11 ms·

Major power failure affects homes and transport

69 points by zimpenfish 7y ago

cjbenedikt 7y ago
Brex-grid...;-)
- ashildr 7y ago
  Interestingly on a quick glance the UK does not seem to be part of the synchronized EU grid and has only a DC connection to France that provides 5% or less of the electricity used at any time. I may be wrong but the grid does not seem to be directly affected by the clusterfuck that Brexit will be.
  - dijit 7y ago
    That's a very generous interpretation of the facts. We actually have lines going to Netherlands (which in turn pulls from Germany) and France, and one incoming that connects us to Norway.[0] I have friends who work in power stations up and down the country and they describe it as a "power sharing" situation, our grid feeds Netherlands and France (to a lesser extent at least), but more often we pull from them to fill our peaks. We actually have links to many countries it seems: https://blogs.platts.com/2019/01/31/uk-electricity-links-europe-multiply-even-brexit-looms/ https://blogs.platts.com/2019/01/31/uk-electricity-links-eur... [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transmission_system_operator https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transmission_system_operator
    - Reason077 7y ago
      That's right, the interconnectors are all bi-directional. They move electricity where it's needed according to market demand: when the wholesale price is higher in Britain than in (for example) France, the UK imports electricity. When the wholesale price is higher in France, which can happen during winter demand peaks as France has a lot of electric heating, the flow is reversed and the UK exports electricity.
    - ashildr 7y ago
      Thanks, your and the other replies left me better informed than before.
  - Reason077 7y ago
    Britain currently has HVDC interconnectors to France (2 GW), Belgium (NemoLink, 1 GW), and Netherlands (BritNed, 1 GW), as well as 2 interconnectors with Ireland (East-West and Moyle, 500 MW each) In addition, there are at least 5 new interconnectors due to be completed by the early 2020s: 2 more to France (IFA-2 and ElecLink), 2 to Norway (North Sea Link, NorthConnect), and 1 to Denmark (Viking link).
    - blibble 7y ago
      there's several UK power stations that are legally required to run at less than full capacity due to EU's large combustion plant directive (+ other later directives) after leaving: in the event of a serious short term problem they can be spun up relatively easily until extra (better) capacity can be brought online
      - Reason077 7y ago
        All of the UK power plants that were affected by the Large Combustion Plant directive have since been closed permanently. The last one, Ironbridge, closed in November 2015. All remaining coal-fired power stations are legally required to close by 2025, but that's a UK decision, not an EU one. In reality they are being used less and less already, and most are likely to close well before 2025.
        blibble 7y ago
        > "large combustion plant directive (>>+ other later directives<<)" the follow up directive is still very much in effect and has placed operating restrictions (mostly load and hour limits) on many UK power stations https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/industrial-emissions-directive-ied-environmental-permits-issued-2016-p-to-z https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/industrial-emissio... these can be lifted on November 1st (if required), and would radically change the economics of the UK's generation market (not that burning coal is a good thing, but it's better than rolling blackouts)
        7y ago
zimpenfish 7y ago
Given the frequent reports we get about the insecurity and fragility of the US power grid, is the UK grid as bad and is this going to be just a business-as-usual oopsie or something more sinister?
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- spazbob 7y ago
  This is a pretty rare event here in the UK to my knowledge. Probably the Russians testing the latest exploit...
  - mlaretallack 7y ago
    Its not often we have power outages. And when we do they usually have "understandable" reasons ( lightning etc..) And are localised. This seems different.
    - techrich 7y ago
      Brexit!
    - bobthepanda 7y ago
      It's a bit pre-emptive to start witch-hunting, though. The 2003 Northeast US/Canada blackout was caused by a race condition: https://odetocode.com/blogs/scott/archive/2004/04/11/blackouts-and-race-conditions.aspx https://odetocode.com/blogs/scott/archive/2004/04/11/blackou...
      - jcranmer 7y ago
        > The 2003 Northeast US/Canada blackout was caused by a race condition: https://odetocode.com/blogs/scott/archive/2004/04/11/blackou.. https://odetocode.com/blogs/scott/archive/2004/04/11/blackou.... No, it wasn't. The race condition caused First Energy to not notice that their energy grid was one more line trip away from catastrophic failure. But there were four line trips that day caused by power lines hitting trees and shorting, the last of which triggered the dynamic instability that caused the blackout. First Energy had a whole host of issues that together caused the blackout, and the race condition in the alarm monitoring system was but one of them. The full report is actually an interesting read. Essentially, the key problem that caused the massive cascade was that the line trips meant that large loads of power had to reroute long distances to get to the Cleveland demand area, and the non-infinitesimal amount of time it takes for the power to establish that route caused several lines to trip, to the point that the demand was cut off from the network before the supply surge reached it.
