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The Baltic states are reconfiguring their electric grids

135 points by sohkamyung 6y ago

082349872349872 6y ago
Interesting that the US grid is not national, according to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Wide_area_synchronous_grid_(Eurasia,_Mediterranean).png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Wide_area_synchronous_gri... Am I misunderstanding "synchronous"? Would it really be possible to mis-frequency only part of the IPS/UPS grid without bricking the rest?
- brudgers 6y ago
  Combined, the Baltic States are about 67k square miles. This is smaller than Missouri. Smaller than nearly half of the US states. Alaska by itself is ten times their area. And though you might say, "but that's Alaska" that's exactly why comparing the US to European nations at the national level is usually a category error. Individually, the Baltics would rank in the smallest ten if they were US states. Or to put it another way, for things like utility grids and high speed rail, a national level system in the US is comparable to a pan-european system that includes everything from Lisbon, to Oslo, to Bucharest and Belgrade and Istambul.
  - sitharus 6y ago
    > Or to put it another way, for things like utility grids and high speed rail, a national level system in the US is comparable to a pan-european system that includes everything from Lisbon, to Oslo, to Bucharest and Belgrade and Istambul. Which is exactly what exists, and what the Baltic states are joining: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synchronous_grid_of_Continental_Europe https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synchronous_grid_of_Continen... It doesn't go as far north as Oslo, but does include Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
  - sandworm101 6y ago
    >> Smaller than nearly half of the US states. Alaska by itself is ten times their area. I wonder if there is something between those states, maybe some sort of land bridge linking Alaska to the more southern states? The north american grid is very multinational, with the US generally a net importer of Canadian power, especially in the east. Except texas. They are weird. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:NERC-map-en.svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:NERC-map-en.svg (And be careful when talking about the size of US states. Americans don't like being reminded how small they are.)
    - jcranmer 6y ago
      Functionally speaking, the infrastructure of Canada doesn't really expand into the northern territories. The Alaska Highway was only built as an emergency measure during WW2; without it, there'd be no infrastructure connection between (non-panhandle) Alaska and British Columbia, or even much of the Yukon and British Columbia. > (And be careful when talking about the size of US states. Americans don't like being reminded how small they are.) The US actually has slightly more land area than Canada, as a larger fraction of Canada's area is large lakes such as Lake Winnipeg, Lake Manitoba, Great Slave Lake, etc.
      - sandworm101 6y ago
        Canada has built many highways since WWII, including a second, straighter, highway through the yukon to alaska. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9b/Roads-Canada-frame.png https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9b/Roads-Ca... The alaska panhandle and BC coast are a series of islands not suitable for highways, or power lines, or much else. As a practical matter, it isn't really connected to canada. Much of it is effectively more remote than canada's northern territories.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
- senkora 6y ago
  This is considered a feature, because having multiple independent systems reduces the probability of a complete failure. IIRC, some national security-sensitive facilities are duplicated on two grids. The really weird thing is that Texas has its own grid. Especially since electricity is significantly cheaper on the Texas grid than on the other two.
  - HarryHirsch 6y ago
    Isn't it that chokepoints are what causes failures in the electric grid, not general connectedness? If you are looking at security holes in control equipment it doesn't matter of you are connected to a grid, when you've got the NSA/KGB/Chinese Ministry of State Security inside your generating station you've lost anyway.
    - khuey 6y ago
      Failures can cascade across the grid. A software bug in an Ohio utility's computers in 2003 ultimately took out power for 55 million people in several US states and the province of Ontario. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northeast_blackout_of_2003 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northeast_blackout_of_2003 If you have sites in multiple grids you're guaranteed that one failure doesn't take down every site.
      - generatorguy 6y ago
        Never heard it was a software bug? Lack of maintenance allowed tree branches to grow under transmission lines which sag the hotter they get and so on a hot summer day with record system loads one transmission line tripping caused a cascading outage. Read the Wikipedia page, sure the system operators in MISO didn’t get some alarms but blaming the whole thing on that is pretty lame. There were multiple causes and not Getting alarms was just one of 10 things that went wrong.
