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Widespread power outage in Spain and Portugal

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Re: Widespread power outage in Spain and Portugal

#541

Post by 7373737373 »

andy99 wrote: post #199

Older readers may remeber the Northeastern blackout of 2003 in the US and Canada that was caused by cascading overloading, I believe originally triggered by high loads due to hot weather and poor vegetation maintenance under lines. I was an an adjacent area at the time and iirc we were saved by our nuclear operator releasing some insane amount of steam to bring the supply down and avoid more overloading. https://en.m…

Good documentary on the ice storm of 1998

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ccTzHBUsYQ

> In January 1998, Montreal and the region surrounding it was hit by the most disastrous ice storm ever recorded: more than four inches of ice entombed an area larger than the State of Florida, causing trees and power lines to collapse on an unprecedented scale, leaving millions in the dark without heat (some for up to four weeks). 35 people died and damages totalled more than $5 billion making it the worst natural disaster in Canadian history.

4 out of 5 power lines to Montreal went down

Re: Widespread power outage in Spain and Portugal

#542

Post by larusso »

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…

I actually have no real clue how and where Spain/Portugal is connected to rest of Europe but could they also restart North to south with help from the grid from France?

Re: Widespread power outage in Spain and Portugal

#543

Post by [deleted] »

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.

[deleted]

Re: Widespread power outage in Spain and Portugal

#544

Post by throwup238 »

gwbas1c wrote: post #532
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…

Spain is part of the largest interconnected grid in the world: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continental_Europe_Synchronous... Does this really qualify as "black start" when they can rely on the bigger EU grid?

Yes because they have to bring it all back up in phases so that they only face the load spike* from one interconnect at a time, which can take some time and can fail if there’s unknown damage like the GP said.

It really depends on the region though because almost all large hydroelectric dams are designed to be primary black-start sources to restore interconnects and get other power plants back up quickly in phase with the dam. i.e. in the US 40% of the country has them so it’s relatively easy to do. The hardest part is usually the messy human coordination bit because none of this stuff is automated (or possible even automatable).

* the load spike from everyone’s motors and compressors booting up at the same time

Re: Widespread power outage in Spain and Portugal

#545

Post by Symbiote »

zdragnar wrote: post #519
oilman wrote: post #475

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In another life I worked as an engineer commissioning oil rigs and I’ve seen how tricky even a small-scale black start can be. On a rig, we simulate total power loss and have to hand-crank a tiny air compressor just to start a small emergency generator, which then powers the compressors needed to fire up the big ~7MW main generators. It's a delicate chain reaction — and that's just for one isolated platform. A full g…

I can appreciate the ability to revert to hand cranking an air compressor, yet I can't help but feel that the 99.99% of events, you'd be better served with keeping a two stroke gas engine ready to go. Air compressors tend to have parts just as or more vulnerable to environmental factors, and you get a lot more power for less elbow grease out of a two stroke.

A power station can start a decently large generator with batteries.

Maybe there are other concerns for an oil rig.

Re: Widespread power outage in Spain and Portugal

#546

Post by mhandley »

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.

With a high fraction of renewables, the reverse is probably better in the long run. The larger geographic area you connect, the less you're affected by weather systems, and the wider area you can draw dependable dispatchable power such as hydro from. But that depends on having enough grid capacity to move enough power around, which is currently a problem.

But I wonder from a reliability (or lack of cascading failures) point of view whether synchronous islands interconnected with DC interconnects is more robust than a large synchronous network?

Re: Widespread power outage in Spain and Portugal

#548

Post by Damogran6 »

gwbas1c wrote: post #532
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…

Spain is part of the largest interconnected grid in the world: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continental_Europe_Synchronous... Does this really qualify as "black start" when they can rely on the bigger EU grid?

It's a complex enough issue that you can't really 'hand wavey' it. The details are specific and thorny.

Re: Widespread power outage in Spain and Portugal

#549

Post by immibis »

addandsubtract wrote: post #353
chippiewill wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a connected grid across most of continental europe. If Portugal's grid blacked out unexpectedly then Spain's grid could have been made unstable too, which then continue onwards to South of France and Italy. Just a typical cascade failure because it means everything's now running with lower tolerances.

So, how do you stop this from cascading further? Did France have to cut them off the grid somehow?

A cascade failure (of any system) would propagate until it runs into a part of the system that's resilient enough to not fall over.

Several people have said the amount of power transferred between France and Spain is very low compared to the amount of power consumed inside either France or Spain, which seems like as good as reason as any that it didn't affect France. The grid in France was presumably able to absorb the sudden change in power flow without itself breaking.

Re: Widespread power outage in Spain and Portugal

#550

Post by Damogran6 »

zdragnar wrote: post #519
oilman wrote: post #475

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In another life I worked as an engineer commissioning oil rigs and I’ve seen how tricky even a small-scale black start can be. On a rig, we simulate total power loss and have to hand-crank a tiny air compressor just to start a small emergency generator, which then powers the compressors needed to fire up the big ~7MW main generators. It's a delicate chain reaction — and that's just for one isolated platform. A full g…

I can appreciate the ability to revert to hand cranking an air compressor, yet I can't help but feel that the 99.99% of events, you'd be better served with keeping a two stroke gas engine ready to go. Air compressors tend to have parts just as or more vulnerable to environmental factors, and you get a lot more power for less elbow grease out of a two stroke.

Not being at all qualified to comment (though I work for a power company), I'd think the hand crank air compressor wouldn't suffer from no spark or bad gas.
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