EuroOutage?

[RETAC21]

1 hour ago, Markus Becker said:

Red Electric is said to have warned about this for several months! 

And then they caused the blackout for the reasons pointed by Sunday, and on top, the deactivated the security system because it was deemed as redundant during daylight hours.

[Soren Ras]

One downside to relying excessively on solar and wind is precisely that the absence of what you could call the inertia reserve of energy in the large rotational mass available with nuclear, hydroelectric and fossil fuel plants, makes your grid a lot less able to recover and manage unexpected fluctuations. 

A power system can use the inertia reserve, since the kinetic energy of the rotating masses provide resistance to changes in frequency. But of course that requires that a substantial part of your total energy comes from plants with large rotating masses that are connected to your grid. Ideally, I suppose you'd want your entire base load to be generated with something that helps you maintain stable frequency and let the more volatile and variable energy sources supply whatever is above base load levels.

If you have a high amount of inertia, frequency variation is dampened, but if your inertia is low, you risk large deviations very suddenly.

One of the reasons Denmark has been able to get away with relying on wind to a very high degree is that the Danish grid is closely connected to those of neighboring Norway and Sweden, where there has traditionally been a large reserve of hydroelectric and nuclear plants able to provide stability against fluctuations. The benefit from the other countries has been that when wind is blowing, they can reduce their power generation and import cheap wind-derived electricity, and conversely spin up their plants and supply electricity at a higher price when the wind is not blowing. And the inertia buffer acts as a stabilizing force. 

Which is why the increased reliance on wind in the countries surrounding Denmark (and shutdowns of Swedish nuclear plants) are now endangering electricity stability across Northern Europe of the kind just visited upon our Iberian friends. The Swedes have increasingly been sounding the alarm because most of their hydro capacity is only available in the northern part of the country, while most consumers are in the south (which used to be served well by nuclear plants, but increasingly get power only from wind and solar), and with insufficient connectors between north and south.  Norway, which has plenty of hydro, has warned that they are risking power outages because they have connected their grid to Denmark - and hence to the broader European grid, which is increasingly fragile.

(Which is not to say that this is the only or necessarily even primary driver of the Apr 28 event, merely that something like it becomes more likely as givernments blindly follow the green mirage).

 

[sunday]

10 minutes ago, Soren Ras said:

One downside to relying excessively on solar and wind is precisely that the absence of what you could call the inertia reserve of energy in the large rotational mass available with nuclear, hydroelectric and fossil fuel plants, makes your grid a lot less able to recover and manage unexpected fluctuations. 

A power system can use the inertia reserve, since the kinetic energy of the rotating masses provide resistance to changes in frequency. But of course that requires that a substantial part of your total energy comes from plants with large rotating masses that are connected to your grid. Ideally, I suppose you'd want your entire base load to be generated with something that helps you maintain stable frequency and let the more volatile and variable energy sources supply whatever is above base load levels.

If you have a high amount of inertia, frequency variation is dampened, but if your inertia is low, you risk large deviations very suddenly.

One of the reasons Denmark has been able to get away with relying on wind to a very high degree is that the Danish grid is closely connected to those of neighboring Norway and Sweden, where there has traditionally been a large reserve of hydroelectric and nuclear plants able to provide stability against fluctuations. The benefit from the other countries has been that when wind is blowing, they can reduce their power generation and import cheap wind-derived electricity, and conversely spin up their plants and supply electricity at a higher price when the wind is not blowing. And the inertia buffer acts as a stabilizing force. 

Which is why the increased reliance on wind in the countries surrounding Denmark (and shutdowns of Swedish nuclear plants) are now endangering electricity stability across Northern Europe of the kind just visited upon our Iberian friends. The Swedes have increasingly been sounding the alarm because most of their hydro capacity is only available in the northern part of the country, while most consumers are in the south (which used to be served well by nuclear plants, but increasingly get power only from wind and solar), and with insufficient connectors between north and south.  Norway, which has plenty of hydro, has warned that they are risking power outages because they have connected their grid to Denmark - and hence to the broader European grid, which is increasingly fragile.

(Which is not to say that this is the only or necessarily even primary driver of the Apr 28 event, merely that something like it becomes more likely as givernments blindly follow the green mirage).

 

Good points.

On interconnections, one of the participants on the video asked the reason why Spain is unable to export the excess renewable generation to the UK, for instance. The answer was that the electrical interconnection with France is quite weak, of about 2-3GW, i.e. less than 1% of the peak demand of the Spanish electrical system. Looks like France is not interested in buying too much electricity from Spain, nor using her network to offer a path for energy exportation. But that is not new.

Also, that isolates the French grid from Spanish system instabilities caused by renewables, so it is likely the French are going to be more reluctant in the future, whatever Brussels say. Brussels said there was a need of interconnections of about 8GW between Spain and France.