  - gameswithgo 6y ago
    we do what we want! which is wind power somehow
- etimberg 6y ago
  Yes, North America is not a single synchronous grid. All of it operates at 60Hz, but interconnections between the regions are done using either HVDC or VFTs because electrical signals from both regions would not be in-phase (i.e. have synchronized peaks) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_Interconnection https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_Interconnection has details on how the Western Interconnection works.
  - Gibbon1 6y ago
    I wonder what the actual advantage of a synchronous grid is.
    - PeterisP 6y ago
      You can transfer power from one side to another without the extra hardware expense and losses that a HVDC connection imposes.
    - wiml 6y ago
      Non-synchronous interconnects are more expensive, inefficient, and complex than synchronous ones.
    - avianlyric 6y ago
      Historically cost. Building a non-synchronous grid is much harder because you need equipment that can correct for phase differences in your grid. This equipment used to be very large and very expensive, Mercury-arc valves are some of equipment that used to be used (they provide AC to DC conversion) [1]. But modern power electronics are so cheap and efficient that High Voltage DC transmission lines are becoming increasingly common, driven by the fact the High Voltage DC is more energy efficient that High Voltage AC (you can push more power down the same cable, with less energy lost to resistive loads because DC doesn't suffer from the skin effect [2]). With more High Voltage DC transmissions lines it becomes easier to run non-synchronous grids, because the DC transmissions acts as natural breaks between synchronous grids. Running a non-synchronous grid tends to be a little easier because you no longer need to worry about strange phase variances caused by multiple transmission lines of different lengths injecting phase delays into your network. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercury-arc_valve https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercury-arc_valve [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skin_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skin_effect
- nippoo 6y ago
  The (very real [1]) risk is that the Russians could disconnect the Baltic states from IPS/UPS, forcing them to operate autonomously, at a time of high demand and low local power generation. This could rapidly (within seconds) cause a grid-wise blackout which could take days to recover from - you have to do what's called a "black start" [2] to restore service - which is technically quite challenging. [1] https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/38632048.pdf https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/38632048.pdf [2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_start https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_start
  - toomuchtodo 6y ago
    Importantly, from your first citation: > The present report gives an insight in the ability of the Baltic States to operate their electricity systems independently of the neighbouring countries. The results show that by 2020 and 2030 the dependency of the Baltic States on the outside generation resources is fairly low, following current electricity system development trends. Consequently, if one were to desire to disempower Russia and Belarus, you’d increase funding to the Baltic states to allow them a more rapid transition to robust electrical grids (through transmission, generation, and interconnector upgrades). The Baltics could always get more power from Finland and Sweden and disconnect entirely from Russia and Belarus if necessary.
    - Strom 6y ago
      > The Baltics could always get more power from Finland and Sweden and disconnect entirely from Russia and Belarus if necessary. Estonia has been a net exporter of electricity since 2017. [1] Amusingly one of the export targets is Russia. Looking at the current live data [2] it looks like Latvia is in a similar situation, although I haven't searched for yearly statistics. Lithuania is a net importer though, but that's largely due to major restructuring of its electricity system. Specifically because a condition of Lithuania joining the EU was that it has to shut down its nuclear power plants. If those plants were still running then Lithuania would be a big exporter, because the plants were built during Soviet times with the idea of powering a bunch of the neighboring coutries as well. [3][4] -- [1] https://majandus24.postimees.ee/6738108/energiasoltumatus-on-ajalugu-eestist-sai-elektri-netoimportija https://majandus24.postimees.ee/6738108/energiasoltumatus-on... [2] https://www.electricitymap.org/zone/LV https://www.electricitymap.org/zone/LV [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_energy_in_Lithuania https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_energy_in_Lithuania [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ignalina_Nuclear_Power_Plant https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ignalina_Nuclear_Power_Plant
nippoo 6y ago
