Widespread power outage in Spain and Portugal

That would be charging up the spring to throw the breaker. High voltage breakers need to switch on (or off) very quickly, to avoid damage from arcing. It's common for them to have some kind of spring or gas piston arrangement that you pump up first to give them enough energy to do that quickly.

Nice attention to detail by the filmmakers.

No, he's winding up a spring to close the circuit breaker quicker than a human hand could, which reduces/prevents and arc from forming as the electrical contacts close.

Hold on to your culos.

Ah shit now I want that panel for my dream house

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—like if a rig was abandoned during a hurricane, drifted off station, and someone somehow ended up back onboard without normal support. It’s a true "everything else failed" kind of backup.

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.

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.

Not being at all qualified to comment (though I work for a power company), I'd think the hand crank air compressor wouldn't suffer from no spark or bad gas.

I'd rather bet on the simplicity of a glorified bicycle pump than the complexity of an engine any day, but then again, I'd probably have both!

A power station can start a decently large generator with batteries.

Maybe there are other concerns for an oil rig.

The point isn't to make a system that is easy. The point is to make a system that is guaranteed to work in any remotely realistic circumstance.

In a real black start, the guys might very well grab a portable generator and just use that instead. But having the option to hand crank something rather than rely on batteries that might run flat is good.

and if the entire thing depends on it, you'll give that generator a handcrank as a backup too instead of assuming the batteries ever dying or getting flooded or whatever is entirely impossible.

> Many people don't even have cash anymore, either in their wallet or at home.

Even if you have cash many shops would not sell anything in case of a mass outage because registers are just clients which depend on a cloud to register a transaction. Not reliable but cheap when it works.

There are now ubiquitous wireless POS terminals for card payments that can be recharged from emergency sources of electricity(like cars). As long as the mobile internet works it's possible. Of course this only little alleviates the disruption.

> a significant part of the population might not even be able to buy food for days.

And who's fault is that? Why did europe allow this?

Why will the US allow this, eventually?

"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 be lean, they should be antifragile.

What's even more annoying that we have solutions for a lot of those problems - in case of electric grids we have hydroelectric buffers, we have types of powerplants that are easier to shutdown and startup than coal, gas or wind/solar(which cannot be used for cold start at all).

The problem is that building any of this takes longer than one political term.

What are some examples of modern system collapse?

We've had substantial disruptions, but they've not been particularly irrecoverable or sustained.

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With a high fraction of renewables, the reverse is probably better in the long run. The larger geographic area you connect, the less you're affected by weather systems, and the wider area you can draw dependable dispatchable power such as hydro from. But that depends on having enough grid capacity to move enough power around, which is currently a problem.

But I wonder from a reliability (or lack of cascading failures) point of view whether synchronous islands interconnected with DC interconnects is more robust than a large synchronous network?

It's hard to build big generators, so as we already struggle with infrastructure I don't think that's feasible, but it would be great.

Presumably emergency phone comms still work(?) so they could issue instructions to do a phased (heh!) restart to avoid every fridge/air conditioner/whatever restarting at once. Not sure how successful that would be however.

The key part of the phrase is actually "electric power station, a part of an electric grid or an industrial plant." Note how the definition doesn't include an entire grid.

Only the first power plant in a black-start (like a hydroelectric dam or gas plant started by a backup generator) is truly "black started." The rest don't fit that definition because they depend on an external power source to spin up and synchronize frequency before burning fuel and supplying any energy to the grid. If they didn't, the second they'd turn on they'd experience catastrophic unscheduled disassembly of the (very big) turbines.

Only the first power plant can come online without the external transmission network.

But not a black start.

"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 augment the batteries with generator and run fully off grid for an extended amount of time ( weeks in my case ).

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 seems to me restarting a grid is made much more tricky when you have millions of generation assets with no control over.

With the new wexford-wales interconnect that went live last month, and another one planned from Cork (?) to France things might be even easier in the near future I reckon.

Did he mention the UK's plan in case they have a full blackout?

With the DC interconnect, your DC to AC conversion equipment would need the capability to provide synchronized power to the generator you are trying to start. With the synchronized grid tie, your are pulling the generator into the running grid.

