Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Spain is about to face the challenge of a "black start"

arstechnica.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 154 posts

Re: Spain is about to face the challenge of a "black start"

#121

Post by tenthirtyam »

justlikereddit wrote: post #120
tenthirtyam wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for the reply. In the 50Mhz-modulated-50Hz scenario, however, the modulated 50Hz signal doesn't change under load; it has zero inertia (or infinite inertia maybe) because it's electronically generated. Any individual station that gets out of sync either works hard to catch up, or gets disconnected. The problem, as I see it, is that the load signal is equal and equivalent to the sync signal and maybe they could…

You need to consider that a master clock signal transmitted through air will arrive at a different time than an AC power wave transmitted through a wire. A millisecond latency will cause a significant out of phase shift to the AC signal too. The AC data you want is already codified in the power signal

> A millisecond latency will cause a significant out of phase shift to the AC signal too.

Ooh, good point. But then, we have I think micro- or even nano-second clock sync over public internet now. Or use (reliable) GPS timestamps codified in the sync signal.

> The AC data you want is already codified in the power signal

You're right, but:

> there needs to be more communication across the grid than just responding to the locally observed frequency

Maybe large stations need a grid-wide sync signal that is independent of load, but small (e.g. domestic, community) suppliers just latch on the observed AC (which is easy for an inverter).

Re: Spain is about to face the challenge of a "black start"

#122

Post by IAmGraydon »

showsover wrote: post #9

That 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…

>It's a bit scary to personally experience how quickly people can start panicking.

People have been panicking, internally, for quite some time. What happened is that the threshold to externalize that panic was dropped with this event. So this is a very real example of how people are always looking for confirmation of what they already believe, and for a relatively brief time after they receive that confirmation, can live in a reality that is not at all aligned with base reality. I find this kind of thing fascinating, and it's been happening more and more in recent years due to changing dynamics in the way we communicate.

Re: Spain is about to face the challenge of a "black start"

#123

Post by toomuchtodo »

justlikereddit wrote: post #45
Animats wrote: post #8

Spain 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.

More recent renewable inverters (solar PV and wind) and battery storage both have grid forming power control support. Term of art is "synthetic inertia" and makes spinning baseload obsolete. This has been shown under real world conditions most notably in South Australia with the Tesla Megapack based Hornsdale Power Reserve, which stepped in to maintain grid inertia when a coal plant exploded in 2021. For a more robust grid, you can deploy additional battery storage that can be called upon not only for energy, but also grid support.

(also replaces the need for synchronous condensers where they would typically be sited for grid ancillary services)

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-05-26/queensland-blackout-c...

https://www.pscconsulting.com/australia-leans-in-on-syntheti...

https://aemo.com.au/-/media/files/initiatives/engineering-fr...

https://www.ercot.com/files/docs/2024/01/12/Tesla%20BESS%20G...

Re: Spain is about to face the challenge of a "black start"

#124

Post by subscribed »

justlikereddit wrote: post #116
mystified5016 wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Man, if only we had some means of instantaneous communication at a distance. What a crazy world that would be, huh?

Superluminal information transfer would be more useful for other areas than grid synchronization, but yeah we don't have crazy tech like that. And if we attempt to synch to a 50hz frequency over the internet means a 10ms latency difference results in 180 degree out of phase input. And even if we did have the superluminal grid sync signal the propagation of electricity itself is slower than C and you'll need to consid…

Microwave, hell, even GPS-based time sources exist.

If I can sync ALL my [important] servers across the globe to the EXACT same time (under 2 microseconds variance in the last 7 days), and all that on the off-the-shelf hardware, surely a NATION can devise something better?

Re: Spain is about to face the challenge of a "black start"

#125

Post by hnuser123456 »

m4rtink wrote: post #103
ffsm8 wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's even worse in satisfactory imo, because the game is build around your fabs consuming wildly varying amounts of power throughout their production cycle... And after a power loss, they'll not only need the initial burst (can be handled via batteries) but will also now all be synchronized to have their power spikes at exactly the same moment. Dyson sphere program is the by far most forgiving in that regard. You can…

Also in Satisfactory pumps need power to run, so coal power plants quite realistically won't start without extra power (unless you have a water tower on the input).