Another interesting recent reminder of the interconnectedness of politics and electricity grids happened a couple of years ago, when all of Europe's frequency (and lots of grid-synced clocks) went out of spec because of a Kosovo/Serbian spat: https://www.theverge.com/2018/3/8/17095440/europe-clocks-running-slow-electricity-frequency-kosovo-serbia https://www.theverge.com/2018/3/8/17095440/europe-clocks-run...
- rosstex 6y ago
  This is so cool! Incoming rabbit hole of electric grid research...
- _nalply 6y ago
  Interesting. I don't understand everything so I have a question to the experts here: It seems that a small part of Kosovo stopped paying for electricity, so the electricity producers stopped producing for the parts. However this didn't work out, electricity still flowed to the nonpayants, because it seems that nobody cut the wires. This created an inbalance distorting the grid frequency, such that clocks in Europe ran a bit late (6 minutes). Sort of an Europe-wide soft brown-out. It's not told in the article, but I think the voltage was also a bit lower than it should be. Did I understand this correctly?
  - probablypower 6y ago
    It is pretty much right. Neither country took responsibility for the demand (X), and so the market wasn't aware of the demand, and therefore the generation provided by the market was lacking X. When there is more energy being taken out of the grid than being provided, generators start to slow down. That is, the power is extracted from their rotational energy (inertia), meaning their rotational speed slows down (frequency decreases). There are mechanisms in place that fix any frequency deviations, but the assumption is that deviations in frequency are symmetrically distributed around 50 Hz (or 60 Hz for you americans). When you have consistently skewed errors (i.e. frequency always being pulled down by Kosovo), you end up with a 'time error' [0]. The time error was noticed fairly quickly (frequency and analogs to 'time error' are monitored in control rooms), but the issue was that no-one took responsibility for it and because it became a political issue it was difficult for other grid operators to step in and fix it. I'm not sure about voltage being lower in this case. Voltage is a very local phenomena, and it would be very unusual for control rooms to allow voltages to be 'lower than they should be', especially over a considerable time period. To do so they would be in violation of their grid codes. [0] https://www.nerc.com/docs/oc/rs/NERC%20Balancing%20and%20Frequency%20Control%20040520111.pdf https://www.nerc.com/docs/oc/rs/NERC%20Balancing%20and%20Fre...
blendergeek 6y ago
Just a question: Why does demand exceeding supply cause the frequency to drop? In my mind it should cause the voltage to drop? If this question is too long to answer on HN, are there any good resources that explain this?
- blendergeek 6y ago
  Well, if anyone sees my comment, I found some (I think) great answers on Reddit. So if anyone else has the same question here is (as far as my non-electrical engineer mind can tell) some great answers. https://old.reddit.com/r/AskEngineers/comments/1tnbob/why_does_the_frequency_drop_when_demand_increases/ https://old.reddit.com/r/AskEngineers/comments/1tnbob/why_do...
- i_am_proteus 6y ago
  This is a gross simplification but hopefully makes sense: Grids using multiple generators use "frequency droop," deliberately governing the generators so that as power goes up, frequency goes down. This makes it easier to load-balance between generators connected in parallel. If one generator were to be "overloaded," its frequency would go down, increasing power output from other generators. When connecting a new machine, it's frequency is typically slightly higher than the grid; after it is connected it "assumes" some load and its frequency drops to match the grid's frequency. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Droop_speed_control https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Droop_speed_control
  - anamexis 6y ago
    And to simplify even more: Generators are just spinning magnets. When load goes up, magnetic resistance goes up, so given the same input mechanical power, the spinning will slow down.
    - xattt 6y ago
      A coal power plant in Thunder Bay, Ontario used to drive an otherwise decommissioned generator for the sake of having inertial mass to stabilize the frequency of the local supply. I would imagine this is common practice in power generation in general.
mcswell 6y ago
I couldn't read most of the original article because paywall. This https://www.onlinefinancenews.com/why-the-baltic-states-are-reconfiguring-their-electric-grids/ https://www.onlinefinancenews.com/why-the-baltic-states-are-... is not behind a paywall. It also seems to be (machine?) translated.
- oseityphelysiol 6y ago
  The Economist paywall can be bypassed by disabling Javascript on the browser. They used to have a limited number of articles you could read per week for free, but it looks like that's not the case anymore. It's really a shame because their journalism is really high quality, but I guess they do have to pay for it somehow.
vermilingua 6y ago
This reminded me of the very interesting (to me) report and discussion on the failure of the UK national grid last August: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20973513 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20973513
