591–600 of 1001 posts
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Probably didn't help that before the outage hit, Spain was running its grid with very little dispatchable spinning generation, and therefore not much inertia. Solar PV/thermal + wind: ~78% Nuclear: 11.5% Co-generation: 5% Gas-fired: ~3% (less than 1GW)
> very little dispatchable spinning generation Makes the case for favouring flywheels over batteries.
https://www.proactiveinvestors.co.uk/companies/news/1057463/...
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The frequency aspect of a black start is presumably a bit easier in Europe because there's an interconnected synchronous grid so they can bootstrap it from France essentially. It's far more problematic for the UK because all the interconnects are DC.
Isn't that backwards? When grids interconnect via DC wouldn't there no longer be a need for the grids to synchronize frequency?
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Wow! Battery capacity has gotten cheap. It's always fascinated me during disasters how independent telecomm can be. Kudos for all the engineering that went into it! I.e. even when any other conceivable dependency is down, the networks keep running.
Depending on country there are sometimes very strict requirements - or just traditions sometimes - around building up strong survivability in face of total loss of grid power. Including diesel and turbine generators on bigger BTSes let alone exchanges. If you drop capacity per terminal (so bandwidth) you can cover a lot more range at times which helps with mobile network resiliency.
Or if you’re AT&T, grid natural gas backup, so your CO goes down if electrical and natural gas both go out once the batteries die. Did I mention how they didn’t build in roll-up generator connection points and had to emergency install those?
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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.
Stale gas was my guess for the plan. Maintaining an emergency system is one of those things that is easy to neglect.
Air compressors have more valves and gaskets that are vulnerable to oxidation, especially in salty environments, so I'd have thought the upkeep between the two, the two stroke would be easier.
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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.
Small diesels could be an option but they're harder to pull start for a given size.
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?
Then again they might be less prepared precise because of the euro grid is available
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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.
Based on how difficult it can be to start my chain-saw, snow-blower, and motorcycle after they've sat without being run for a while, I'd not recommend a gasoline-powered engine to be the only thing on stand-by.
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The tree had malicious intent. You can't convince me otherwise.
Can you blame them? Just look at how they've been treated in the last few hundred years.
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A monkey took out the whole grid in Sri Lanka this year https://edition.cnn.com/2025/02/13/asia/sri-lanka-power-outa...
If that's all it took to turn Srilanka off.Even if that country lags behind western Europe, what would it take for a few humans who intentionally cut off power. Trying to stay on the facts, this incident is likely accidental but some people even the very workers at energy companies could send a message for, I don't know. A pay raise?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moore_County_substation_attack
Unsolved to this day.