18 ms·

What is a black start of the power grid?

217 points by bumbledraven 4y ago

hoseja 4y ago
Can we have abundant appliance town-scale fusion generators already.
- krallja 4y ago
  Only 50 years away!
Arnavion 4y ago
As one of the comment threads on the Youtube video mentions, this setup of having tiered power generation comes up naturally in the video game Factorio. You have mining drils feeding coal to boilers, and the boilers feeding steam to steam engines. If the power runs out, the system can't start back up because the drills need power. So you end up automating the setup so that if the steam reserves drop too low, the rest of the factory gets disconnected from the steam engines until it builds back up. Furthermore, some mods make it so that even pumping the water to the boilers requires power (*), and add a separate "burner generator" that directly burns coal to produce power. So you end up setting the automation so that tier one power generation uses the burner generators to build up water reserves, then tier two power generation turns off the burner generators and uses the boilers to build up steam reserves, and then finally switches on the rest of the factory once steam reserves have been built up. (*) In the base game the water pumps magically work without needing electric power, because the devs don't want to complicate the experience of setting up power. So it's an amusing situation where the Factorio character starts with the innate knowledge of how to build magic water pumps and steam engines out of iron plates and gears, but needs to "research" more trivial things like dumping rocks into a lake to landfill it and create a buildable surface.
- tehbeard 4y ago
  I mean in theory that research involves understanding how best to layer the rocks to prevent erosion, shifting or flooding of the foundation of a new section of the factory. We were taught the basic physics of the Newcomen engine in school as part of history on the industrial revolution, but nothing about geo-engineering for land reclamation.
  - jeffrallen 4y ago
    Grady's got a video on that too...
- blibble 4y ago
  with the mods: how do you start that process at all? the steam engine is the only (early) way to produce electricity, and the pump needs electric, and the steam engine needss water (I tried googling for the mod but came up short)
  - FeepingCreature 4y ago
    AAI Industries? [1] There's a separate building (Burner Turbine Generator) to generate electricity from combustion without needing water - though less efficiently. https://mods.factorio.com/mod/aai-industry https://mods.factorio.com/mod/aai-industry
  - Arnavion 4y ago
    Like I said, there's a coal burner generator that burns coal directly into electricity. Its efficiency (energy produced per energy consumed) is less than the water boiler + steam engine, so you have an incentive to switch to steam once you've researched it. But you need to keep the burner generators around for re-bootstrapping.
    - cesarb 4y ago
      Another step you forgot to mention is that, in both the base game and the modded (AAI Industry) game, there's a much less efficient kind of mining drill (burner mining drill) which is directly powered with coal (or other solid fuels), instead of electricity; when mining coal with it, you usually loop back its output to its input (through a burner inserter, another device powered directly with coal or other solid fuels instead of electricity), so the only thing you need to start up the whole system is a single piece of wood as the fuel for the farthest burner mining drill.
      - krallja 4y ago
        You can also mine coal by hand, so you don't even need wood. Which is convenient, if you start on a desert biome.
  - rcxdude 4y ago
- johannes1234321 4y ago
  > (*) In the base game the water pumps magically work without needing electric power The bigger magic: hand crafted belts work for transporting goods reliably over long distance without any energy supply. Quite some engineering there.
  - mat_epice 4y ago
    Perhaps they have very long tendrils extending into the ground that can allow them to use geothermal energy! I'd usually say built-in solar and batteries, but they work even if you place them at night.
- Aloha 4y ago
  In the games where I've reserved spare coal capacity, I kept burning loaders there, so if there is an issue with the main coal line, it can restart.
- xeromal 4y ago
  There's a game called Satisfactory that I've played that is kind of similar. When I played, there was no way to automated those breakers so I'd cut the lines to my power grid when I had an outage. I'd then have to fire up my biofuel generators to kick start everything including the coal miners. lol. Loved that game. You did need to power the water pumps and it sucked depending on the distance.
  - mrguyorama 4y ago
    I built "power hubs" that had 8 coal generators with an included set of backup batteries which I connected a modded wind generator to (literally free constant minuscule energy) so everything could be self restarting with the flip of like one switch to turn off power distribution.
  - LorenPechtel 4y ago
    Factorio liquid handling sucks. And it's just water pumps that don't need power--because your first power generation technology is coal-fired burners and they need water to convert to steam to run the steam turbines. They gave us magic pumps rather than provide some means of making power without water. Likewise, magic belts because belts come far earlier than power.