Mid-line pumps do, but "offshore pumps" that pull water from lakes don't actually use any electricity. Otherwise, they would have to build a whole new mechanic for how you power your first water pump. Maybe you'd have to make iron buckets and bring 10 buckets of water to your boiler to get it started, then the offshore pump could use the brief moment of electricity to start pumping water continuously. Maybe you'd have to salvage a solar panel off your ship to start the water pump, since you can't build solar panels in early game. Maybe we're assuming that the water is flowing and the water pump has its own built in water wheel power source.

Same thing with all the coal burning... how does that coal get ignited? Do we secretly have an infinite lighter in our pocket? Are we rubbing sticks together but not showing it for the sake of gameplay?

Re: Spain is about to face the challenge of a "black start"

#127

Post by mrguyorama »

AStonesThrow wrote: post #43
showsover wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was referring to the fact that generally people prefer cold beer, not room temp beer.

> generally people prefer cold beer Do they? But why? Why would they? Are they simply accustomed to tasting it that way? I should say "not tasting it" because chilling a beverage basically kills its flavours, and they never make it to your tongue correctly. I would say that many people would be surprised and amazed if they tasted such things as Pepsi without ice, and without coming right out of the fridge. Unfortunat…

There is so much more to enjoyment of consumption than just "taste".

Smell, touch, look, mouthfeel, nostalgia, temperature, color, other various human factors (ie I always eat this with my friends), sounds, cost

ALL of these affect your experience of consuming something.

Your insistence on ignoring the holistic experience because cold things don't react as well to produce taste sensations is misguided.

Never mind that plenty of things a DESIGNED to be consumed cold, and eating it room temp or warm would be contrary to the design. Beer and other soft drinks are often in this category as they intend to be "refreshing".

You don't drink your beer at 85 Celsius right? Why not? You will "taste" it more!

Re: Spain is about to face the challenge of a "black start"

#128

Post by ffsm8 »

hnuser123456 wrote: post #125
m4rtink wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also in Satisfactory pumps need power to run, so coal power plants quite realistically won't start without extra power (unless you have a water tower on the input).

Mid-line pumps do, but "offshore pumps" that pull water from lakes don't actually use any electricity. Otherwise, they would have to build a whole new mechanic for how you power your first water pump. Maybe you'd have to make iron buckets and bring 10 buckets of water to your boiler to get it started, then the offshore pump could use the brief moment of electricity to start pumping water continuously. Maybe you'd hav…

I think you're talking about factorio, right hnuser123456?

In satisfactory, all pumps need water and there is a special kind of power plant that doesn't need pumps/electricity to kickstart the factory. It's special because it needs items the player has to manually gather and only runs "on demand" (shuts off if enough power from regular plants is provided)

Strong recommendation to give it a try if you haven't already. It's very different to factorio, but great in it's own way

Re: Spain is about to face the challenge of a "black start"

#129

Post by cellularmitosis »

flysand7 wrote: post #53

Oh man, this reminds me of factorio. When you miscalculate your power needs and your generators eat up the fuel that isn't being produced enough. I've had to make a bootstrapping mechanisms and power switches for some of my powerplants to ensure I can get it back up in case it goes down and I can then re-enable my factory bit by bit.

The real problem is when you have hundreds (or thousands) of fully discharge roboports, which will peg your power satisfaction to zero for quite some time during a black restart.

During that time, you are producing power, but none of the inserters work, none of the miners work, etc. and the distributed nature of the roboports means it isn’t straightforward to simply disconnect them.

Re: Spain is about to face the challenge of a "black start"

#130

Post by Animats »

Tade0 wrote: post #86
abe_m wrote: post #75

Earlier 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…

Again, this appears to be a problem of coordination. An inverter doesn't have to: -react immediately -use its full capacity all the time

Until we start seeing graphs of voltage and frequency, and logs of breaker trips, speculation is futile. All that info is available for major US blackouts.
Post reply on HN