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Widespread power outage in Spain and Portugal

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Re: Widespread power outage in Spain and Portugal

#971

Post by rightbyte »

IAmGraydon wrote: post #966
ExoticPearTree wrote: post #946

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have to ask: what's with "many people buying toilet paper" when there's the smallest probability of a disaster? Why? Why? Why?

I've asked the same question. I think people are so pampered in western societies that the worst thing they can possibly imagine is not being able to wipe their ass with a fresh piece of toilet paper.

What, no. The toilet paper hysteria began in Hong Kong.

And the irrational urge to panic buy toilet paper became rational since enough people were irrationally buying it.

Re: Widespread power outage in Spain and Portugal

#972

Post by LorenPechtel »

lillecarl wrote: post #677
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…

I love the "analog" handcranked air compressor to 7MW generator escalation, it really captures human ingenuity. I wonder however how being part of the "continental Europe synchronous grid" affects this, and how it isolates to Portugal and Spain like this. But yeah there are a lot of capacitors that want juice on startup that happily kills any attempt to restore power. My father had "a lot" of PA speakers at home and…

Blackstart assumes *no* power is available, period. Nothing but human muscle power. Thus the first stage is always either a human pulling a starter cord or the like, or a human building up energy in some fashion that is then dumped into the system to produce a bigger surge than is possible by direct muscle power.

And, despite the news reports, this is not a true blackstart. Some power survived.

Re: Widespread power outage in Spain and Portugal

#973

Post by LorenPechtel »

BenjiWiebe wrote: post #596
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.

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.

Yup, I would certainly use propane for a blackstart system. It stores so much better than other fuels.

Re: Widespread power outage in Spain and Portugal

#974

Post by LorenPechtel »

wepple wrote: post #806
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…

I can’t see an answer here: how does an air compressor start an engine?

It doesn't. It's a power storage device to allow muscle power to produce a higher peak output.

Re: Widespread power outage in Spain and Portugal

#975

Post by notfirstpost »

frozenwind wrote: post #916

I'm wondering: are there any simulator games in which you have to take care of the stability of a nation-wide power grid? This whole situation has me interested in logistics of power distribution now.

UK NESO’s website has one. It’s more educational that a real game…

https://www.neso.energy/energy-101/balancing-grid-interactiv...

Re: Widespread power outage in Spain and Portugal

#976

Post by LorenPechtel »

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…

Challenger wasn't really about cutting safety margins, but about kicking the can on a known problem: blowby in the motor joints. It was a gut feeling by the engineers that the problem was related to temperature, but there was enough of a random element to it that there was nothing specific to point to.

That should have been enough to scrub anyway, but there was clearly political pressure to launch.

I do agree that they need to specifically design anti-fragile.

Re: Widespread power outage in Spain and Portugal

#977

Post by fhdkweig »

ExoticPearTree wrote: post #946
jventura wrote: post #910

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Experience from Portugal, near Lisbon: fake news and made-up stories traveled fast! My wife called me (before phones went out) saying someone heard on the radio that Portugal was on red alert, it was WW3 (world war 3) and I think she even mentioned "missiles"! Also someone said it was a cyberattack and all Europe was off. Lots of panic reactions, many people buying toilet paper, water, candles, sausages and other can…

I have to ask: what's with "many people buying toilet paper" when there's the smallest probability of a disaster? Why? Why? Why?

If you are old enough to have a conversation with someone who lived through the 1930s United States Great Depression, they had to resort to tearing pages out of the Sears catalog. After that, they would hoard toilet paper. And every generation since has done the same thing. But it started with the Great Depression.

Re: Widespread power outage in Spain and Portugal

#978

Post by LorenPechtel »

ncruces wrote: post #893
mike_hearn wrote: post #634

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Spain is but Portugal is only connected to Spain and they are currently doing a full black start. For Spain the external power and synchronization can come from France rather than generators which will help, but the process and complexities are still mostly the same. Call it a dark start, perhaps.

Even then, the interconnect capacity with France is currently 2800 MW (was 1400 MW in 2015) with just 3 links, all on the NE. If Portugal (on the West) had to wait for that, it would probably have taken even longer.

But even a "small" amount of input power makes the process much easier because it can be used to bring up the next source of power.

Re: Widespread power outage in Spain and Portugal

#979

Post by LorenPechtel »

shagie wrote: post #631
kennysmoothx wrote: post #566

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is literally like Factorio. If your Factory uses too much power, theres not enough energy to run the power plants generation, which decreases your power production. Death spiraling until theres no power. You have to disconnect the factory, and independently power your power plants back up until you have enough energy production to connect your factory up again.

Capacitor circuit network warning for alarm for "main grid is drawing on this bank - bad things may happen if capacity is not increased." Another "trick" is those burner inserters are black start capable. They can pick up fuel and feed themselves to keep running without an electrical network. I also tend to put Schmitt triggers in low priority areas. They've got a battery on the main grid next to them and if the batt…

That's a mod, not stock. It does two things: feeds the inserter from either end (something I think should be stock--it's a machine that grabs things, why can't it grab fuel it can reach??) and provides a trickle of power to unpowered ones (nice from a standpoint of not having to fuel them when you put them down, but it also adds blackstart capability.

As for 50%/75% triggers--the game doesn't model start/stop problems, only fancy circuit setups would give a hoot about being fed by flickering power. (But as a human....I was out adding to a big accumulator bank at twilight. Far away the bugs had a base close enough to my laser turrets that they kept attacking. The sun was powering my base but didn't have enough for the turrets. The whole bank would flicker for every bug. Usually the electrical indicator on the accumulators is a good thing.)

Re: Widespread power outage in Spain and Portugal

#980

Post by LorenPechtel »

worldsayshi wrote: post #772
somat wrote: post #695

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same with Satifactory, The larger powerplants need a lot of energy for their infrastructure to run and an overload will trip breakers and shut the whole grid down, a naively designed grid death spirals very easy. My factory was needing increasingly complicated black start systems so I started putting the powerplant infrastructure on a self contained islands. something a factory overload would not trip, it was somethi…

Thinking about this makes me wonder how all real world power plants aren't designed to survive a grid outage? Why would you ever need to black start a real power plant? Like, can't you design it so that it disengages from the grid rather than shutting down in a catastrophic outage like this? Or make it only take on a fraction of the load or something?

Disengage from the grid and do what with the vast amount of power that suddenly has no place to go? That kind of power tends to break things. Powerplants have big cooling towers because disposing of heat is problematic.

And you're assuming that there is a throttle setting that lets the plant produce so little power that it only runs itself. Think of the Falcon 9--the landing is hairy because it's impossible for it to produce less thrust than it weighs. The engine will go out if you try to throttle it too much.

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