Sami_Lehtinen 7y ago
Here's some information: https://mobile.twitter.com/upsideenergy/status/1159870347618865152 https://mobile.twitter.com/upsideenergy/status/1159870347618...
z92 7y ago
I link a few old news with it : First there was a news that electric grids are hackable. And Russians might be after those. Then there was a news that White House called for some of the power transmission switches be turned manual, which are now automatic. Next there were a bunch of large and sudden power failures in large cities all over the world. And now this. Maybe there isn't a link. Just a possibility.
- snambi 7y ago
  oh come on. if power goes down, the it is Russians. probably old outdated powerlines are the reason.
  - jazzyjackson 7y ago
    Just saying... if I was a hacker, I would hack in a way that made it look like old failing equipment
- JBorrow 7y ago
  More likely that the huge storm sweeping the south of england is the cause
  - londons_explore 7y ago
    Imagine I were a hacker who had hacked into a big gas turbine power plant. To create maximum damage, I am going to want to time my attack within moments of another generator going down. The UK grid can tolerate one big failure, but not two at the same time. So I sit... I lie in wait... For maybe months... As soon as I see another big generator fail and cause a sudden change in frequency, then within a couple of seconds, I trigger my exploit to shut down my powerstation too. The storm might have caused one outage, and a hacker the other. Any decent hacker with this plan in mind will try to hide their tracks. They'll inject a 'glitchy' sensor reading to trigger the failure. They'll make sure all their malware auto-uninstalls itself within milliseconds of the incident, so any investigation sees a glitch in a sensor reading and can't track down the real cause.
_Microft 7y ago
There was confusion on Twitter how a frequency drop could cause a power outage. It's the other way around: loss of power/a plant leads to a drop in frequency. Here's why: Imagine a generator spinning at 50 rpm (for the sake of simplicity). Now if the load on the generator is larger than the power it can provide, it will be slowed down and the frequency goes down. If the load is lower than the power output of the generator though this surplus goes into spinning it up, raising the frequency. There are plants that can more easily vary their output which are used to manage these fluctuation and providing frequency control. A pretty new and fast one is the Hornsdale Power Reserve in Australia, based on Tesla Powerpacks which can react in milliseconds, instead of seconds and minutes.
- matthewmacleod 7y ago
  I’m not an expert - but I understand that while this is true (generator loss causes frequency to drop), this drop in frequency can in turn trigger actual “power outages” for users. Automated systems respond to sagging frequency by shedding loads - reducing the demand for power, so that the frequency can increase and a new equilibrium can be achieved. The goal is to avoid an uncontrolled cascade across the power network as demand outstrips supply; this is substantially harder to manage than a short interruption. The UK does have battery-powered frequency management services, but it looks like it was quite a large and sudden drop in generation capacity that caused this deviation, and it took several minutes before it was back to normal. Not totally sure what it was yet, but sounds like a gas turbine generator suddenly tripped, along with a nearby offshore wind farm, taking out about a gigawatt of capacity that normal frequency stabilisation couldn’t handle, resulting in load shedding.
  - noir_lord 7y ago
    Weather has been unusual as hell today, sunny one minute 50mph winds and torrential rain the next.
- Scoundreller 7y ago
  Or you could pay people to put a device on their air conditioner or water heater or car charger that’ll back-off when the frequency dips. Conservation seems way more sensible than building new and advanced capacity.
LeoPanthera 7y ago
The headline (which has since been updated on the BBC) is somewhat misleading, in that the power outage has affected a large area of the UK and is not specifically affecting transport infrastructure.
HocusLocus 7y ago
"Major power failure affects homes and transport" Is a HILARIOUS headline! In a region with many electric trains it's double-funny! In the future they'll be able to make homes levitate on electrical power (just because they can, and for views and breezes, neighborly one-upmanship etc)and power outages will have even more spectacular effects! And it will be funnier still!