Edited April 30, 2025 by sunday

[sunday]

Here is a report discussing electrical system stability issues when there is a lot of renewable generation. Most of the topics discussed are state-of-the-art or beyond, but the Executive Summary provides enough background to begin to understand the problems involved.

[seahawk]

Development however advances.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0378779624006321?via%3Dihub

[Steven P Allen]

On 4/28/2025 at 2:36 PM, TrustMe said:

Wasn't there a US TV show about how electrictly just didn't work anymore and the world fell apart?

Revolution.

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2070791/

 

 

[Ivanhoe]

2 hours ago, sunday said:

Here is a report discussing electrical system stability issues when there is a lot of renewable generation. Most of the topics discussed are state-of-the-art or beyond, but the Executive Summary provides enough background to begin to understand the problems involved.

Here in the US, most but not all interconnects are AC-AC. Which sounds great in theory, but when Bad Things happen, one bad grid can take others down.

Texas has DC-DC interconnects, which are wasteful but isolate the participants from frequency and/or phase booboos.

I assume the use of DC-DC interconnects was chosen for emergency use only, rather than buying/selling large amounts of power in a regional market.

 

[TrustMe]

21 minutes ago, Steven P Allen said:

Revolution.

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2070791/

 

 

Thanks, I didn't know what it was called.

[sunday]

29 minutes ago, Ivanhoe said:

Here in the US, most but not all interconnects are AC-AC. Which sounds great in theory, but when Bad Things happen, one bad grid can take others down.

Texas has DC-DC interconnects, which are wasteful but isolate the participants from frequency and/or phase booboos.

I assume the use of DC-DC interconnects was chosen for emergency use only, rather than buying/selling large amounts of power in a regional market.

 

DC-DC interconnections (or HVDC, High Voltage Direct Current, interconnections) are the only solution for transmitting lots of power at long distances, when grid frequencies in source and destination are different, or when the two systems are not synchronized in phase. AC-AC have some distance limits. See for instance the line that comes from all the Canadian hydro in James Bay to the US Northeast.

For the USA power grid, see this. It is divided in several "islands" joined by HVDC interconnections.

Quote

The electrical power grid that powers Northern America is not a single grid, but is instead divided into multiple wide area synchronous grids.[1] The Eastern Interconnection and the Western Interconnection are the largest. Three other regions include the Texas Interconnection, the Quebec Interconnection, and the Alaska Interconnection. Each region delivers power at a nominal 60 Hz frequency.[2]

The regions are not usually directly connected or synchronized to each other, but there exist some HVDC interconnectors. The Eastern and Western grids are connected via seven links that allow 1.32 GW to flow between them. A study by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory found that increasing these interconnections would save energy costs.[2]

 

Edited April 30, 2025 by sunday

[RETAC21]

Already discussed in the posts above, but nevertheless interesting: https://www.worksinprogress.news/p/the-spanish-grid-collapse

"While the use of intermittent energy sources doesn’t cause power outages, lack of inertia makes it easier for them to spread. As Western countries continue to go full steam ahead on building out wind and solar capacity, policymakers are yet to face-up to these trade-offs or their financially painful mitigations. There’s also a more worrying question. Inertia may buy the grid one or two seconds to deploy energy it has stored in batteries or to fire up some gas-powered engines. But without spare large generation capacity, you will still expect to see blackouts. Most countries have built up enough fossil fuel reserves and battery storage to tide them over so far, but if an interconnector were to break at a high demand, low wind moment, all bets are off."

Of note, hydro is renewable but not intermittent so it's not just green energy vs fossil/nuclear.

[sunday]

Well, well, well, just found there is a project under consideration for a HVDC link between Spain, France and the UK. Only 1.8GW, however.

https://eepublicdownloads.entsoe.eu/clean-documents/tyndp-documents/TYNDP 2016/projects/P0296.pdf

Edited to add: There is another under construction between Spain and France

https://www.hitachienergy.com/news-and-events/customer-success-stories/biscay-gulf

Edited April 30, 2025 by sunday

[Ivanhoe]

The environmentalists would have a cow, but it occurs to me that using excess power to pump seawater up to a man-made reservoir that feeds a backup hydro generator might be helpful.

[sunday]

1 minute ago, Ivanhoe said:

The environmentalists would have a cow, but it occurs to me that using excess power to pump seawater up to a man-made reservoir that feeds a backup hydro generator might be helpful.

That is perfectly reasonable, but for the need of using seawater-resistant materials in the turbine-pumps, and the need to find some mountainous terrain near the shore, as the difference in height should be large enough. The biggest pump storage system we have here, in the Spanish Pyrenees, has a height difference of 850m.

[Ivanhoe]

California pumps water from Mono Lake to LA, roughly 250 miles. Some of it is downhill, some not.

Given the all-up costs of public works projects lately, y'all could build the turbines out of 24k gold.

Further thought; stock the saltwater reservoir with Spanish Mackerel (Scomberomorini), bump up Spain's Omega-3 intake.