jve 6y ago
> A giant outage in Latvia on June ninth concentrated minds "Giant" per what definition? It happened because of damaged isolation for 330kV line and automatics just shut it off. It also brought overflow within 110kV line affecting 160k people in capital and around it. Communications was affected (apparantly they didnt test their energy backup systems), traffic, homes. Diesel generators were put to work where needed. Our datacenter was up and running, being backed up by other electricity lines and diesel. Yeah, a MAJOR outage, but in LESS than 2 hours everything was restored. Nothing to do with frequency. Why even mention it and try to associate with Russia?
- rzmnzm 6y ago
  Sharing a land border with Russia also tends to concentrate minds
- the-dude 6y ago
  Russia is an enormous threat to Western civilization, haven't you heard? /s
  - Stierlitz 6y ago
    >> Nothing to do with frequency. Why even mention it and try to associate with Russia? > Russia is an enormous threat to Western civilization, haven't you heard? /s Merely yet more anti-russian neocon propaganda, who are nostalgic for the cold war. It's the $insert_one_of: Chinese, Russian, North Korean, Iranian hackers who took down the electric grid, hacked hospitals etc.
    - M2Ys4U 6y ago
      It's not like Russian agents go around attacking The West, doing things like interfering in elections or launching chemical warfare in Western nations is it? Oh, wait, yes - that's exactly what they've done.
      - zwww 6y ago
        Chemical warfare?
blargmaster33 6y ago
"But look closer, and the switch is part of a contest that pits democratic Europe against autocratic Russia and its tinpot ally Belarus." I wish we had objective need where snipes like this was not done.
ur-whale 6y ago
http://archive.is/B1Qx8 http://archive.is/B1Qx8
JackPoach 6y ago
This article is completely off point. The three Baltic states have inherited Soviet power system and back then they produced more power than they needed and they were net power exporters. However, in order to join the EU, they had to comply with very strict environmental regulations. For instance, Lithuania had to shut down Ignalina nuclear power plant, this was a required condition from the EU or Lithuania wouldn't be able to join the Union. Last year Estonia had to decommission their shale plants (yes, they used to burn shale) due to CO2. In order to get power from somewhere, a series of interconnectors were built, with Sweden and Finland (which is funny, 40% of Sweden's power comes from nuclear) and those interconnectors had 16 outages within a very short period of time, which happens when you build new grids, you need to work all kinks out. As the result of this, the price of power in the Baltic states increases by about 30% each year. So, this is the background story that you need to understand before reading the article. If you first destroy your power generation capacity and become depended on imports - yeah, you become vulnerable. Excess capacity is unprofitable BUT it's much safer to have it. Right now excess capacity for the Balitc states is Russia and they want to change it to the EU. But physics doesn't care about your political views. It's always smart to have internal excess capacity rather than depend on outside parties.
- probablypower 6y ago
  Your post is mostly right. I haven't read the article itself (paywall) but I already knew about this particular issue through work. You've touched on a lot of the "pull" factors that cause the Baltic states to connect to the EU. There are however a few geopolitical "push" factors that cause Baltic states (particularly Lithuania) from staying dependent upon connections to Russia. The Lithuanian grid has been able to rely on energy from Russia due to the Kaliningrad enclave being dependent upon the Lithuanian grid. Russia has recently been making investments into making Kaliningrad energy independent. If this is achieved, Russia no longer has a vested interest in the security of the Lithuanian grid. Given the history of alleged Russian sabotage of Lithuanian infrastructure (other than electrical), there is considerable fear that once Kaliningrad is energy independent that Russia may sabotage the Lithuanian grid. Therefore Lithuania is rushing to connect to the EU grid before Kaliningrad achieves self-sufficiency.
- 6y ago
oseityphelysiol 6y ago
Another thing that's not mentioned in the article is the Astravets nuclear power plant in Belarus, which is largely subsidized by Russian funds and is seen as a political maneuver by Russia to threaten Lithuanian sovereignty. Lithuanian energy situation has been an issue ever since the closing Ignalina nuclear power plant as a condition of joining the European union. There were plans to build a new modern nuclear plant in its place, but it has been canceled, largely as a consequence of the 2008 financial crisis. The Astravets power plant is seen as a way to force Lithuania to buy cheap electricity from Belarus and keep close ties to the Russian sphere of influence. It's choice of location is largely questionable, being built just 50km from Vilnius, the capital of Lithuania. The power plant is set to start generating electricity sometime this year and Lithuania is looking to reconfigure its power grid in time to boycott it.