- jcranmer 4y ago
  My initial setup is to use burner inserters (which don't need an electrical connection to move) to feed the boilers, combined with priority splitters so that the ore smelters only get whatever coal the power doesn't get. Combined with overprovisioning of steam power, it means that the factory will start shutting down before the power grid gets overheated to the point that it can't keep itself up. Later, I move to nuclear power, where fuel use is such that even glacial low-power inserters can keep the facilities fed through a power spiral. Although my massive 12-reactor facility did rely on pumps to keep the steam moving fast enough through my flowmeter to regulate power... but when you have a 12 reactor powerplant, power death spirals take long enough to occur that you will have ample time to fix them before things start needing black start.
  - LorenPechtel 4y ago
    I haven't played it that much, I've normally worked from an overprovisioning approach. Extra power plants are a trivial cost compared to your research. Even vast solar fields aren't all that expensive. I do agree that if you try to go for a most optimum setup you do risk getting in a black start situation. My current game I'm trying a totally different idea--I'm trying to play it with no defenses at all, rely purely on killing biter bases before they get upset.
rob74 4y ago
This article (or rather transcript) got me thinking that building and maintaining a power grid with all connected power stations, lines etc. while power consumers keep popping up automatically would make a good RTS game a la Mini Metro (ok, maybe make it a little more realistic, but not as detailed as Factorio)...
- imrejonk 4y ago
  The first thing that comes to mind is ENTSO-E's Power Flow Tool. It had a number of simulations of Europe's power grid with typical demand scenario's, prompting you to take care of grid balancing when a power line suddenly failed during peak load. Unfortunately I just discovered that they removed it from their website somewhere this year. I've asked them to restore it. For now you can play with this copy in the Internet Archive: https://web.archive.org/web/20220124003709/https://www.entsoe.eu/data/powerflow-tool/ https://web.archive.org/web/20220124003709/https://www.entso...
  - epilys 4y ago
    The disclaimer is probably unintentionally funny: This demonstration tool is not connected to our real grids: therefore you can feel free to go to the limits and test out all constellations that interest you.
ggm 4y ago
South Australia had to test one for real in the big storms a few years back. "It's harder than it looks" time. Two contracted gas turbine black start sources didn't work and had pretty major contractual penalty issues.
- bombcar 4y ago
  This is the main problem with a black start; you never get a chance to test it until you're in a black start scenario. And since it is never tested, it's almost guaranteed to fail in some unexpected way. And since that's the case, almost anything is better then getting yourself into a black start scenario, including shedding load in any possible way. Which leads to it never being tested, and more things being unknowingly broken.
  - jefftk 4y ago
    I don't see why you can't test it: take one of these contracted sources, disconnect it from the grid, and verify it can start on its own. What am I missing?
    - bombcar 4y ago
      That's testing one source; and you CAN do that but you may find that there are things you didn't realize because the grid was actually UP. For example, the entire station may be disconnected from the grid, but somewhere in the system is a Siemens device that for whatever ungodly reason needs to access the internet, which works when the grid as a whole is operational but fails when it can't get cell service. And even if those stations work correctly, you still haven't verified that the actual plan is operational because you haven't actually done the black start; perhaps the grid divisions are incorrect and the first load you try to apply will brown out the start source.
      - jefftk 4y ago
        I agree there are other things that can go wrong, but the "two contracted gas turbine black start sources didn't work" problem does still seem like something that probably could have been avoided with regular testing?
DrBazza 4y ago
The UK recently demolished one of the few power stations that could restart the national grid via a jet engine. https://www.ianvisits.co.uk/articles/watch-a-power-station-demolition-2-34461/ https://www.ianvisits.co.uk/articles/watch-a-power-station-d... >To be able to restart the plant, it made use of versions of jet engines based on those used on Concorde to jump start the main generators
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- gambiting 4y ago
  It's frustrating that the article doesn't mention what remaining power plants can restart the grid with this power station gone.
  - arethuza 4y ago
    The pumped storage plant at Cruachan is one: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cruachan_Power_Station https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cruachan_Power_Station Edit: Given that the turbine hall is 300m deep in granite that station is probably fairly safe from anything other than a nuke!
    - jcranmer 4y ago
      > Edit: Given that the turbine hall is 300m deep in granite that station is probably fairly safe from anything other than a nuke! 300m deep in granite is safe from a nuke as well.
      - arethuza 4y ago
        Probably not from one of the SS-18 variants that had a single large 20MT or 25MT warhead - don't think the Russians have any of those still deployed though.