69 points by zimpenfish 7y ago

cjbenedikt 7y ago

Brex-grid...;-)

ashildr 7y ago
Interestingly on a quick glance the UK does not seem to be part of the synchronized EU grid and has only a DC connection to France that provides 5% or less of the electricity used at any time. I may be wrong but the grid does not seem to be directly affected by the clusterfuck that Brexit will be.
- dijit 7y ago
  That's a very generous interpretation of the facts. We actually have lines going to Netherlands (which in turn pulls from Germany) and France, and one incoming that connects us to Norway.[0] I have friends who work in power stations up and down the country and they describe it as a "power sharing" situation, our grid feeds Netherlands and France (to a lesser extent at least), but more often we pull from them to fill our peaks. We actually have links to many countries it seems: https://blogs.platts.com/2019/01/31/uk-electricity-links-europe-multiply-even-brexit-looms/ https://blogs.platts.com/2019/01/31/uk-electricity-links-eur... [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transmission_system_operator https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transmission_system_operator
  - Reason077 7y ago
    That's right, the interconnectors are all bi-directional. They move electricity where it's needed according to market demand: when the wholesale price is higher in Britain than in (for example) France, the UK imports electricity. When the wholesale price is higher in France, which can happen during winter demand peaks as France has a lot of electric heating, the flow is reversed and the UK exports electricity.
  - ashildr 7y ago
    Thanks, your and the other replies left me better informed than before.
- Reason077 7y ago
  Britain currently has HVDC interconnectors to France (2 GW), Belgium (NemoLink, 1 GW), and Netherlands (BritNed, 1 GW), as well as 2 interconnectors with Ireland (East-West and Moyle, 500 MW each) In addition, there are at least 5 new interconnectors due to be completed by the early 2020s: 2 more to France (IFA-2 and ElecLink), 2 to Norway (North Sea Link, NorthConnect), and 1 to Denmark (Viking link).
  - blibble 7y ago
    there's several UK power stations that are legally required to run at less than full capacity due to EU's large combustion plant directive (+ other later directives) after leaving: in the event of a serious short term problem they can be spun up relatively easily until extra (better) capacity can be brought online
    - Reason077 7y ago
      All of the UK power plants that were affected by the Large Combustion Plant directive have since been closed permanently. The last one, Ironbridge, closed in November 2015. All remaining coal-fired power stations are legally required to close by 2025, but that's a UK decision, not an EU one. In reality they are being used less and less already, and most are likely to close well before 2025.
      - blibble 7y ago
        > "large combustion plant directive (>>+ other later directives<<)" the follow up directive is still very much in effect and has placed operating restrictions (mostly load and hour limits) on many UK power stations https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/industrial-emissions-directive-ied-environmental-permits-issued-2016-p-to-z https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/industrial-emissio... these can be lifted on November 1st (if required), and would radically change the economics of the UK's generation market (not that burning coal is a good thing, but it's better than rolling blackouts)
        7y ago

zimpenfish 7y ago

Given the frequent reports we get about the insecurity and fragility of the US power grid, is the UK grid as bad and is this going to be just a business-as-usual oopsie or something more sinister?

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
spazbob 7y ago
This is a pretty rare event here in the UK to my knowledge. Probably the Russians testing the latest exploit...
- mlaretallack 7y ago
  Its not often we have power outages. And when we do they usually have "understandable" reasons ( lightning etc..) And are localised. This seems different.
  - techrich 7y ago
    Brexit!
  - bobthepanda 7y ago
    It's a bit pre-emptive to start witch-hunting, though. The 2003 Northeast US/Canada blackout was caused by a race condition: https://odetocode.com/blogs/scott/archive/2004/04/11/blackouts-and-race-conditions.aspx https://odetocode.com/blogs/scott/archive/2004/04/11/blackou...
    - jcranmer 7y ago
      > The 2003 Northeast US/Canada blackout was caused by a race condition: https://odetocode.com/blogs/scott/archive/2004/04/11/blackou.. https://odetocode.com/blogs/scott/archive/2004/04/11/blackou.... No, it wasn't. The race condition caused First Energy to not notice that their energy grid was one more line trip away from catastrophic failure. But there were four line trips that day caused by power lines hitting trees and shorting, the last of which triggered the dynamic instability that caused the blackout. First Energy had a whole host of issues that together caused the blackout, and the race condition in the alarm monitoring system was but one of them. The full report is actually an interesting read. Essentially, the key problem that caused the massive cascade was that the line trips meant that large loads of power had to reroute long distances to get to the Cleveland demand area, and the non-infinitesimal amount of time it takes for the power to establish that route caused several lines to trip, to the point that the demand was cut off from the network before the supply surge reached it.