135 points by sohkamyung 6y ago

Interesting that the US grid is not national, according to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Wide_area_synchronous_grid_(Eurasia,_Mediterranean).png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Wide_area_synchronous_gri... Am I misunderstanding "synchronous"? Would it really be possible to mis-frequency only part of the IPS/UPS grid without bricking the rest?

brudgers 6y ago
Combined, the Baltic States are about 67k square miles. This is smaller than Missouri. Smaller than nearly half of the US states. Alaska by itself is ten times their area. And though you might say, "but that's Alaska" that's exactly why comparing the US to European nations at the national level is usually a category error. Individually, the Baltics would rank in the smallest ten if they were US states. Or to put it another way, for things like utility grids and high speed rail, a national level system in the US is comparable to a pan-european system that includes everything from Lisbon, to Oslo, to Bucharest and Belgrade and Istambul.
- sitharus 6y ago
  > Or to put it another way, for things like utility grids and high speed rail, a national level system in the US is comparable to a pan-european system that includes everything from Lisbon, to Oslo, to Bucharest and Belgrade and Istambul. Which is exactly what exists, and what the Baltic states are joining: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synchronous_grid_of_Continental_Europe https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synchronous_grid_of_Continen... It doesn't go as far north as Oslo, but does include Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
- sandworm101 6y ago
  >> Smaller than nearly half of the US states. Alaska by itself is ten times their area. I wonder if there is something between those states, maybe some sort of land bridge linking Alaska to the more southern states? The north american grid is very multinational, with the US generally a net importer of Canadian power, especially in the east. Except texas. They are weird. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:NERC-map-en.svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:NERC-map-en.svg (And be careful when talking about the size of US states. Americans don't like being reminded how small they are.)
  - jcranmer 6y ago
    Functionally speaking, the infrastructure of Canada doesn't really expand into the northern territories. The Alaska Highway was only built as an emergency measure during WW2; without it, there'd be no infrastructure connection between (non-panhandle) Alaska and British Columbia, or even much of the Yukon and British Columbia. > (And be careful when talking about the size of US states. Americans don't like being reminded how small they are.) The US actually has slightly more land area than Canada, as a larger fraction of Canada's area is large lakes such as Lake Winnipeg, Lake Manitoba, Great Slave Lake, etc.
    - sandworm101 6y ago
      Canada has built many highways since WWII, including a second, straighter, highway through the yukon to alaska. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9b/Roads-Canada-frame.png https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9b/Roads-Ca... The alaska panhandle and BC coast are a series of islands not suitable for highways, or power lines, or much else. As a practical matter, it isn't really connected to canada. Much of it is effectively more remote than canada's northern territories.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
senkora 6y ago
This is considered a feature, because having multiple independent systems reduces the probability of a complete failure. IIRC, some national security-sensitive facilities are duplicated on two grids. The really weird thing is that Texas has its own grid. Especially since electricity is significantly cheaper on the Texas grid than on the other two.
- HarryHirsch 6y ago
  Isn't it that chokepoints are what causes failures in the electric grid, not general connectedness? If you are looking at security holes in control equipment it doesn't matter of you are connected to a grid, when you've got the NSA/KGB/Chinese Ministry of State Security inside your generating station you've lost anyway.
  - khuey 6y ago
    Failures can cascade across the grid. A software bug in an Ohio utility's computers in 2003 ultimately took out power for 55 million people in several US states and the province of Ontario. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northeast_blackout_of_2003 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northeast_blackout_of_2003 If you have sites in multiple grids you're guaranteed that one failure doesn't take down every site.
    - generatorguy 6y ago
      Never heard it was a software bug? Lack of maintenance allowed tree branches to grow under transmission lines which sag the hotter they get and so on a hot summer day with record system loads one transmission line tripping caused a cascading outage. Read the Wikipedia page, sure the system operators in MISO didn’t get some alarms but blaming the whole thing on that is pretty lame. There were multiple causes and not Getting alarms was just one of 10 things that went wrong.
