Electrical outages. cyber attacks ?

"Loss of Mains (LoM) protection on embedded generation in the area "

I know that embedded generation, i.e. my solar panels, need mains as a voltage and frequency stabiliser and a source / dump for extra energy.

I therefore asked my installer why two houses in the same street did not see each other as "mains" in the event of a power cut and his answer was that solar panels are set to try and run at about 52Hz. They can't as long as the grid is connected but as soon as the grid is lost the frequency rises and the units all trip.

It would expect this to happen if a line was taken out by a lightning strike long before the auto reclose reconnected the supply but with my solar panels they would restart generating fairly quickly on restoration.

Does anyone know how a wind farm reacts to suddenly finding it is generating more than the connected load?


What I think all this shows is that it is impossible to test system stability and protection in a live situation. It can be mathematically modeled by clever people but probably not in sufficient detail to be sure of the way the system will react. All we can hope for is that lessons will be learned from this event which will improve the models.

"Loss of Mains (LoM) protection on embedded generation in the area "

I know that embedded generation, i.e. my solar panels, need mains as a voltage and frequency stabiliser and a source / dump for extra energy.

I therefore asked my installer why two houses in the same street did not see each other as "mains" in the event of a power cut and his answer was that solar panels are set to try and run at about 52Hz. They can't as long as the grid is connected but as soon as the grid is lost the frequency rises and the units all trip.

It would expect this to happen if a line was taken out by a lightning strike long before the auto reclose reconnected the supply but with my solar panels they would restart generating fairly quickly on restoration.

Does anyone know how a wind farm reacts to suddenly finding it is generating more than the connected load?


What I think all this shows is that it is impossible to test system stability and protection in a live situation. It can be mathematically modeled by clever people but probably not in sufficient detail to be sure of the way the system will react. All we can hope for is that lessons will be learned from this event which will improve the models.