  - blutack 4y ago
    Dinorwig pumped storage hydro is another: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dinorwig_Power_Station https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dinorwig_Power_Station It's built inside a hollowed out mountain - definitely worth doing the tour if you're in the area. Edit: apparently Drax as well as many of the older plants can too.
yobbo 4y ago
My thoughts are that power plants don't stop completely in blackouts, they disconnect, power down, and idle. The reason they need to disconnect (in chain reactions) is that the load is too high for them to maintain frequency/keep in phase. Starting back up is complex because loads need to be added to the network in some order they can be powered.
- tibbydudeza 4y ago
  The generators have safety systems in place when the grid tied frequency deviates too much from 50 or 60HZ - they then "trip" and disconnect themselves from the grid to prevent damage. Powering them down to a complete stop is a rather long process taking hours. One silly technician left a spanner in one turbine after maintenance, and it took about 2 years for a replacement part to be installed.
- bunabhucan 4y ago
  Black start is just that: powering up the whole grid from blackout. It requires stuff you might not think of like the gas turbine stations need a big spark to light the flame so a diesel generator isn't enough if the station breaker is open, you need a hv DC transformer.
- zaarn 4y ago
  Not all power plants can self-feed the power they need to keep generators working. Often this is a diesel generator on the plant because the only other source of power is 20MW generators that simply can't be tuned down enough to handle the few kilowatts it takes to keep the generators turning. Almost all plants will trip from the grid if it gets bad and remain idling for some time. But if that happens, the grid is still dark and the black start generators are the best equipped to bootstrap the grid. You can't start with the big generators too, so you can initially only bring in small plants until the grid capacity is big enough to not trip out when the big generators come online in a wrong way. There is a good chance that by the time the grid is stable, atleast some power plants will have had to shutdown entirely and spin back up from a black start with only external power.
- LorenPechtel 4y ago
tibbydudeza 4y ago
In South Africa we are experiencing major shortfalls in our power generation (coal fleet is aging and breaking down more - poor maintenance and two new mega power stations has been mired with corruption during building) We have a few cycle gas turbines (diesel) and two major hydro schemes which maintains a critical reserve at all times of water, so they just need to open the sluices to jumpstart the system. Also, our grid is tied to our neighbors so they can help out if need be like France does to the UK during shortfalls.
- tibbydudeza 4y ago
  We now up to Stage 6 as we call it. I will have no power from 6pm until 8:30pm and then again from 10pm until midnight. Fortunately, we got a gas cooker/inverter for my ONT/Router/WiFi.
  - dividedbyzero 4y ago
    > Fortunately, we got a gas cooker/inverter for my ONT/Router/WiFi. Does the ISP keep things working for the duration?
    - tibbydudeza 4y ago
      The fiber box at home is 12V so it is easy to power yourself - the local POP has battery backup since it is installed at the same location as the cellphone masts for our neighborhood. The core routers in probably in a datacenter with battery/diesel backup. We had outages in the beginning because they use DHCP for the fiber box to get an IP address so you can imagine a few thousand ONT terminals all coming online nearly at the same time and hitting one DHCP server
rlt 4y ago
I was just thinking about how decentralization is important for building robust systems, but it’s not simply decentralization, also the ability for the nodes to operate isolated from each other. The grid is “decentralized” but still brittle and at risk of cascading failures. A future where the majority of power is provided by onsite solar + storage is much more robust. Similarly not robust are things like tech stacks with complex “cold boot” plans or unexpected cascading failure modes, etc. I don’t know what the right terminology for this subset of decentralization is.
- Ygg2 4y ago
  Onsite solar and storage is the big issue. That's why most solar plants come with a peaker gas plant. It's cheaper to provide additional demand via fossil fuels than to rely on storage solutions. You need a huge amount of storage.
  - Retric 4y ago
    Many solar power plants come with 3-4h of battery simply to time shift output to peak demand. Because solar is DC you effectively skip inefficiency from DC>AC (Solar to grid) and DC>AC (Grid to battery) conversion. On top of this you can use the same DC>AC equipment for both the batteries and solar plus being able to convert DC>AC to charge batteries from the grid becomes optional.
