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Widespread power outage in Spain and Portugal

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Re: Widespread power outage in Spain and Portugal

#661

Post by TheJoeMan »

tantalor wrote: post #653
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…

> hand-crank a tiny air compressor Is that what Dr. Sattler is doing in this scene from Jurassic Park ? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FoW4vXnkhJw

No, he's winding up a spring to close the circuit breaker quicker than a human hand could, which reduces/prevents and arc from forming as the electrical contacts close.

Re: Widespread power outage in Spain and Portugal

#662

Post by guerrilla »

Karawebnetwork wrote: post #659

What caused it? The Portuguese prime minister, Luís Montenegro, said that the issue originated in Spain. Portugal’s REN said a “rare atmospheric phenomenon” had caused a severe imbalance in temperatures that led to the widespread shutdowns. REN said: “Due to extreme temperature variations in the interior of Spain, there were anomalous oscillations in the very high voltage lines (400 kV), a phenomenon known as ‘induce…

So, what you're saying is that literal bad vibes caused it... ;)

Re: Widespread power outage in Spain and Portugal

#663

Post by Symbiote »

tonyarkles wrote: post #607
Symbiote wrote: post #545

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A power station can start a decently large generator with batteries. Maybe there are other concerns for an oil rig.

Batteries are great when they have charge. What happens if the generator doesn't want to start the first, second, and third time? How many start attempts do you get before the batteries are dead? The hand-pumped air compressor is the tool of last resort. You can try an engine start if there's someone there who's able to pump it. You don't have to worry about how much charge is left in your batteries or whether or not…

It's unrealistic, and if one power station is unable to use their batteries to start their emergency generator (through the absurd incompetence you describe, or more likely through a major fire, flood or assault) the grid can be started from a different one.

Re: Widespread power outage in Spain and Portugal

#664

Post by rini17 »

the_duke wrote: post #520
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…

Just to highlight this: the last significant power outage in Western/middle Europe was 2003. [1] That's 20 years without any significant problems in the grid, apart from small localized outages. It's not hard to start taking things for granted if it works perfectly for 20 years. Many people don't even have cash anymore, either in their wallet or at home. In case of a longer power outage a significant part of the popu…

There are now ubiquitous wireless POS terminals for card payments that can be recharged from emergency sources of electricity(like cars). As long as the mobile internet works it's possible. Of course this only little alleviates the disruption.

Re: Widespread power outage in Spain and Portugal

#665

Post by petertodd »

genewitch wrote: post #630
the_duke wrote: post #520

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just to highlight this: the last significant power outage in Western/middle Europe was 2003. [1] That's 20 years without any significant problems in the grid, apart from small localized outages. It's not hard to start taking things for granted if it works perfectly for 20 years. Many people don't even have cash anymore, either in their wallet or at home. In case of a longer power outage a significant part of the popu…

> a significant part of the population might not even be able to buy food for days. And who's fault is that? Why did europe allow this? Why will the US allow this, eventually?

> And who's fault is that? Why did europe allow this?

In Spain it's now illegal to pay with cash for transactions over 1000EUR. Absurd.

In Norway they recently made it mandatory in most circumstances to accept cash for transactions up to 20,000kroner (~1700EUR): https://www.norges-bank.no/en/topics/notes-and-coins/the-rig...

Re: Widespread power outage in Spain and Portugal

#666

Post by Eduard »

Karawebnetwork wrote: post #659

What caused it? The Portuguese prime minister, Luís Montenegro, said that the issue originated in Spain. Portugal’s REN said a “rare atmospheric phenomenon” had caused a severe imbalance in temperatures that led to the widespread shutdowns. REN said: “Due to extreme temperature variations in the interior of Spain, there were anomalous oscillations in the very high voltage lines (400 kV), a phenomenon known as ‘induce…

"Conductor gallop" is one of several proposed causes.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conductor_gallop

Re: Widespread power outage in Spain and Portugal

#667

Post by optimalsolver »

tantalor wrote: post #653
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…

> hand-crank a tiny air compressor Is that what Dr. Sattler is doing in this scene from Jurassic Park ? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FoW4vXnkhJw

Hold on to your culos.

Re: Widespread power outage in Spain and Portugal

#668

Post by petertodd »

egorfine wrote: post #484
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…

Ukraine can share some experience with forced black starts.

Ukraine is interesting in this context because there are so many generators. In the richer parts of Odesa I've even found it hard sometimes to tell whether or not the grid power is on as literally every single building had sufficient backup generators to keep the lights on (also, many big businesses seemed to run their generators even when the power was on, I presume as a civic-minded way to add generation capacity overall and avoid interruptions when the power flips on and off).

Re: Widespread power outage in Spain and Portugal

#669

Post by citrin_ru »

the_duke wrote: post #520
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…

Just to highlight this: the last significant power outage in Western/middle Europe was 2003. [1] That's 20 years without any significant problems in the grid, apart from small localized outages. It's not hard to start taking things for granted if it works perfectly for 20 years. Many people don't even have cash anymore, either in their wallet or at home. In case of a longer power outage a significant part of the popu…

> Many people don't even have cash anymore, either in their wallet or at home.

Even if you have cash many shops would not sell anything in case of a mass outage because registers are just clients which depend on a cloud to register a transaction. Not reliable but cheap when it works.

Re: Widespread power outage in Spain and Portugal

#670

Post by petertodd »

celticninja wrote: post #449
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…

cash is all well and good but if the tills dont work most stores wont be able to serve you. corner shops, vape shops and barbers will be ok though

The tills have keys to manually open them, and you can just record transactions on pen-and-paper if needed and enter them later. I've seen plenty of businesses do exactly that during power outages. Not as fast. But totally doable.
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