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Cold starts on industrial equipment, turbo machinery, etc is not as simple as just turning the power back on. There are checklists and physical inspections tha

Cold starts on industrial equipment, turbo machinery, etc is not as simple as just turning the power back on. There are checklists and physical inspections that usually need to take place before re-instating. That's just on a single unit/plant, I have no idea how they coordinate across an entire power grid.

mikeyouse 5y ago
They basically can't. You run into the same problem that caused the blackout to begin with -- you need to turn on the generators one-by-one, but you also need to find an outlet for the power to exactly match the supply that's being generated. If you run a power plant without sufficient load, the frequency will flip in the other direction, and if you attach too much demand to a single generator that can't handle it, the frequency will drop again. So you need to do this slow 'titration' of turning on power assets, connecting demand to them, balancing that load and then moving on to the next thing. Texas has something like 11 designated 'black start' generators that are meant to be bulletproof but more than half of them failed in some way last February.
- Tempest1981 5y ago
  Is this being done manually? Or under computer control? Seems like it could be automated.
  - YXNjaGVyZWdlbgo 5y ago
    You can't, it's just not feasible nor practical to have the required number of sensors for a cold start computer control on giant machinery.
  - JaimeThompson 5y ago
    If a lot of the power companies aren't willing to spend money on things like insulation and temperature sensors they are even less likely to spend what is necessary to automate a black start.
    - bluGill 5y ago
      I hope it is never worthwhile to automate a blackstart. Some parts of it maybe, but this should be a rare event that isn't worth the cost. I'm not sure how you would test your automation even if you tried.
  - p_l 5y ago
    In black start conditions, you probably aren't going to have reliable network or power to position the switches in startup position, or to reset breakers, possibly even to power the sensors necessary to bring back a single substation.

mikeyouse 5y ago

They basically can't. You run into the same problem that caused the blackout to begin with -- you need to turn on the generators one-by-one, but you also need to find an outlet for the power to exactly match the supply that's being generated. If you run a power plant without sufficient load, the frequency will flip in the other direction, and if you attach too much demand to a single generator that can't handle it, the frequency will drop again. So you need to do this slow 'titration' of turning on power assets, connecting demand to them, balancing that load and then moving on to the next thing. Texas has something like 11 designated 'black start' generators that are meant to be bulletproof but more than half of them failed in some way last February.

Tempest1981 5y ago
Is this being done manually? Or under computer control? Seems like it could be automated.
- YXNjaGVyZWdlbgo 5y ago
  You can't, it's just not feasible nor practical to have the required number of sensors for a cold start computer control on giant machinery.
- JaimeThompson 5y ago
  If a lot of the power companies aren't willing to spend money on things like insulation and temperature sensors they are even less likely to spend what is necessary to automate a black start.
  - bluGill 5y ago
    I hope it is never worthwhile to automate a blackstart. Some parts of it maybe, but this should be a rare event that isn't worth the cost. I'm not sure how you would test your automation even if you tried.
- p_l 5y ago
  In black start conditions, you probably aren't going to have reliable network or power to position the switches in startup position, or to reset breakers, possibly even to power the sensors necessary to bring back a single substation.