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Widespread power outage in Spain and Portugal

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Re: Widespread power outage in Spain and Portugal

#731

Post by dom96 »

jameshart wrote: post #707
apexalpha wrote: post #461

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would this be relevant here? Spain is connected to the French grid, and probably also Morocco. The entire EU runs on one synchronised grid so from that perspective a single 'province' went offline, not the grid.

Re: probably also Morocco: yes, there is an interconnect across the Strait of Gibraltar https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spain-Morocco_interconnection

Speaking of Gibraltar, it's interesting that its electricity grid isn't connected to Spain/EU's grid. So they are completely unaffected.

Re: Widespread power outage in Spain and Portugal

#732

Post by ale42 »

oilman wrote: post #565
zdragnar wrote: post #519

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

In 99.99% of real-world scenarios, the rig would have other options to bootstrap a black start—like fully charged air tanks, backup power from a support vessel, or even emergency battery systems. The hand-cranked air compressor is really a last resort tool. We test it during commissioning to prove it could work, but in most cases, it’s never used again in the rig’s working life. It’s there for the rarest situations—l…

Nice to see that at least in some places people are actually thinking to almost-impossible scenarios and taking them into account. I have the feeling that it's quite unlike most infrastructure development nowadays, unfortunately.

Re: Widespread power outage in Spain and Portugal

#734

Post by christkv »

martinald wrote: post #638
genewitch wrote: post #633

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Grid tied solar won't put power into the grid when the grid is down. It's the one reason I didn't grid tie. Non tied solar won't affect the grid at all. So this is a non-issue. Grid tie requires the grid to tie to, otherwise it can't synchronize. So it stays disconnected.

Youre missing my point. I know that; I mean if you are restarting the grid and say you have a segment you think has 5MW of load that will come online, but you connect it and a minute or two later suddenly 2MW of grid tied solar detects the grid and starts exporting and you now have 3MW of load it is going to make it much more tricky to balance the restart. I'm not sure how much of a problem this is in reality but it…

This is why most of the restart of the grid is being done as the solar input tappers out I suspect. The grid was pretty much down during peak sun and started coming back online around 5:30 pm or later.

Re: Widespread power outage in Spain and Portugal

#736

Post by jmorenoamor »

bethekidyouwant wrote: post #701
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…

[flagged]

They have data and probable causes, but nobody will tell until forensic studies take place, which seems a good decission. No need to spread speculations.

A cold start from zero generation took 6 to 10 h. No casualties, hospitals and crtitical infrastructure kept working all day.

Whatever the cause, this has been a great test of the emergency protocols.

Re: Widespread power outage in Spain and Portugal

#737

Post by r3trohack3r »

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…

This is one of the key insights in my early SRE career that changed how I viewed software engineering at scale.

Components aren’t reliable. The whole thing might be duct tape and popsicle sticks. But the trick for SRE work is to create stability from unreliable components by isolating and routing around failures.

It’s part of what made chaos engineering so effective. From randomly slowing down disk/network speed to unplugging server racks to making entire datacenters go dark - you intentionally introduce all sorts of crazy failure modes to intentionally break things and make sure the system remains metastable.

Re: Widespread power outage in Spain and Portugal

#738

Post by leumon »

ksajadi wrote: post #723

Apparently Europ network came close to shutdown due to frequency drop as the result: https://x.com/shellenberger/status/1916914966663434493?s=46

Except that's not true: an auto shutdown only occurs at 47.5 Hz, at least in Germany, some countries have the limit even lower: https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unterfrequenz

Re: Widespread power outage in Spain and Portugal

#739

Post by giantg2 »

morning-coffee wrote: post #587
zdragnar wrote: post #519

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It shouldn't be that bad. A little fogging oil when put away and drain all the fuel. Then a little starting fluid on the first couple start attempts. Usually they start fairly quickly if they're in decent shape. And that's just for pull starts. My electric start mower starts right up after even 5 months of not running with stabilizer in the fuel.

Re: Widespread power outage in Spain and Portugal

#740

Post by pomatic »

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…

Lister diesel generators are much the same - half a dozen cranks, restore compression and off they go. The hand cranking can easily break your arm if you get it wrong though.
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