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Widespread power outage in Spain and Portugal

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Re: Widespread power outage in Spain and Portugal

#521

Post by pfdietz »

bob1029 wrote: post #467
mike_hearn wrote: post #319

This sounds big enough to require a black start. Unfortunately, those are slow and difficult. If an entire nation trips offline then every generator station disconnects itself from the grid and the grid itself snaps apart into islands. To bring it back you have to disconnect consumer loads and then re-energize a small set of plants that have dedicated black start capability. Thermal plants require energy to start up…

> Thermal plants require energy to start up It's not just about the power. System components cannot be brought to operating temperatures, speeds and pressures faster than mechanical tolerances allow. If a thermal plant is cold & dark, it can take days to ramp it to full production.

That's true of some kinds of thermal generators, but not all. Simple cycle gas turbines can come up very quickly (think jet engines). Or your car's engine.

Re: Widespread power outage in Spain and Portugal

#522

Post by flobosg »

crvdgc wrote: post #265
anal_reactor wrote: post #74

Call me crazy but I'd love to see full power outage at least once in my life

In Japan, sometimes earthquakes will cause regional power outages, though they are usually recovered quickly.

I was living in Chile during its 2010 earthquake (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_Chile_earthquake). The power outage in my hometown lasted approximately two weeks.

Re: Widespread power outage in Spain and Portugal

#523

Post by guerrilla »

red_admiral wrote: post #253

I'm going with: never attribute to malice what can be explained by ... an incredibly complex system that can fall over even if no-one's being stupid. I would want very strong evidence before I believe this is an attack. There is precedent for major power outages, a huge majority of which are not malicious: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_major_power_outages I remember the day when the Swiss railway power networ…

> I'm going with: never attribute to malice what can be explained by ... an incredibly complex system that can fall over even if no-one's being stupid. I would want very strong evidence before I believe this is an attack.

I think we should prepare for the worst though. It's wrong to assume it's not an attack too, and until we can conclude it's not an attack we should be prepared to deal with the possible consequences and act accordingly.

Re: Widespread power outage in Spain and Portugal

#524

Post by rich_sasha »

nine_k wrote: post #512
Filligree wrote: post #412

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Is a grid built on renewables and batteries somehow more resilient? So this is a complicated subject in itself, and a full answer won't fit inside this textbox. Some bullet points: - Grid stability is maintained by batteries, but not literally. The "batteries" in question are typically rotating generators, i.e. turbines, wind, literally anything where you have an electrical coupling to a lot of physical inertia. Th…

It almost sounds like running a large motor/generator with a large flywheel on it, just for the purposes of frequency stabilization and flattening load spikes, may be a good idea in a large solar installation. The downside is the mass and the bulk, and the cost of copper. The upside is zero reaction time.

It is in fact a thing: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flywheel_storage_power_syste...

I believe (but I am 0% expert) these are mostly but not exclusively used for adding inertia to the system, rather than real energy storage.

Re: Widespread power outage in Spain and Portugal

#525

Post by jrs235 »

Vox_Leone wrote: post #471
mike_hearn wrote: post #319

This sounds big enough to require a black start. Unfortunately, those are slow and difficult. If an entire nation trips offline then every generator station disconnects itself from the grid and the grid itself snaps apart into islands. To bring it back you have to disconnect consumer loads and then re-energize a small set of plants that have dedicated black start capability. Thermal plants require energy to start up…

The fewer resources we dedicate to grid resilience and modernization, the harder black starts become. And as grids get more complex and interdependent, recovering from total failure becomes exponentially harder. A rare but sobering opportunity to reflect on something we usually take for granted: electricity. We live in societies where everything depends on the grid — from logistics and healthcare to communications an…

Honest question, are we better off in the long run, and is it a better solution, to decentralize energy generation and make more smaller grids rather than linking them all up? This isn't to say completely getting rid of the ability to transfer between the smaller grids to assist with power disruptions but to decouple and make it less likely for catastrophic "global" failures like this.

Re: Widespread power outage in Spain and Portugal

#526

Post by k7sune »

wongarsu wrote: post #515
oliwarner wrote: post #480

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does the source of "truth" matter? You still have to turn everything off, bring your generators up, each in sync and then allow load back on slowly. The UK keeping its own time just makes things easier for it IMO.

A synchronous interconnect provides not just a source of truth but also stabilizes your grid frequency. If you have an isolated grid you have to match generation to demand to keep the grid frequency stable. If you have a 1GW interconnect that means you can mismatch generation and demand by up to a gigawatt and still be fine. I imagine that makes for a much faster startup procedure

If the isolated grids all each synced to a source of truth first (GPS?), would it be possible for them to immediately connect afterwards?

Re: Widespread power outage in Spain and Portugal

#527

Post by zanellato19 »

jrs235 wrote: post #525
Vox_Leone wrote: post #471

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fewer resources we dedicate to grid resilience and modernization, the harder black starts become. And as grids get more complex and interdependent, recovering from total failure becomes exponentially harder. A rare but sobering opportunity to reflect on something we usually take for granted: electricity. We live in societies where everything depends on the grid — from logistics and healthcare to communications an…

Honest question, are we better off in the long run, and is it a better solution, to decentralize energy generation and make more smaller grids rather than linking them all up? This isn't to say completely getting rid of the ability to transfer between the smaller grids to assist with power disruptions but to decouple and make it less likely for catastrophic "global" failures like this.

It's hard to build big generators, so as we already struggle with infrastructure I don't think that's feasible, but it would be great.

Re: Widespread power outage in Spain and Portugal

#529

Post by dark-star »

rcarmo wrote: post #59

Apparently a local grid overload near France and a cascading failure down the Spanish network, but radio and newspapers don’t agree on root cause. Of course there is a lot of noise. For instance, one reporter asked one of the government flunkies whether it could be a cyberattack and they turned his noncommittal “maybe, we don’t know” into “government says cyberattack may be ongoing”. Be careful of idiot reporters out…

I can only imagine the "fun" in getting those synced back up to the European grid once this is all over... That alone will take weeks

Re: Widespread power outage in Spain and Portugal

#530

Post by crmd »

apexalpha wrote: post #461
mike_hearn wrote: post #319

This sounds big enough to require a black start. Unfortunately, those are slow and difficult. If an entire nation trips offline then every generator station disconnects itself from the grid and the grid itself snaps apart into islands. To bring it back you have to disconnect consumer loads and then re-energize a small set of plants that have dedicated black start capability. Thermal plants require energy to start up…

Would this be relevant here? Spain is connected to the French grid, and probably also Morocco. The entire EU runs on one synchronised grid so from that perspective a single 'province' went offline, not the grid.

It would be essentially the same thing as a grid black start, except that the first breaker to close has the European grid on its primary side, instead of a freshly started generator under your control.

The complex process of configuring the transmission network to bring grid power to each power plant in succession is the same.

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