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Widespread power outage in Spain and Portugal

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Re: Widespread power outage in Spain and Portugal

#991

Post by genewitch »

sponaugle wrote: post #657
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.

"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." Why would that prevent you from being grid-tie? I have 53 panels (~21kw) grid tied and pushing to the grid, but in the event of grid failure my panels will still operate and push into my 42kwh battery array which will power the entire house. ( The batteries take over as the 'virtual grid source). I can then a…

> grid tied

> 42kwh battery array

these are mutually exclusive. What you have is a hybrid system, which is something i explicitly did not mention. A grid-tie system is not generating an AC waveform when the grid is down, at all. it cannot, by definition, and by design, as the AC waveform requires the grid to synchronize to.

Hope this clears this up.

Re: Widespread power outage in Spain and Portugal

#992

Post by codingbot3000 »

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

Sponsored by the fossil fuels industry... Also, Texans are not in a good position to lecture others about power network stability :-D

The official investigation is not over yet, but the head of the Spanish power network has already said that this cannot be related to renewables: https://www.lavanguardia.com/vida/20250430/10632617/beatriz-...

Re: Widespread power outage in Spain and Portugal

#993

Post by shagie »

LorenPechtel wrote: post #979
shagie wrote: post #631

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 problem…

Burner inserters are stock. https://wiki.factorio.com/Burner_inserter

> The burner inserter is the most basic and slowest type of inserters. It is powered by burning fuel, compared to the more advanced inserters which are powered by electricity. It will add fuel to its own supply if it picks any up, which makes it useful for filling boilers with coal. This has the advantage that it will continue working even if the power fails, as opposed to electrically-powered inserters which will be unable to function.

In particular, when power demand drops below the supply everything starts running slower, which in turn means that the electrical inserters used to feed coal into the boilers run slower which drops the rate of electrical production. Burner inserters don't have that problem.

---

Schmitt triggers are really easy with stock multi combinators now. It isn't so much a "things have issue with flickering power" but rather "turn off the coal feed to the steel furnaces that would go to the electrical station instead" and "make sure that the coal unloading station doesn't brown out" and "turn off power to the electrical furnaces and labs to make sure that the coal mines don't dip in production rate when power dims".

The Schmitt trigger also makes for more reasonable "where is there excess oil that I should produce solid fuel from?" There's the optimal, but sometimes in the processing you can't crack any more crude to gas because the heavy oil is backed up, so turn on the appropriate cracking station when {conditions} and turn it off when {conditions}.

Re: Widespread power outage in Spain and Portugal

#994

Post by ncruces »

LorenPechtel wrote: post #978
ncruces wrote: post #893

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Sure. Portugal is in deed completely “isolated” if it loses Spain, so it needs black start capability if it wants some degree of autonomy.

As far as containing the issue, this was a disaster. On the flip side, this was as good an opportunity to test a black start as any, it went reasonably well, and the network operator was already in the process of contracting two further dams for the ability.

Re: Widespread power outage in Spain and Portugal

#995

Post by zestyping »

amirhirsch wrote: post #842
0xbadcafebee wrote: post #724

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If people knew how crappy, insecure, and unreliable nuclear computer systems were, there'd be a lot more existential dread about cyber security

I built control computers for nuclear reactors. Those machines are not connected to a network and are guarded by multiple stages of men with automatic machine guns. It was designed to flawlessly run 3x boards each with triple-modular-redundant processors in FPGA fabric all nine processors instruction-synced with ECC down to the Registers (including cycling the three areas of programmable fabric on the FPGAs). They cy…

How is the software inspected and tested for defects, malicious or accidental? I'm just very curious about how this is done.

Re: Widespread power outage in Spain and Portugal

#996

Post by zestyping »

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…

I'm confused. Would the start ever have to be truly black? Wouldn't water always be driving hydroelectric turbines, generating some electricity? Solar panels generate electricity without requiring input. I understand that synchronizing AC is not trivial, I'm only questioning the part about whether the start is truly black.

Re: Widespread power outage in Spain and Portugal

#997

Post by VagabundoP »

feirlane wrote: post #950
VagabundoP wrote: post #907

On a slight side note if anyone has any good references to read on grid stability and resilience please reply. Ex Electronic Engineer interest.

Practical Engineering on youtube has some good videos on the electrical grid. This one in particular is a good explanation on what they had to go through to get power back on: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uOSnQM1Zu4w

Excellent video, thank you.

Re: Widespread power outage in Spain and Portugal

#998

Post by BenjiWiebe »

ethbr1 wrote: post #676
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.

Do you have any small engine mechanic books you'd recommend? They're my kryptonite, but I accept it's mostly my ignorance.

I learned from another mechanic, no book recommendations, sorry.

Re: Widespread power outage in Spain and Portugal

#999

Post by brutusborn »

Helmut10001 wrote: post #942
brutusborn wrote: post #915

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Looks like they're using French nuclear to help black start the grid [1]. Solar and wind systems could have caused the instability issues that led to the Spanish Nuclear requiring isolation. It will be interesting to see the final investigation, but my bet is that "induced atmospheric vibration" is a PR deflection from a badly designed and operated system [2]. [1] https://transparency.entsoe.eu/transmission-domain/ph…

According to [1], 3/4 came from renewables during the re-startup. Most of today's inverters are black-start ready. That is, they don't require external energy to startup, unlike nuclear, which is heavy, costly, and slow. German readers may find fefe interesting here [2]. He debunks many of these myths. [1]: https://www.spiegel.de/wissenschaft/stromversorgung-in-spani... [2]: https://blog.fefe.de/?ts=96ee73ea

Interesting, especially the black-start ready inverters, but orthogonal to our comments on the stability of nuclear.

If the addition of renewables leads to an unstable grid, it is irrelevant if the grid is then restarted with the help of renewables.

Re: Widespread power outage in Spain and Portugal

#1000

Post by enether »

derbOac wrote: post #337
rvz wrote: post #9

A full nationwide power outage affecting not one but three [0] countries. Sounds like a major infrastructure risk given that it is possible for more than one country to experience a full loss of power. EDIT: Andorra is also affected, so that is three. [0] https://www.lavanguardia.com/vida/20250428/10624908/caida-ge...

Yeah I've been wondering why this seems so centralized. I'd think power would be more decentralized.

ditto, definitely TIL
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