3 ms·

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-usua

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.
- somesortofsystm 7y ago
  Is everything going to be blamed on the Russians now? I mean, its only fair .. sure .. after all, the West has been blamed for so many fucked up things throughout recent history - the destruction of the Middle East, the failure of financial markets, the massive losses of the middle class throughout the 5-eyes nations, the grand propagation of myths and lies about WMD, and so on .. but is this really fair game? Got actual evidence that Russia is engaging in aggressive cyber-warfare? Yes? Then show it. Otherwise, please shut the fuck up with this nonsense.
  - throwaway5752 7y ago
    There's the matter of the well attributed 2016 US election interference operation, generally the hundreds of billions they spend on their military, and stuff like https://www.us-cert.gov/ncas/alerts/TA18-074A https://www.us-cert.gov/ncas/alerts/TA18-074A. There is lots of documentation of Russian state interference in the Brexit referendum that is publicly available. There long standing interest in disrupting NATO and the EU are just basic common sense.
    - somesortofsystm 7y ago
      General this, 'reports' that .. You can't keep blaming the Russians for your stupid country's HUGE, DISASTROUS mistakes. Start taking responsibility for the fact that the USA's miltiary-industrial-complex is out of control. Russia is not your problem: American oligarchs are your problem. IF Russia is doing these things, it is well deserved.
funnybeam 7y ago
Outages of this scale are pretty much unheard of in the UK
- kraigie 7y ago
  Wait until the dover-calais power grid interconnector goes down on nov 1st.
  - tgsovlerkhgsel 7y ago
    I assume you're referring to Brexit. Any indication that this would actually affect the power grid? https://www.reuters.com/article/us-britain-energy/no-deal-brexit-wouldnt-disrupt-gas-power-flows-from-europe-uk-national-grid-idUSKCN1R717Y https://www.reuters.com/article/us-britain-energy/no-deal-br...
    - isostatic 7y ago
      “UK-issued Renewable Guarantees of Origin and Guarantees of Origin for combined heat and power will no longer be recognised in the EU. If an existing contract with an EU countries’ electricity supplier or trader requires an EU-recognised Guarantee of Origin, it is possible that the contract could be compromised”
- goatinaboat 7y ago
  ... yet mysteriously, the trains are often this bad
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
matthewmacleod 7y ago
(Not an expert) The UK grid is actually pretty well maintained and resilient - and controlled power outages can actually be a positive thing in this sense. It looks like a couple of generators failed within a short period, causing a sudden loss of about a gigawatt. When the frequency drops as a result, automated systems start tripping to prevent a more widespread collapse - it’s much easier to restore power to customers who have been isolated than to recover after a more widespread collapse, like the US northeast blackout in 2003.
- makomk 7y ago
  Yeah, apparently these power outages only lasted a little under an hour for the folks affected. The big disruption came from it taking out heavily-used sections of the train network during the evening commute and the operators seemingly not having an easy way to bring those back into operation.
  - Reason077 7y ago
    The problem seems to be that individual trains have faulted and apparently cannot be restarted without a visit from an engineer. With multiple faulty trains blocking lines, nothing can move.
- poooogles 7y ago
  >The UK grid is actually pretty well maintained and resilient Also prefixed by not an expert here; but know a few in the industry and somewhat keep up with it. The push away from coal to other sources of power (combined with the closure of gigawatts of nuclear power) has put the network under more stress than it's been in the past few decades [1]. I'd expect more of this in the future in cases of multi generator failures; there just isn't that much in the way of generation to take up the slack. Luckily we're in summer where demand is much lower, if this was to happen in winter the outcomes could have been much worse. //edit - Just to be clear though, this does seem to be totally benign and could have happened to any other well equipped grid. A gigawatt of power dropping out in such a short space is going to result in some kind of load shedding. Denorwig spins up fast; but not that fast. 1. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-33527967 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-33527967
hazeii 7y ago
There have been similar reports about the UK grid for as long as I can remember (multiple decades). The squeaky wheels get the grease. As for the UK today, certainly anywhere along the South Coast was untroubled by this (including the RJ Mitchell windtunnel[0], which was quite literally a blast). [0] https://www.southampton.ac.uk/windtunnels/index.page https://www.southampton.ac.uk/windtunnels/index.page
jhoechtl 7y ago
The US power network is on 110v, this is reason enough to call it fragile opposed to the 230v in the UK
- dsfyu404ed 7y ago
  Only the last bit to your house or apartment is 110v. That doesn't make it more or less fragile, it just means you need more amps and correspondingly more wire in the final hop to the customer.
  - kalleboo 7y ago
    The difference in voltage results a real difference is in the distribution and how the phases are delivered - due to the lower voltage limiting how far it's economical to distribute the last mile, the US has many smaller transformers (those big cans on poles that catch fire sometimes), whereas Europe has fewer bigger transformer stations. Although this has the opposite effect - the 120V system is less fragile, since the points of failure are more distributed (a blown transformer will affect fewer customers). See: https://electrical-engineering-portal.com/north-american-versus-european-distribution-systems https://electrical-engineering-portal.com/north-american-ver...
- Mindless2112 7y ago
  Nominal voltage in the US is 120 volts. It hasn't been 110 volts since the 1970s. And it's still creeping upward. The average voltage at my house over the last year was 121.9 volts. https://i.imgur.com/6RMZnXd.png https://i.imgur.com/6RMZnXd.png

