weather zones that get little wintry weather.

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

#78

Post by EGreg »

I really take no pleasure in saying this

THE PROBLEM IS CENTRALIZATION!!!!

In this case, of the electric grids. In USA there are a few huge transformers that can be knocked out with an EMP, carrington event or otherwise, and plunge the USA into a similar situation.

We need to decentralize:

Electric grids (solar, etc.)

Cellphone towers and ISPs (mesh networks)

Social software and collaboration (open source software platforms to replace Facebook and Google)

I am a big believer in this, and I have led Qbix to reinvest nearly a million dollars of our company’s revenues to build towards this future:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=pZ1O_gmPneI

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WzMm7-j7yIY

https://qbix.com/blog

Happy to answer any questions / comments / threats :)

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

#79

Post by ics »

asdfasgasdgasdg wrote: post #56
ics wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I work on one of the densest power grids in the world (NYC) on the team which does emergency transformer replacements and can possibly answer questions about this. From failure to in service for a single transformer in Manhattan is down to 2-3 weeks. That includes design and engineering (my part), permitting, and construction. For fast transformer replacements we rely on two paths, either system spares (identical uni…

I'm curious how long that process would take if it were do or die. Obviously, permitting would no longer be involved. So the real question is how long is the critical path through engineering->construction?

It varies significantly from project to project. What we depend on is the accuracy of existing records (30-60 year old microfilm scans typically, schematics and physical drawings), similarity of the failed and replacement units, ease of access to the site, support needed by other disciplines (e.g. concrete or steel work), and cost even if it is do-or-die.

A perfect like in kind replacement could possibly be done entirely by construction using proper procedure of documenting their disconnects if there were no structural modifications required to move the units in/out. This is rarely the case however and so we need to check everything from phase clearance on making the high voltage connections to whether disconnecting a failed transformer will trip out another perfectly healthy one, possibly making the situation much worse.

All that being said, we make every attempt to triage the work required and get information to construction as soon as possible so that no time is wasted waiting for engineering. We can have a conceptual layout circulating within engineering in a few hours and out to the field by the next day. Field technicians can tag and disconnect terminals right away while we figure out how to wire up the new unit. Perhaps in a perfect situation you might get all this done in a few days with all hands on deck but that's more luck than aptitude.

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

#80

Post by ClassyJacket »

kragen wrote: post #69
L_Rahman wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not OP, but deeply interesting to me and especially so as I travel around South America. I am completely fascinated by the home infrastructure choices in different parts of the world. I'm currently in Sao Paulo and the hot water setup is a little scary. There's no hot water reserve or hot water plumbing at all. The only hot water source is in the shower. It's heated electrically in real time by a 5000W appliance that…

Yeah, electric showers are common in much of Latin America. In theory you could build them to be safe, but often they aren't. I showered with a tank-based electric shower today: you fill the tank, plug it in until it's hot, unplug it, step underneath, and open the valve. This arrangement has less risk of electrical shock, but it's far less convenient. Because the power was out, I filled it with hot water from the tan…

Many of the showers in Scotland are electric too, but they look much more modern and safe than the Asian and South American ones I've seen on the internet.
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