3 ms·

Right, I mean physically what is happening that causes that.

by defen 6y ago

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
ihsw 6y ago
The grid is a mesh network that self-balances -- eg: electricity automatically routes around damage. It's great when things work well (supply > demand) but if things go sideways then there can (and there has been) cascading failures. These failures are by design -- if too much electricity is routed through a given section of the grid then those sections will (for example) get too hot and surrounding materials (eg: plastic, wood, debris) will catch fire. Intentionally designing your equipment to fail in a non-catastrophic way is a sensible precaution. That said, the "seconds away from system-wide catastrophic failure" message could be (and probably should be) parsed as "long-standing cost-cutting measures made things go from bad to catastrophe rather than bad to worse." Sensible upgrades were skipped over (because those cost money), due diligence was not done (because that costs money), safety standards were lowered (because that saves money), etc etc etc. The argument that this was a Black Swan event is weak because the government should do its planning on multi-decade-long timescales, which should account for Black Swan events. The entire premise behind Texas having its own power grid was that being beholden to the West Coast/East Coast electrical grid dichotomy was to guard against a Black Swan event (civil war) -- this flies in the face of that rationale.
tibbydudeza 6y ago
My understanding is the entire grid needs to be at a stable frequency of either 50 or 60 Hz (affected by demand) , if a generator goes out of sync/phase you are going have major trouble. Bringing up a grid from scratch from a total blackout scenario is such a time consuming process so you rather throw consumers off with no warning even in the coldest winter imaginable.
- ldbooth 6y ago
  I was scratching my head too. It's also a broad statement to cover who knows what but I read "ground faults" while getting our tinker on. Agree the frequency and voltage would drop out of phase tolerance. That shouldnt cause fires unless there's a spinning resource that fails. The sudden availability or lack of power would create imbalances across the grid, frankly I don't think they know what would break. Might also drop one circuit and accidentally overload another, there's lots of failure points so they just broad stroke it.
  - tibbydudeza 6y ago
    Yep lot's of failure points due to the cold weather that affected a nuclear power plant (faulty sensors in the inflow tripped it into safe mode and took it off the grid) , the natural gas wells (water vapour in the gas freezes) and the infamous wind turbines (no heating/anti-freeze). The problem was they could not import power from the Western grid (little interconnect capability for political reasons) and meanwhile El Paso and some border counties is humming right along because they are tied to the Western grid and not ERCOT.
yabones 6y ago
There's a few factors that could lead to widespread damage. The other commenter addressed grid frequency which is also important, but the real issue is over drawing current. (Disclaimer - I am not an electrician). In most houses you have a fuse box or breaker panel, this is to prevent the appliances from drawing too much current. Conductors heat up according to their resistance and the current applied to them, so if a circuit with 14 gauge wires suddenly has a load of 2000 watts applied to it, it will begin to heat up. If this load is applied for too long it can get hot enough to start a fire inside the walls of a house. This is why we have breakers - they will cut the circuit if it exceeds a safe level for too long. Power grids don't really have breakers. They have complex control systems and highly trained operators to serve the same purpose. If transmission lines have too much current applied to them they can expand and sag, catching on other wires or structures causing damage and outages. Overloads can also damage substations and transformers for similar reasons (heat, thermal expansion). In this case, they did exactly what they had to. They cut the power to millions of people for a few days and saved their infrastructure from months of repairs if things went catastrophically wrong.
- caddywompus 6y ago
  I think you're right. The system expects a certain voltage, if the load increases too much, the generators would struggle to keep up, and the voltage would begin to drop. However, the total amount of power would remain the same, which means that the electrical current would increase to compensate. The problem is that the amount of current increase is a square law increase compared to the voltage, V = I * R P = V * I P = I^2 * R So now you have equipment having to deal with the heat created by resistance (since nothing is 100% efficient), but way more heat than it can handle. I'm not an electrician either, and my knowledge of AC isn't great, so I'm sure there are other reasons too, like the frequency is also effected if the generator can't keep up with the load, and that causes other problems
morio 6y ago
There are many failure points but one are the high voltage carrying power lines themselves. As they reach their capacity they start to droop quite a bit, which in itself can cause issues like touching something they usually would not. Because HV lines are made from aluminum they loose some of their strength as they are heated up. Above 100C or so the aluminum anneals which means strength is lost. Now you just need some wind shaking those lines and the whole thing breaks. If you have reached that point you likely have to replace the entire length of the HV line. Of course the cold weather counters some of this. But only to a certain point. If just one HV line fails you now have to deal with the cascading effect as the current is load balanced on the remaining HV lines.