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.
somesortofsystm 7y ago
Is everything going to be blamed on the Russians now? I mean, its only fair .. sure .. after all, the West has been blamed for so many fucked up things throughout recent history - the destruction of the Middle East, the failure of financial markets, the massive losses of the middle class throughout the 5-eyes nations, the grand propagation of myths and lies about WMD, and so on .. but is this really fair game? Got actual evidence that Russia is engaging in aggressive cyber-warfare? Yes? Then show it. Otherwise, please shut the fuck up with this nonsense.
- throwaway5752 7y ago
  There's the matter of the well attributed 2016 US election interference operation, generally the hundreds of billions they spend on their military, and stuff like https://www.us-cert.gov/ncas/alerts/TA18-074A https://www.us-cert.gov/ncas/alerts/TA18-074A. There is lots of documentation of Russian state interference in the Brexit referendum that is publicly available. There long standing interest in disrupting NATO and the EU are just basic common sense.
  - somesortofsystm 7y ago
    General this, 'reports' that .. You can't keep blaming the Russians for your stupid country's HUGE, DISASTROUS mistakes. Start taking responsibility for the fact that the USA's miltiary-industrial-complex is out of control. Russia is not your problem: American oligarchs are your problem. IF Russia is doing these things, it is well deserved.

funnybeam 7y ago

Outages of this scale are pretty much unheard of in the UK

kraigie 7y ago
Wait until the dover-calais power grid interconnector goes down on nov 1st.
- tgsovlerkhgsel 7y ago
  I assume you're referring to Brexit. Any indication that this would actually affect the power grid? https://www.reuters.com/article/us-britain-energy/no-deal-brexit-wouldnt-disrupt-gas-power-flows-from-europe-uk-national-grid-idUSKCN1R717Y https://www.reuters.com/article/us-britain-energy/no-deal-br...
  - isostatic 7y ago
    “UK-issued Renewable Guarantees of Origin and Guarantees of Origin for combined heat and power will no longer be recognised in the EU. If an existing contract with an EU countries’ electricity supplier or trader requires an EU-recognised Guarantee of Origin, it is possible that the contract could be compromised”
goatinaboat 7y ago
... yet mysteriously, the trains are often this bad

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

matthewmacleod 7y ago

(Not an expert) The UK grid is actually pretty well maintained and resilient - and controlled power outages can actually be a positive thing in this sense. It looks like a couple of generators failed within a short period, causing a sudden loss of about a gigawatt. When the frequency drops as a result, automated systems start tripping to prevent a more widespread collapse - it’s much easier to restore power to customers who have been isolated than to recover after a more widespread collapse, like the US northeast blackout in 2003.

makomk 7y ago
Yeah, apparently these power outages only lasted a little under an hour for the folks affected. The big disruption came from it taking out heavily-used sections of the train network during the evening commute and the operators seemingly not having an easy way to bring those back into operation.
- Reason077 7y ago
  The problem seems to be that individual trains have faulted and apparently cannot be restarted without a visit from an engineer. With multiple faulty trains blocking lines, nothing can move.
poooogles 7y ago
>The UK grid is actually pretty well maintained and resilient Also prefixed by not an expert here; but know a few in the industry and somewhat keep up with it. The push away from coal to other sources of power (combined with the closure of gigawatts of nuclear power) has put the network under more stress than it's been in the past few decades [1]. I'd expect more of this in the future in cases of multi generator failures; there just isn't that much in the way of generation to take up the slack. Luckily we're in summer where demand is much lower, if this was to happen in winter the outcomes could have been much worse. //edit - Just to be clear though, this does seem to be totally benign and could have happened to any other well equipped grid. A gigawatt of power dropping out in such a short space is going to result in some kind of load shedding. Denorwig spins up fast; but not that fast. 1. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-33527967 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-33527967

hazeii 7y ago

There have been similar reports about the UK grid for as long as I can remember (multiple decades). The squeaky wheels get the grease. As for the UK today, certainly anywhere along the South Coast was untroubled by this (including the RJ Mitchell windtunnel[0], which was quite literally a blast). [0] https://www.southampton.ac.uk/windtunnels/index.page https://www.southampton.ac.uk/windtunnels/index.page

jhoechtl 7y ago

The US power network is on 110v, this is reason enough to call it fragile opposed to the 230v in the UK

dsfyu404ed 7y ago
Only the last bit to your house or apartment is 110v. That doesn't make it more or less fragile, it just means you need more amps and correspondingly more wire in the final hop to the customer.
- kalleboo 7y ago
  The difference in voltage results a real difference is in the distribution and how the phases are delivered - due to the lower voltage limiting how far it's economical to distribute the last mile, the US has many smaller transformers (those big cans on poles that catch fire sometimes), whereas Europe has fewer bigger transformer stations. Although this has the opposite effect - the 120V system is less fragile, since the points of failure are more distributed (a blown transformer will affect fewer customers). See: https://electrical-engineering-portal.com/north-american-versus-european-distribution-systems https://electrical-engineering-portal.com/north-american-ver...
Mindless2112 7y ago
Nominal voltage in the US is 120 volts. It hasn't been 110 volts since the 1970s. And it's still creeping upward. The average voltage at my house over the last year was 121.9 volts. https://i.imgur.com/6RMZnXd.png https://i.imgur.com/6RMZnXd.png