So this is a story about low inertia, low inertia exacerbating what should have been a survivable event.
Even if all the generators had been conventional rotating electromagnetic machines - how could the grid have survived a sudden loss of nearly 1.9GW of generation? (at least without load shedding). I can see that Inertia might keep things going (at a gradually declining frequency) for a short while - but for how long before the frequency (and voltage) drop to unacceptable levels? My gut feel is that it wouldn't be very long (a few tens of seconds - or a minute or two perhaps at a complete guess) - but surely that's nothing like long enough to bring conventional grid-level generation on-line out of the blue to compensate?
So this is a story about low inertia, low inertia exacerbating what should have been a survivable event.
Even if all the generators had been conventional rotating electromagnetic machines - how could the grid have survived a sudden loss of nearly 1.9GW of generation? (at least without load shedding). I can see that Inertia might keep things going (at a gradually declining frequency) for a short while - but for how long before the frequency (and voltage) drop to unacceptable levels? My gut feel is that it wouldn't be very long (a few tens of seconds - or a minute or two perhaps at a complete guess) - but surely that's nothing like long enough to bring conventional grid-level generation on-line out of the blue to compensate?