A synchronous interconnect provides not just a source of truth but also stabilizes your grid frequency. If you have an isolated grid you have to match generation to demand to keep the grid frequency stable. If you have a 1GW interconnect that means you can mismatch generation and demand by up to a gigawatt and still be fine. I imagine that makes for a much faster startup procedure

Factorio has logic circuits which allow you to do this.

BBC reporting the head of Spain's electricity grid saying restoring power could take "between six and ten hours": https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/c9wpq8xrvd9t?post=asset%3A85...

Interesting, but in terms of load I think think the data may just be delayed by ~1 hour. Switching to UTC, to avoid timezone confusion, it's currently 13:10:

Last actual load value for Spain at 12:15: https://transparency.entsoe.eu/load-domain/r2/totalLoadR2/sh...

Last actual load value for France at 12:00: https://transparency.entsoe.eu/load-domain/r2/totalLoadR2/sh...

> The animal had come into contact with the transformer at the station, disrupting supply to the entire country. There were no immediate details on whether the monkey survived the incident.

If that's all it took to turn Srilanka off.Even if that country lags behind western Europe, what would it take for a few humans who intentionally cut off power.

Trying to stay on the facts, this incident is likely accidental but some people even the very workers at energy companies could send a message for, I don't know. A pay raise?

"Same difference" to use an Irish turn of phrase. If a short to ground takes out power to an extensive area does it mater what touched what?

Can you blame them? Just look at how they've been treated in the last few hundred years.

They've had a grudge against humanity since the fall. Ever since—once a year—they send a clear message, "leaf" but do the humans listen? No.

> Solar PV/thermal + wind: ~78%

This is (a) incredibly impressive to achieve and (b) definitely the point at which the battery infrastructure needs to catch up in order to reduce the risk of such incidents.

> very little dispatchable spinning generation

Makes the case for favouring flywheels over batteries.

I’m no expert but I think it has to do with this effect: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vortex-induced_vibration

See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aeolian_harp

Edit: might be a completely different kind of oscillation than I was thinking of. https://news.sky.com/story/spain-portugal-power-outage-lates...

So I would also like to understand how this works :)

> stores would pull out the credit card imprint machines, but those don't work anymore because cards are flat

It's the other way around: Cards are flat because a carbon imprint doesn't afford the merchant any payment guarantee by the card issuer anymore anyway. (In other words, the "floor limit" above which cards require electronic authorization is now zero.)

> Some of the panic is likely related to the war in Europe too, and especially the general talk about war

We were just two years removed from 9/11 so terror talk was the first thing that happened. We got that news from AM radio in our cars. Still no panic.

> probably with the usual suspects popping up to blame renewables

Renewables were a factor in the blackout here in Brazil a couple of years ago: the models used by the system operator did not correspond to reality, many solar and wind power plants disconnected on grid disturbances quicker than specified. That mismatch led the system operator to allow a grid configuration where a single fault could lead to a cascade (more power was allowed through a power line than could be redistributed safely if that power line shut off for any reason), and that single fault happened when a protection mechanism misbehaved and disconnected that power line. The main fix was to model these solar and wind power plants more conservatively (pending a more detailed review of their real-life behavior and the corresponding update of the models), which allowed them to correctly limit the power going through these power lines.

If you want an excruciating level of detail, the final 614-page report is at https://www.ons.org.br/AcervoDigitalDocumentosEPublicacoes/R... (in Portuguese; the main page for that incident is at https://www.ons.org.br/Paginas/Noticias/Ocorr%c3%aancia-no-S...).

This is why solar requires redundant data links to the operator in CA now. Mine has it. During instability they can command my system to accept larger voltage and frequency excursions than would normally be allowed to prevent a "pile-on" where an excursion causes solar to make the problem worse.

Is 50Hz really that important these days – i.e. more important than maintaining power? (Honest naive question.)

I can speak for the GB case. Low Frequency Demand Disconnection (LFDD) occurs automatically and in stages when the frequency drops until it stabilises. The substations or feeders that are tripped off are not currently determined by real-time metering - instead they are pre-allocated based on their typical demand. This means that the system operator does not really know how much demand will be disconnected at any given time. If it's sunny, you could easily trip off a lot of solar generation connected on the low voltage network, causing the frequency to drop further. It is far from optimal!

