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Widespread power outage in Spain and Portugal

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Re: Widespread power outage in Spain and Portugal

#741

Post by layman51 »

ithkuil wrote: post #647
genewitch wrote: post #630

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

I don't know but I find it very practical to not carry piles of cash in my pocket and home and know that we're less likely to get robbed just because of the cash we have. I don't know how true the relationship between the cashless lifestyle and safety actually is, but it works and I feel ok; I'm not sure that the prospect of a few hours of national blackout once in 20 years will make me change my mind significantly.

It does seem safer to not carry cash. However, I remember around May 2024 that there were some reported incidents in Chicago were in the early morning hours, there were some groups of robbers who would force victims to do something I found especially worrying: they would be forced into resetting their phone password and logging into their mobile banking app. I’m not sure what ended up happening in these cases.

Re: Widespread power outage in Spain and Portugal

#742

Post by giantg2 »

Kon-Peki wrote: post #702
BenjiWiebe wrote: post #596

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As an ex small engine mechanic, I'd advise against using a 2 stroke for something like that. A 4 stroke would be a better bet. Better yet would be a natural gas/propane 4 stroke, since gasoline goes stale and plugs carburetors. Small diesels could be an option but they're harder to pull start for a given size.

> Small diesels could be an option but they're harder to pull start for a given size. I once needed to jump-start a small marine diesel, many miles from land... There was a small lever that cuts compression. You have to get it spinning really fast before restoring compression! It's definitely a lot of work! EDIT - Here is a cheap modern small marine diesel [1]. The operation manual suggests that you don't have to do…

Even gas engine pull starts have a compression release function built in. That's why you need special cylinder pressure tools to check compression on most pull starts.

Re: Widespread power outage in Spain and Portugal

#743

Post by seabrookmx »

isolli wrote: post #719
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…

What does synchronization mean in this context, and why is it needed?

The bulk of the power grid is alternating current (AC), and the frequency of the resulting sine wave needs to be synchronized with the other parts of the grid it is connected to.

Re: Widespread power outage in Spain and Portugal

#744

Post by lisper »

tpmoney wrote: post #716
lenerdenator wrote: post #610

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remember talking to my ex's dad about his job, which involved planning refuels of a large nuclear-powered generation station in the Lower Midwest. The words "it's a miracle it works at all" routinely popped up in those conversations, which is... something you don't want to hear about any sort of power generation - especially not nuclear - but it's true. It's a system basically built to produce "common accidents". I…

> The words "it's a miracle it works at all" routinely popped up in those conversations, which is... something you don't want to hear about any sort of power generation - especially not nuclear - but it's true. Funny thing is, those are the exact words I use when talking to people about networking. And realistically anytime I dig deep into the underlying details of any big enough system I walk away with that impressi…

> those are the exact words I use when talking to people about networking

Or the U.S. financial system. Or civilization in general.

Re: Widespread power outage in Spain and Portugal

#745

Post by Tempest1981 »

isolli wrote: post #719
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…

What does synchronization mean in this context, and why is it needed?

The grid uses AC (not DC), running at 50 Hz (cycles per second). So the voltage is going up and down at that frequency, in a sine-wave pattern.

If you try to connect another generator to the grid, it needs to be at the same point (phase) in the sine-wave cycle, so that its power contribution is added, not subtracted.

If it's not in sync, huge currents can flow, causing damage. Sort of like connecting jumper cables backwards.

Re: Widespread power outage in Spain and Portugal

#746

Post by EugeneOZ »

yannvon wrote: post #577

I experienced it first hand in Madrid. This was much scarier than I would have imagined. News travelled extremely slow: phone coverage was just barely enough to receive a couple text messages every 15 minutes or so. News spread on the street, I even saw a group of 20 people hunched around someone owning a hand-held radio in the streets. Just before power was restored, things started to get worse, as the phone coverag…

My son was at the university outside of Barcelona, and I lost contact with him for 6 hours. He was traveling home, and I knew that the roads had no working semaphores, and there were dozens of incidents...

I lost some years today.

My son is fine, thanks to a random person (“the man with a rabbit”) who just decided to give a lift to my son and his friend to the edge of Barcelona.

Re: Widespread power outage in Spain and Portugal

#747

Post by cyberax »

throwup238 wrote: post #693
pbhjpbhj wrote: post #680

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Presumably emergency phone comms still work(?) so they could issue instructions to do a phased (heh!) restart to avoid every fridge/air conditioner/whatever restarting at once. Not sure how successful that would be however.

There’s usually two parallel processes going on during a black-start: spinning the power plants back up to get them synchronized to the grid, and getting power back out to all the consumers. Power plants have breakers that disconnect them from consumers which they keep disconnected until independent connections to other power plants allow them to spin up their massive turbines and synchronize them to the grid. There’…

And to add more fun, this time they're not dealing with a small number of individual power plants that can be connected with only some phone-call based coordination.

Instead, there are literally hundreds of smaller wind/solar installations. Some of which depend on rapidly fading cellular communication to restart. And some might need an actual site visit to throw on the physical breakers.

Re: Widespread power outage in Spain and Portugal

#748

Post by dzhiurgis »

Kon-Peki wrote: post #702
BenjiWiebe wrote: post #596

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As an ex small engine mechanic, I'd advise against using a 2 stroke for something like that. A 4 stroke would be a better bet. Better yet would be a natural gas/propane 4 stroke, since gasoline goes stale and plugs carburetors. Small diesels could be an option but they're harder to pull start for a given size.

> Small diesels could be an option but they're harder to pull start for a given size. I once needed to jump-start a small marine diesel, many miles from land... There was a small lever that cuts compression. You have to get it spinning really fast before restoring compression! It's definitely a lot of work! EDIT - Here is a cheap modern small marine diesel [1]. The operation manual suggests that you don't have to do…

I did that too and crank got stuck on flywheel. To stop engine I had to climb over the engine where now-removed stairs were since my mate was clueless. Fortunately the crank handle stayed on.

Cranks and decompression levers are gone for at least 30-40 years now tho.

Re: Widespread power outage in Spain and Portugal

#749

Post by kryogen1c »

oilman wrote: post #475
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…

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…

> have to hand-crank a tiny air compressor just to start a small emergency generator

Similarly, the US Navy maintains banks of pressurized air flasks to air-start emergency diesels. Total Capacity being some multiple of the required single-start capacity

Re: Widespread power outage in Spain and Portugal

#750

Post by Marsymars »

Xelbair wrote: post #581
roughly wrote: post #500

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, this is the turkey’s dilemma - life on a farm is a lot better than life in the wild for 51 out of the 52 weeks of the year. Most of our modern economy and systems are built to reduce redundancy and buffers - ever since the era of “just in time” manufacturing, we’ve done our best to strip out any “fat” from our systems to reduce costs. Consequently, any time we face anything but the most idealized conditions, th…

"Just in time" is a phrase I hate with vehement passion. You aren't optimizing the system, you're reducing safety marigns - and consequences are usually similar to Challanger. This is a solution that teenager put in management position would think of(along with hire more people as solution to inefficient processes), not a paid professional. Systems like electric grid, internal water management (anti-flood) shouldn't…

> Systems like electric grid, internal water management (anti-flood) shouldn't be lean, they should be antifragile.

How do you make those systems antifragile rather than simply highly resilient?

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