 

[bfng3569]

On 4/28/2025 at 4:00 PM, Roman Alymov said:

I wonder how long will it take to blame Russians (and Putin personally) for that.

    But, jokes aside, it is terrible situation for locals, especially in places with lots of migrants. Within few hours, this guys would discover CCTVs, security systems and alarms, phoines etc. are not working, police would not arrive and this "lazy white colonisers" are now legitimate prey....

well, ya know what they say.... he who denies it first......

[sunday]

18 minutes ago, Ivanhoe said:

California pumps water from Mono Lake to LA, roughly 250 miles. Some of it is downhill, some not.

Given the all-up costs of public works projects lately, y'all could build the turbines out of 24k gold.

Further thought; stock the saltwater reservoir with Spanish Mackerel (Scomberomorini), bump up Spain's Omega-3 intake.

 

For pumped storage, reducing the pressure losses in the piping is a key aspect. Not the same as bringing drinking water from one place to another.

[Markus Becker]

8 hours ago, RETAC21 said:

And then they caused the blackout for the reasons pointed by Sunday, and on top, the deactivated the security system because it was deemed as redundant during daylight hours.

We can hope that this becomes a huge FAFO incident. 

Judging by the literal radio silence here, it should be. Two mornings on the radio for an hour and pretty much nothing. 

Only around ~7 am they had a nine minute interview with a green energy lobbyist and she spend five minutes saying nothing with many words, the journalist NOT pressing her for hard answers. 

[sunday]

That deactivated security system was useful in case of lack of generation. This event was likely caused by excess generation.

[RETAC21]

21 minutes ago, sunday said:

That deactivated security system was useful in case of lack of generation. This event was likely caused by excess generation.

Well, we had both.

If there was an excess (which seems likely) it's surprising to my uninformed mind that the net cannot be isolated in sectors. once substations started tripping off, but it seems the excess had nowhere to go.

 

[RETAC21]

37 minutes ago, Markus Becker said:

We can hope that this becomes a huge FAFO incident. 

Judging by the literal radio silence here, it should be. Two mornings on the radio for an hour and pretty much nothing. 

Only around ~7 am they had a nine minute interview with a green energy lobbyist and she spend five minutes saying nothing with many words, the journalist NOT pressing her for hard answers. 

My suspicion is that the guy responsible will be kicked out and be left at that.

Or it will get exotic and blame will be shifted to "Russian hackers" because why not.

[Ivanhoe]

57 minutes ago, Markus Becker said:

Judging by the literal radio silence here, it should be. Two mornings on the radio for an hour and pretty much nothing.

 

[rmgill]

11 hours ago, sunday said:

Moreover, about half of the Spanish nuke plants were stopped, with the authorization of RE, because the taxes on electrical generation, that were recently raised by the Socialist Government, make selling electricity unprofitable for them. Stability of the system be screwed.

Time to get into the business of selling candles eh? 

[sunday]

Here we are not used to multi-hour outages.

There was a somewhat funny bit in the chronicle of a journalist describing how people was enduring the outage in Madrid (mostly in bars and the like, helping the bar owners to dispose of beer in danger of getting a bit warm), when he asked a waitress:

- "Hi, how are you and your coworkers managing with the lack of power?"

- "Quite well, it is usual"

- "Usual??? Where do you come from?"

. "Cuba"

 

[rmgill]

Haha. Ask your Cuban cousins for tips...

Here, we're used to severe weather that knocks down pine trees and those knock down power lines. Snow, heavy storms. We've had windy days that have the reclosers acting repeatedly and it echos around the area as you hear the DNNNNT....DNNNNT....DNNNNNT.....POW! as the fuse links blow. 

So, recommendations. 

Bees wax candles are quite nice, but burn quckly. Use em for special occasions. 
More regular candles are good too. 

Oil lamps, either the victorian glass ones with chimneys are nice for static locations.

For moving around the house older Dietz lamps are the cats pajamas. Feuerhand are good, western made. 
 

 

Edited April 30, 2025 by rmgill

[RETAC21]

9 hours ago, rmgill said:

Haha. Ask your Cuban cousins for tips...

Here, we're used to severe weather that knocks down pine trees and those knock down power lines. Snow, heavy storms. We've had windy days that have the reclosers acting repeatedly and it echos around the area as you hear the DNNNNT....DNNNNT....DNNNNNT.....POW! as the fuse links blow. 

So, recommendations. 

Bees wax candles are quite nice, but burn quckly. Use em for special occasions. 
More regular candles are good too. 

Oil lamps, either the victorian glass ones with chimneys are nice for static locations.

For moving around the house older Dietz lamps are the cats pajamas. Feuerhand are good, western made. 
 

 

Great ideas if you don't mind your house burning down.

Just buy batteries (rechargable and classic) and flashlights or LED lights that will give you the same autonomy and better light. I am no survivalist, but with 2 kids I have flashlights and batteries galore, plus you get one of this things:

plus a handheld radio and a jetboil

And Bob is your uncle.