- gameswithgo 6y ago
  we do what we want! which is wind power somehow
etimberg 6y ago
Yes, North America is not a single synchronous grid. All of it operates at 60Hz, but interconnections between the regions are done using either HVDC or VFTs because electrical signals from both regions would not be in-phase (i.e. have synchronized peaks) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_Interconnection https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_Interconnection has details on how the Western Interconnection works.
- Gibbon1 6y ago
  I wonder what the actual advantage of a synchronous grid is.
  - PeterisP 6y ago
    You can transfer power from one side to another without the extra hardware expense and losses that a HVDC connection imposes.
  - wiml 6y ago
    Non-synchronous interconnects are more expensive, inefficient, and complex than synchronous ones.
  - avianlyric 6y ago
    Historically cost. Building a non-synchronous grid is much harder because you need equipment that can correct for phase differences in your grid. This equipment used to be very large and very expensive, Mercury-arc valves are some of equipment that used to be used (they provide AC to DC conversion) [1]. But modern power electronics are so cheap and efficient that High Voltage DC transmission lines are becoming increasingly common, driven by the fact the High Voltage DC is more energy efficient that High Voltage AC (you can push more power down the same cable, with less energy lost to resistive loads because DC doesn't suffer from the skin effect [2]). With more High Voltage DC transmissions lines it becomes easier to run non-synchronous grids, because the DC transmissions acts as natural breaks between synchronous grids. Running a non-synchronous grid tends to be a little easier because you no longer need to worry about strange phase variances caused by multiple transmission lines of different lengths injecting phase delays into your network. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercury-arc_valve https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercury-arc_valve [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skin_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skin_effect
nippoo 6y ago
The (very real [1]) risk is that the Russians could disconnect the Baltic states from IPS/UPS, forcing them to operate autonomously, at a time of high demand and low local power generation. This could rapidly (within seconds) cause a grid-wise blackout which could take days to recover from - you have to do what's called a "black start" [2] to restore service - which is technically quite challenging. [1] https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/38632048.pdf https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/38632048.pdf [2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_start https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_start
- toomuchtodo 6y ago
  Importantly, from your first citation: > The present report gives an insight in the ability of the Baltic States to operate their electricity systems independently of the neighbouring countries. The results show that by 2020 and 2030 the dependency of the Baltic States on the outside generation resources is fairly low, following current electricity system development trends. Consequently, if one were to desire to disempower Russia and Belarus, you’d increase funding to the Baltic states to allow them a more rapid transition to robust electrical grids (through transmission, generation, and interconnector upgrades). The Baltics could always get more power from Finland and Sweden and disconnect entirely from Russia and Belarus if necessary.
  - Strom 6y ago
    > The Baltics could always get more power from Finland and Sweden and disconnect entirely from Russia and Belarus if necessary. Estonia has been a net exporter of electricity since 2017. [1] Amusingly one of the export targets is Russia. Looking at the current live data [2] it looks like Latvia is in a similar situation, although I haven't searched for yearly statistics. Lithuania is a net importer though, but that's largely due to major restructuring of its electricity system. Specifically because a condition of Lithuania joining the EU was that it has to shut down its nuclear power plants. If those plants were still running then Lithuania would be a big exporter, because the plants were built during Soviet times with the idea of powering a bunch of the neighboring coutries as well. [3][4] -- [1] https://majandus24.postimees.ee/6738108/energiasoltumatus-on-ajalugu-eestist-sai-elektri-netoimportija https://majandus24.postimees.ee/6738108/energiasoltumatus-on... [2] https://www.electricitymap.org/zone/LV https://www.electricitymap.org/zone/LV [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_energy_in_Lithuania https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_energy_in_Lithuania [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ignalina_Nuclear_Power_Plant https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ignalina_Nuclear_Power_Plant