Right, I mean physically what is happening that causes that.

by defen 6y ago

Right, I mean physically what is happening that causes that.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

ihsw 6y ago

The grid is a mesh network that self-balances -- eg: electricity automatically routes around damage. It's great when things work well (supply > demand) but if things go sideways then there can (and there has been) cascading failures. These failures are by design -- if too much electricity is routed through a given section of the grid then those sections will (for example) get too hot and surrounding materials (eg: plastic, wood, debris) will catch fire. Intentionally designing your equipment to fail in a non-catastrophic way is a sensible precaution. That said, the "seconds away from system-wide catastrophic failure" message could be (and probably should be) parsed as "long-standing cost-cutting measures made things go from bad to catastrophe rather than bad to worse." Sensible upgrades were skipped over (because those cost money), due diligence was not done (because that costs money), safety standards were lowered (because that saves money), etc etc etc. The argument that this was a Black Swan event is weak because the government should do its planning on multi-decade-long timescales, which should account for Black Swan events. The entire premise behind Texas having its own power grid was that being beholden to the West Coast/East Coast electrical grid dichotomy was to guard against a Black Swan event (civil war) -- this flies in the face of that rationale.

tibbydudeza 6y ago

My understanding is the entire grid needs to be at a stable frequency of either 50 or 60 Hz (affected by demand) , if a generator goes out of sync/phase you are going have major trouble. Bringing up a grid from scratch from a total blackout scenario is such a time consuming process so you rather throw consumers off with no warning even in the coldest winter imaginable.

ldbooth 6y ago
I was scratching my head too. It's also a broad statement to cover who knows what but I read "ground faults" while getting our tinker on. Agree the frequency and voltage would drop out of phase tolerance. That shouldnt cause fires unless there's a spinning resource that fails. The sudden availability or lack of power would create imbalances across the grid, frankly I don't think they know what would break. Might also drop one circuit and accidentally overload another, there's lots of failure points so they just broad stroke it.
- tibbydudeza 6y ago
  Yep lot's of failure points due to the cold weather that affected a nuclear power plant (faulty sensors in the inflow tripped it into safe mode and took it off the grid) , the natural gas wells (water vapour in the gas freezes) and the infamous wind turbines (no heating/anti-freeze). The problem was they could not import power from the Western grid (little interconnect capability for political reasons) and meanwhile El Paso and some border counties is humming right along because they are tied to the Western grid and not ERCOT.

yabones 6y ago

There's a few factors that could lead to widespread damage. The other commenter addressed grid frequency which is also important, but the real issue is over drawing current. (Disclaimer - I am not an electrician). In most houses you have a fuse box or breaker panel, this is to prevent the appliances from drawing too much current. Conductors heat up according to their resistance and the current applied to them, so if a circuit with 14 gauge wires suddenly has a load of 2000 watts applied to it, it will begin to heat up. If this load is applied for too long it can get hot enough to start a fire inside the walls of a house. This is why we have breakers - they will cut the circuit if it exceeds a safe level for too long. Power grids don't really have breakers. They have complex control systems and highly trained operators to serve the same purpose. If transmission lines have too much current applied to them they can expand and sag, catching on other wires or structures causing damage and outages. Overloads can also damage substations and transformers for similar reasons (heat, thermal expansion). In this case, they did exactly what they had to. They cut the power to millions of people for a few days and saved their infrastructure from months of repairs if things went catastrophically wrong.

caddywompus 6y ago
I think you're right. The system expects a certain voltage, if the load increases too much, the generators would struggle to keep up, and the voltage would begin to drop. However, the total amount of power would remain the same, which means that the electrical current would increase to compensate. The problem is that the amount of current increase is a square law increase compared to the voltage, V = I * R P = V * I P = I^2 * R So now you have equipment having to deal with the heat created by resistance (since nothing is 100% efficient), but way more heat than it can handle. I'm not an electrician either, and my knowledge of AC isn't great, so I'm sure there are other reasons too, like the frequency is also effected if the generator can't keep up with the load, and that causes other problems

morio 6y ago

There are many failure points but one are the high voltage carrying power lines themselves. As they reach their capacity they start to droop quite a bit, which in itself can cause issues like touching something they usually would not. Because HV lines are made from aluminum they loose some of their strength as they are heated up. Above 100C or so the aluminum anneals which means strength is lost. Now you just need some wind shaking those lines and the whole thing breaks. If you have reached that point you likely have to replace the entire length of the HV line. Of course the cold weather counters some of this. But only to a certain point. If just one HV line fails you now have to deal with the cascading effect as the current is load balanced on the remaining HV lines.