What caused it? Nowadays when anything like this happens in the EU, I immediately wonder if it was Russian saboteurs.
They have certainly been destroying infrastructure here, eg. undersea internet and power cables.
Spain is about to face the challenge of a "black start"
81–90 of 154 posts
Re: Spain is about to face the challenge of a "black start"
#82Spain is mostly back up. Plant startup is only the first step.[1] It's load pickup. Here is a PJM training module on load pickup during system restoration.[2] It gives a sense of how touchy the process is. Power network control has good control over generation and transmission, but limited control over load. When load is turned on, there are transient loads with different time constants. There's a huge load for the f…
The groundwork for the blackout will inevitably come back to a buildout and reliance of renewable sources that do not have spinning mass that can do frequency synchronization. There are costly means to compensate for the lack of spinning baseload but actually building these devices have been neglected, to no ones surprise.
I don't see why. Battery-backed renewables should be much easier to synchronize than spinning generators.
Re: Spain is about to face the challenge of a "black start"
#83That was a fun 10 hours or so that we were without power in most of Barcelona. Some barrios had ~some~ power but most of us were without. The one thing that surprised me is how quickly rumors started about power being out in Portugal (true), France (true to an extent), Belgium (false), and the UK (false). Walking back home from work you heard the names of Trump being mentioned as well. It's a bit scary to personally…
A security guard at my workplace actually told me they had "received a call" about power being out in Romania as well. I'm not sure how that one rumour spread.
Re: Spain is about to face the challenge of a "black start"
#84Spain is mostly back up. Plant startup is only the first step.[1] It's load pickup. Here is a PJM training module on load pickup during system restoration.[2] It gives a sense of how touchy the process is. Power network control has good control over generation and transmission, but limited control over load. When load is turned on, there are transient loads with different time constants. There's a huge load for the f…
The groundwork for the blackout will inevitably come back to a buildout and reliance of renewable sources that do not have spinning mass that can do frequency synchronization. There are costly means to compensate for the lack of spinning baseload but actually building these devices have been neglected, to no ones surprise.
I've always wondered why we can't just have a "master" power station transmit a 50Hz signal modulated at, say, 50MHz. Then all the other station simply sync to that, including small scale such as domestic PV etc.
Then depending on how out-of-sync a given station is with the signal, they ramp production up or down accordingly.
Is the problem here that there is inadequate or slow feedback to the supply side regarding load and therefore you'd end up with under-voltage?
Re: Spain is about to face the challenge of a "black start"
#85Spain is mostly back up. Plant startup is only the first step.[1] It's load pickup. Here is a PJM training module on load pickup during system restoration.[2] It gives a sense of how touchy the process is. Power network control has good control over generation and transmission, but limited control over load. When load is turned on, there are transient loads with different time constants. There's a huge load for the f…
The groundwork for the blackout will inevitably come back to a buildout and reliance of renewable sources that do not have spinning mass that can do frequency synchronization. There are costly means to compensate for the lack of spinning baseload but actually building these devices have been neglected, to no ones surprise.
Not my area of expertise, but I think this is wrong? Modern PV inverters used in rooftop solar could easily start frequency synchronization autonomously, but are regulated to not do that autonomously in (at least) parts of the EU.
More importantly, according to the REE, PV played a mayor role in the current and successful black start.
Re: Spain is about to face the challenge of a "black start"
#86Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why would you need a spinning mass when you have an inverter which can produce a range of frequencies and outputs and it all boils down to coordination? Looking at power generation reports it's the plants relying on inertia (like nuclear) which were disconnected and haven't been reconnected since: https://app.electricitymaps.com/zone/ES/72h/hourly
At the time I'm writing this, there appears to be about equal (hydro + gas) = (solar + wind). It appears they are running a significant portion of the grid with high inertia generators. In a control system when you have an actuator that is much more responsive than the load, you can get into instable operating regimes where. On a small scale, when you are setting up servo motors, there is an inertia matching ratio fo…
Again, this appears to be a problem of coordination. An inverter doesn't have to:
-react immediately
-use its full capacity all the time
Re: Spain is about to face the challenge of a "black start"
#87Spain is mostly back up. Plant startup is only the first step.[1] It's load pickup. Here is a PJM training module on load pickup during system restoration.[2] It gives a sense of how touchy the process is. Power network control has good control over generation and transmission, but limited control over load. When load is turned on, there are transient loads with different time constants. There's a huge load for the f…
The groundwork for the blackout will inevitably come back to a buildout and reliance of renewable sources that do not have spinning mass that can do frequency synchronization. There are costly means to compensate for the lack of spinning baseload but actually building these devices have been neglected, to no ones surprise.
Do you mean solar energy sources? Wind turbines have plenty of "spinning mass"...
Re: Spain is about to face the challenge of a "black start"
#88Earlier quoted context omitted.
At the time I'm writing this, there appears to be about equal (hydro + gas) = (solar + wind). It appears they are running a significant portion of the grid with high inertia generators. In a control system when you have an actuator that is much more responsive than the load, you can get into instable operating regimes where. On a small scale, when you are setting up servo motors, there is an inertia matching ratio fo…
Seems like a simple cybernetics problem, especially if it's point-to-point. If there's many different inverters on the same circuit, you might need something like a directed graph, but there should be simpler, more local solutions.
If the response rate is the only problem, you could just add damping to the system with the faster capability (especially when it is already software driven electronics).
Re: Spain is about to face the challenge of a "black start"
#89That was a fun 10 hours or so that we were without power in most of Barcelona. Some barrios had ~some~ power but most of us were without. The one thing that surprised me is how quickly rumors started about power being out in Portugal (true), France (true to an extent), Belgium (false), and the UK (false). Walking back home from work you heard the names of Trump being mentioned as well. It's a bit scary to personally…
I am in Barcelona too. The combination of no power and patchy internet was the perfect recipe for rumors to spread, which was fun to observe. I went for a walk since I couldn't work and saw tons of people socializing, drinking beers (more than usual), and young people playing without their phones. It'll be a special day to remember, I think.
[deleted]
Re: Spain is about to face the challenge of a "black start"
#90Earlier quoted context omitted.
Initial estimates went from "No idea" to "Could take days". In the end it took about 12 hours to restore most of the power in two countries. There are some knock-on effects from trains being in the wrong places, but a solid result overall.
This is not correct. The REE press conference held about two hours after the start of the blackout gave an estimate of 6 to 10 hours, which was about right. Any other estimations were misinformation.
Some outlets said days to weeks, but who knows where they got that info.