nippoo 6y ago

Another interesting recent reminder of the interconnectedness of politics and electricity grids happened a couple of years ago, when all of Europe's frequency (and lots of grid-synced clocks) went out of spec because of a Kosovo/Serbian spat: https://www.theverge.com/2018/3/8/17095440/europe-clocks-running-slow-electricity-frequency-kosovo-serbia https://www.theverge.com/2018/3/8/17095440/europe-clocks-run...

rosstex 6y ago
This is so cool! Incoming rabbit hole of electric grid research...
_nalply 6y ago
Interesting. I don't understand everything so I have a question to the experts here: It seems that a small part of Kosovo stopped paying for electricity, so the electricity producers stopped producing for the parts. However this didn't work out, electricity still flowed to the nonpayants, because it seems that nobody cut the wires. This created an inbalance distorting the grid frequency, such that clocks in Europe ran a bit late (6 minutes). Sort of an Europe-wide soft brown-out. It's not told in the article, but I think the voltage was also a bit lower than it should be. Did I understand this correctly?
- probablypower 6y ago
  It is pretty much right. Neither country took responsibility for the demand (X), and so the market wasn't aware of the demand, and therefore the generation provided by the market was lacking X. When there is more energy being taken out of the grid than being provided, generators start to slow down. That is, the power is extracted from their rotational energy (inertia), meaning their rotational speed slows down (frequency decreases). There are mechanisms in place that fix any frequency deviations, but the assumption is that deviations in frequency are symmetrically distributed around 50 Hz (or 60 Hz for you americans). When you have consistently skewed errors (i.e. frequency always being pulled down by Kosovo), you end up with a 'time error' [0]. The time error was noticed fairly quickly (frequency and analogs to 'time error' are monitored in control rooms), but the issue was that no-one took responsibility for it and because it became a political issue it was difficult for other grid operators to step in and fix it. I'm not sure about voltage being lower in this case. Voltage is a very local phenomena, and it would be very unusual for control rooms to allow voltages to be 'lower than they should be', especially over a considerable time period. To do so they would be in violation of their grid codes. [0] https://www.nerc.com/docs/oc/rs/NERC%20Balancing%20and%20Frequency%20Control%20040520111.pdf https://www.nerc.com/docs/oc/rs/NERC%20Balancing%20and%20Fre...

blendergeek 6y ago

Just a question: Why does demand exceeding supply cause the frequency to drop? In my mind it should cause the voltage to drop? If this question is too long to answer on HN, are there any good resources that explain this?

blendergeek 6y ago
Well, if anyone sees my comment, I found some (I think) great answers on Reddit. So if anyone else has the same question here is (as far as my non-electrical engineer mind can tell) some great answers. https://old.reddit.com/r/AskEngineers/comments/1tnbob/why_does_the_frequency_drop_when_demand_increases/ https://old.reddit.com/r/AskEngineers/comments/1tnbob/why_do...
i_am_proteus 6y ago
This is a gross simplification but hopefully makes sense: Grids using multiple generators use "frequency droop," deliberately governing the generators so that as power goes up, frequency goes down. This makes it easier to load-balance between generators connected in parallel. If one generator were to be "overloaded," its frequency would go down, increasing power output from other generators. When connecting a new machine, it's frequency is typically slightly higher than the grid; after it is connected it "assumes" some load and its frequency drops to match the grid's frequency. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Droop_speed_control https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Droop_speed_control
- anamexis 6y ago
  And to simplify even more: Generators are just spinning magnets. When load goes up, magnetic resistance goes up, so given the same input mechanical power, the spinning will slow down.
  - xattt 6y ago
    A coal power plant in Thunder Bay, Ontario used to drive an otherwise decommissioned generator for the sake of having inertial mass to stabilize the frequency of the local supply. I would imagine this is common practice in power generation in general.

mcswell 6y ago

I couldn't read most of the original article because paywall. This https://www.onlinefinancenews.com/why-the-baltic-states-are-reconfiguring-their-electric-grids/ https://www.onlinefinancenews.com/why-the-baltic-states-are-... is not behind a paywall. It also seems to be (machine?) translated.

oseityphelysiol 6y ago
The Economist paywall can be bypassed by disabling Javascript on the browser. They used to have a limited number of articles you could read per week for free, but it looks like that's not the case anymore. It's really a shame because their journalism is really high quality, but I guess they do have to pay for it somehow.

vermilingua 6y ago

This reminded me of the very interesting (to me) report and discussion on the failure of the UK national grid last August: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20973513 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20973513

jve 6y ago

> A giant outage in Latvia on June ninth concentrated minds "Giant" per what definition? It happened because of damaged isolation for 330kV line and automatics just shut it off. It also brought overflow within 110kV line affecting 160k people in capital and around it. Communications was affected (apparantly they didnt test their energy backup systems), traffic, homes. Diesel generators were put to work where needed. Our datacenter was up and running, being backed up by other electricity lines and diesel. Yeah, a MAJOR outage, but in LESS than 2 hours everything was restored. Nothing to do with frequency. Why even mention it and try to associate with Russia?

