Any thoughts/information on what happened? Was it a lack of spinning reserve?
Was it " The Portuguese operator, REN, said the outage was caused by a “rare atmospheric phenomenon”, with extreme temperature variations in Spain causing “anomalous oscillations” in very high-voltage lines."
as is written in the Guardian?
The Italien blackout from a few years ago had a definate cause in the tripping of interconnetors from Switzerland during a storm.
My thoughts
Could this happen in other European countries? Yes absolutely.
Lack of information/poor information? Yes absolutely, reminds me of Ed Milliband talking about Heathrow.
Are there lessons to be learnt? Yes absolutely
- All Telecoms (mobile phone networks) need to be power independent/battery backup power for at least 24 hours to help maintain mobile coms throughout the nation
- All Data centres need to be power independent/battery backup power for at least 12 hours to help maintain Data coms throughout the nation
- Countries need to look at how much power they use and how much they buy in from abroad. It only takes 1 country interlink to go down and people will find themselves needing to wear brown trousers. In the UK I bet we have come close to that on several occasions. Picture if you will a power station going offline, then at the same time an interlink to France going down, now you are very close to the mark. Now when that cascade starts it is very difficult to stop the avalaunch.
- More COLD start sites/Black Start site need to be commissioned probably throughout the EuroGrid network
- Procedures are needed or need to be written to ensure assets can synchronise on the network especially considering the amount of renewable energy source created. Voltage and frequency errors are probably the most hidden Gremlin when adding renewable energy onto the Grid be that either NGrid or EuroGrid.
Personally I feel that we need more battery storage attached to the Grids to help store the renewable when it’s created rather than waste it and it may also help even out the fluctuations on the Grids. Now I understand they are the size of large football stadiums and they can not AT the MOMENT create Frequency BUT they would most certainly help minimise the cascade effect that leads to the need for a Black start. It also means that Solar energy can be used at Night. (Other renewable energy sources are available).
Personally I feel that we need more battery storage attached to the Grids to help store the renewable when it’s created rather than waste it and it may also help even out the fluctuations on the Grids. Now I understand they are the size of large football stadiums and they can not AT the MOMENT create Frequency BUT they would most certainly help minimise the cascade effect that leads to the need for a Black start. It also means that Solar energy can be used at Night. (Other renewable energy sources are available)
We particularly need more grid-forming batteries that can act like spinning generators.
Most inverters will simply track the grid frequency as it falls. Until it goes out of specification, and the inverter shuts down. Which only adds to the problem.
Personally I feel that we need more battery storage attached to the Grids to help store the renewable when it’s created rather than waste it and it may also help even out the fluctuations on the Grids. Now I understand they are the size of large football stadiums and they can not AT the MOMENT create Frequency BUT they would most certainly help minimise the cascade effect that leads to the need for a Black start. It also means that Solar energy can be used at Night. (Other renewable energy sources are available)
We particularly need more grid-forming batteries that can act like spinning generators.
Most inverters will simply track the grid frequency as it falls. Until it goes out of specification, and the inverter shuts down. Which only adds to the problem.
Once the cascade starts or starts to get out of control it become like an Avalanche. Lets hope that people learn lesson from this disaster and then implement more robust and redundant systems that are capable of meeting the requirements that are now the norm rather than relying on how things were done 20 plus years ago. I do like the fact that Spain has lot of wind turbines (personally I think it still needs nuclear as well) and I hope the UK installs more but and it is a BIG BUT the Wind Turbines on mas scale change how the national grid would work/function during normal operation and under fault conditions. Frequency is crucial to any grid.
Frequency is crucial to any grid.
I suspect that it's not as crucial as people think. Rather it's a statement about how some parts of the electrical network were designed and configured.
Way back in the UK past we had the 3-day week caused by a miners strike which meant that the frequency was allowed to be 'way-off', apparently to the point that electric clocks could be 10 minutes away of true time (during the loaded day), and that the grid than ran fast overnight to catch up.
I do remember when working at NEI Parsons (c1979) that V/f was a concern for transformer saturation.
(I was looking at designed a digital converter to monitor the generator voltage for control purposes needing multiple readings per cycle via a 3ph->6ph transformer, a 6 phase rectifier, a voltage to frequency converter and counter per part cycle - It implicitly produced a V/f reading!, and a 1/f reading)
We have become locked in to that way of thinking, forgetting all the newer converter based transmission tech that doesn't care in the same way.
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