Sami_Lehtinen 7y ago

Here's some information: https://mobile.twitter.com/upsideenergy/status/1159870347618865152 https://mobile.twitter.com/upsideenergy/status/1159870347618...

z92 7y ago

I link a few old news with it : First there was a news that electric grids are hackable. And Russians might be after those. Then there was a news that White House called for some of the power transmission switches be turned manual, which are now automatic. Next there were a bunch of large and sudden power failures in large cities all over the world. And now this. Maybe there isn't a link. Just a possibility.

snambi 7y ago
oh come on. if power goes down, the it is Russians. probably old outdated powerlines are the reason.
- jazzyjackson 7y ago
  Just saying... if I was a hacker, I would hack in a way that made it look like old failing equipment
JBorrow 7y ago
More likely that the huge storm sweeping the south of england is the cause
- londons_explore 7y ago
  Imagine I were a hacker who had hacked into a big gas turbine power plant. To create maximum damage, I am going to want to time my attack within moments of another generator going down. The UK grid can tolerate one big failure, but not two at the same time. So I sit... I lie in wait... For maybe months... As soon as I see another big generator fail and cause a sudden change in frequency, then within a couple of seconds, I trigger my exploit to shut down my powerstation too. The storm might have caused one outage, and a hacker the other. Any decent hacker with this plan in mind will try to hide their tracks. They'll inject a 'glitchy' sensor reading to trigger the failure. They'll make sure all their malware auto-uninstalls itself within milliseconds of the incident, so any investigation sees a glitch in a sensor reading and can't track down the real cause.

_Microft 7y ago

There was confusion on Twitter how a frequency drop could cause a power outage. It's the other way around: loss of power/a plant leads to a drop in frequency. Here's why: Imagine a generator spinning at 50 rpm (for the sake of simplicity). Now if the load on the generator is larger than the power it can provide, it will be slowed down and the frequency goes down. If the load is lower than the power output of the generator though this surplus goes into spinning it up, raising the frequency. There are plants that can more easily vary their output which are used to manage these fluctuation and providing frequency control. A pretty new and fast one is the Hornsdale Power Reserve in Australia, based on Tesla Powerpacks which can react in milliseconds, instead of seconds and minutes.

matthewmacleod 7y ago
I’m not an expert - but I understand that while this is true (generator loss causes frequency to drop), this drop in frequency can in turn trigger actual “power outages” for users. Automated systems respond to sagging frequency by shedding loads - reducing the demand for power, so that the frequency can increase and a new equilibrium can be achieved. The goal is to avoid an uncontrolled cascade across the power network as demand outstrips supply; this is substantially harder to manage than a short interruption. The UK does have battery-powered frequency management services, but it looks like it was quite a large and sudden drop in generation capacity that caused this deviation, and it took several minutes before it was back to normal. Not totally sure what it was yet, but sounds like a gas turbine generator suddenly tripped, along with a nearby offshore wind farm, taking out about a gigawatt of capacity that normal frequency stabilisation couldn’t handle, resulting in load shedding.
- noir_lord 7y ago
  Weather has been unusual as hell today, sunny one minute 50mph winds and torrential rain the next.
Scoundreller 7y ago
Or you could pay people to put a device on their air conditioner or water heater or car charger that’ll back-off when the frequency dips. Conservation seems way more sensible than building new and advanced capacity.

LeoPanthera 7y ago

The headline (which has since been updated on the BBC) is somewhat misleading, in that the power outage has affected a large area of the UK and is not specifically affecting transport infrastructure.

HocusLocus 7y ago

"Major power failure affects homes and transport" Is a HILARIOUS headline! In a region with many electric trains it's double-funny! In the future they'll be able to make homes levitate on electrical power (just because they can, and for views and breezes, neighborly one-upmanship etc)and power outages will have even more spectacular effects! And it will be funnier still!