rzmnzm 6y ago
Sharing a land border with Russia also tends to concentrate minds
the-dude 6y ago
Russia is an enormous threat to Western civilization, haven't you heard? /s
- Stierlitz 6y ago
  >> Nothing to do with frequency. Why even mention it and try to associate with Russia? > Russia is an enormous threat to Western civilization, haven't you heard? /s Merely yet more anti-russian neocon propaganda, who are nostalgic for the cold war. It's the $insert_one_of: Chinese, Russian, North Korean, Iranian hackers who took down the electric grid, hacked hospitals etc.
  - M2Ys4U 6y ago
    It's not like Russian agents go around attacking The West, doing things like interfering in elections or launching chemical warfare in Western nations is it? Oh, wait, yes - that's exactly what they've done.
    - zwww 6y ago
      Chemical warfare?

blargmaster33 6y ago

"But look closer, and the switch is part of a contest that pits democratic Europe against autocratic Russia and its tinpot ally Belarus." I wish we had objective need where snipes like this was not done.

ur-whale 6y ago

http://archive.is/B1Qx8 http://archive.is/B1Qx8

JackPoach 6y ago

This article is completely off point. The three Baltic states have inherited Soviet power system and back then they produced more power than they needed and they were net power exporters. However, in order to join the EU, they had to comply with very strict environmental regulations. For instance, Lithuania had to shut down Ignalina nuclear power plant, this was a required condition from the EU or Lithuania wouldn't be able to join the Union. Last year Estonia had to decommission their shale plants (yes, they used to burn shale) due to CO2. In order to get power from somewhere, a series of interconnectors were built, with Sweden and Finland (which is funny, 40% of Sweden's power comes from nuclear) and those interconnectors had 16 outages within a very short period of time, which happens when you build new grids, you need to work all kinks out. As the result of this, the price of power in the Baltic states increases by about 30% each year. So, this is the background story that you need to understand before reading the article. If you first destroy your power generation capacity and become depended on imports - yeah, you become vulnerable. Excess capacity is unprofitable BUT it's much safer to have it. Right now excess capacity for the Balitc states is Russia and they want to change it to the EU. But physics doesn't care about your political views. It's always smart to have internal excess capacity rather than depend on outside parties.

probablypower 6y ago
Your post is mostly right. I haven't read the article itself (paywall) but I already knew about this particular issue through work. You've touched on a lot of the "pull" factors that cause the Baltic states to connect to the EU. There are however a few geopolitical "push" factors that cause Baltic states (particularly Lithuania) from staying dependent upon connections to Russia. The Lithuanian grid has been able to rely on energy from Russia due to the Kaliningrad enclave being dependent upon the Lithuanian grid. Russia has recently been making investments into making Kaliningrad energy independent. If this is achieved, Russia no longer has a vested interest in the security of the Lithuanian grid. Given the history of alleged Russian sabotage of Lithuanian infrastructure (other than electrical), there is considerable fear that once Kaliningrad is energy independent that Russia may sabotage the Lithuanian grid. Therefore Lithuania is rushing to connect to the EU grid before Kaliningrad achieves self-sufficiency.
6y ago

oseityphelysiol 6y ago

Another thing that's not mentioned in the article is the Astravets nuclear power plant in Belarus, which is largely subsidized by Russian funds and is seen as a political maneuver by Russia to threaten Lithuanian sovereignty. Lithuanian energy situation has been an issue ever since the closing Ignalina nuclear power plant as a condition of joining the European union. There were plans to build a new modern nuclear plant in its place, but it has been canceled, largely as a consequence of the 2008 financial crisis. The Astravets power plant is seen as a way to force Lithuania to buy cheap electricity from Belarus and keep close ties to the Russian sphere of influence. It's choice of location is largely questionable, being built just 50km from Vilnius, the capital of Lithuania. The power plant is set to start generating electricity sometime this year and Lithuania is looking to reconfigure its power grid in time to boycott it.