They don't really disconnect it like that in these circumstances (as in they choose what to disconnect). As far as I know generation plants will start disconnect when grid frequency is <49Hz or >51Hz (at least in the UK) automatically as it's all starting to go very wrong. This is what causes this huge cascade effect. Roughly speak less frequency means there is more demand than supply and the other way round for higher frequencies.

This has changed a lot though, as even home batteries afaik will start discharging if they start noticing the frequency dropping to provide some support on generation. But if it's dropping too fast and too quickly it won't help.

But yes they do have very granular info on all the HV sources and how much load is on them.

Load shedding is an active measure taken when the grid operator knows that it will not be able to balance supply and demand. This is what happens in South Africa, where the operator preventively disconnects parts of the network at predetermined times to ensure network balance. As this is programmed, it is possible to rotate the areas under blackout.

In this case, we are dealing with a widespread grid incident. The various grid protection mechanisms have been triggered to prevent interconnection overload. In addition, the generators are trying to correct the grid frequency to exactly 50Hz. At 49Hz, more power must be generated; at 51Hz, less power must be generated. However, if the frequency varies too much, there are also protection mechanisms to prevent the turbines from overspeeding or amplifying frequency variations.

The grid is complex, and normally this type of incident is limited to one cell of the electricity distribution grid. A blackout is a domino effect, when a minor event triggers a chain reaction that disconnects more and more elements from the grid.

Th grid operator will have to restart or reconnect the power plants one by one, restore power to stations and sub stations. All of this must be done in a specific order before power can be restored to consumers. All of this takes time, requires resources (you need men on the ground), and the slightest error can lead to further outages.

Some consumers are prioritised, such as hospitals, transport infrastructure, telecoms and water networks. Many critical pieces of equipment have UPS systems, but these are not always designed for such long outages or have not been tested for years. There are patients with home equipment who will struggle.

This is why rotating load shedding is preferable. The outages are not too long and vital infrastructure is not affected (or less so).

That's how some have been pronouncing it in English, too.

Grey failures are harder for large systems to handle. If a chunk goes hard down that's usually easy. Something like voltage oscillations that trigger cascading failures in a sequence can lead to negative feedback loops that bring it all down.

Yes, France was importing 884MW from Spain at 12:45, 198MW at 13:00, no net flow at 13:15, and Spain has been importing up to 265MW since: https://transparency.entsoe.eu/transmission-domain/physicalF...

Almost certainly being coordinated at that rate by adding one plant at a time, then a load region, then checking stability is holding, and so on.

Our government said we're fine with our local generation and are even exporting 200 MW (possibly to our eastern neighbors?).

I definitely had no problems with electricity all of today (on the eastern side). And there was nothing in the news about local outages either.

Funny enough, there were news before the Easter holidays that they're preparing for extremely reduced demand by shutting down facilities.

It was Practical Engineering. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uOSnQM1Zu4w

Very good video. Very good channel.

Idk, it might be updated with some lag

Old-school PSTN folks looked at XKCD 705 and chuckled. Late to the party, pal.

The telephone network was designed from the ground up to be completely independent of _everything_ except fuel deliveries. If grid power is up, that's convenient, but it's totally not required.

In many places, that's because telegraph and telephone lines got there before the power grid did. Lines running along railroads connected communities that had no centralized power generation. Delco-light plants at individual farms might be the only electric power for miles, aside from the communications lines themselves. Even if the only phone was at the rail depot, it still had to power itself somehow. As those communities sprouted their own telephone offices and subscriber lines branching throughout town, the office had its own batteries for primary power, and eventually generators to recharge them. (Telegraph networks largely ran from just batteries, recharged chemically rather than with generators, for years.)

Fast-forward a century and there was just never a need to depend on anything else. As long as the diesel bowser can get down the driveway, the office can run indefinitely.

Among old AT&T/Bell/WECo hands, the devotion to reliable service goes far beyond fanatical. Many offices built during the cold-war have showers in the basement and a room of shelf-stable food, though these are no longer maintained. The expectation was that whoever was in the office when the bombs dropped, would keep things running as long as they could. And when they couldn't anymore, well, there was probably nobody left to call anyway.

Depending on country there are sometimes very strict requirements - or just traditions sometimes - around building up strong survivability in face of total loss of grid power. Including diesel and turbine generators on bigger BTSes let alone exchanges. If you drop capacity per terminal (so bandwidth) you can cover a lot more range at times which helps with mobile network resiliency.