- jillesvangurp 4y ago
  Parts of Australia have this. They have so much rooftop solar (and reliable access to plenty of sun) and battery there that effectively centralized power is less and less relevant there and quite a few parts of especially southern Australia effectively run on solar and battery for most of the time. It has indeed made the grid there more reliable; not less. Decentralization is mainly bad for centralized power companies as it erodes their monopoly and forces them to deal with the notion that their power is too expensive most of the time. Intermittent scarcity and over supply of energy (both are a thing) also leads to different consumption patterns. People valuing cheap energy when it is scarce invest in batteries that they charge when there's a surplus. Others buy at a premium or simply shift when they consume their energy. Demand shaping is also something that can be incentivized financially. Of course that works great in Australia but other parts of the world have other options like wind, geothermal, hydro, nuclear, etc. Which is why places like Norway and parts of Canada are also mostly running on clean energy at this point. The key is actually not isolating but interconnecting. Norway is part of a connected grid that spans most of Europe with a market where you can sell energy and buy energy. Norway is an energy exporter at this point and there are plenty of countries importing their power to supplement their own generation when it falls short. That's why countries like Germany are now predominantly wind and solar powered and yet doesn't have blackouts when there's no wind. Like today (gloomy winter day with barely any wind here in Berlin). But there's still plenty of wind elsewhere. Germany imports almost as much power as that it exports each year.
qikInNdOutReply 4y ago
Not mentioned, you need to "harden" your electrics, if your power grid restarts frequently. Cause the spikes and surges fry weak electric devices. So its filters, timers and stability checkers to keep everything intact. South africa has made some experiences there.
- jollyllama 4y ago
  SA is screwed. Stage 6+ load shedding on the reg means cable theft / looting is skyrocketing; there's not going to be any coming back from that.
  - qikInNdOutReply 4y ago
    We should saw the bread bakery into pieces and distribute to the people
StreamBright 4y ago
The future of power grid is to have cheap base load (likely nuclear) and efficient batteries in everything we can put batteries in. When I am talking about batteries, I really talked about NBD style devices[1]. https://ndb.technology/ https://ndb.technology/
- pfdietz 4y ago
  Nuclear is not cheap base load, unless you are given the power plant for free.
  - tomatocracy 4y ago
    True, but it's not necessarily expensive either in the current context. The strike price EDF agreed for Hinkley Point C in 2013 was £92.50/MWh in 2012 prices. Wholesale prices (both day-ahead and next-season) have been well above that level for some time now (although it is also delayed and over budget so there is additional subsidy in the form of the pain-share mechanism to account for). For new build baseload coming online in 10-20 years, coal or CCGT with carbon capture are probably the realistic alternatives to nuclear in most countries which don't have the resources to build out significant hydro or geothermal baseload. But it's not clear that carbon capture technology can be scaled enough (especially if we go down the storage rather than reuse route), and those technologies look like they could be equally as, if not more expensive than nuclear at this point. Realistically we need to plan for nuclear to at least potentially be a significant part of the energy mix if we can't solve the current scalability issues with carbon capture, demand reduction and storage. On the plus side the costs per unit should scale down as we build more (as the French did in the 70s/80s), if there is the political commitment.
    - pfdietz 4y ago
      Any new start nuclear plant today would likely be more expensive than renewables + storage (to combine to produce equivalent sythentic baseload) by the time the nuclear plant could come online. I don't think there's any window left for new nuclear plants to make sense, unless their cost can be radically reduced.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
mnw21cam 4y ago
The video which this appears to be a transcript of is over here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uOSnQM1Zu4w https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uOSnQM1Zu4w
- gwbas1c 4y ago
  The video is also embedded at the top of the page, front and center and 100% obvious.
  - cesarb 4y ago
    Some people have Javascript disabled and/or third-party resources blocked by default, in which case the only indication that there is an embedded video (instead of just some kind of blocked advertisement) at the top of the page is the text "[Note that this article is a transcript of the video embedded above.]" at the top of the article. It's easy to miss. (The first time I read an article on that site, it looked a bit strange to me, as if it were stage directions for a video; only by reading the comments here on HN I learned that it had an embedded video, and that the text was just a transcript of it. Unlike this one, that article didn't have a note at the top mentioning that it was a transcript.)
    - gwbas1c 4y ago
      > Some people have Javascript disabled I know that. JavaScript is firmly established as how the web works. I don't think we need to bend over backwards for people who intentionally cripple their browsers.
oilman 4y ago
As an engineer who has spent time commissioning electrical systems on oil rigs, I've had the opportunity to witness some truly fascinating tests. However, out of all the tests I've seen, the black start test is by far the most intriguing. Similar to the article, but at a smaller scale, it takes power to start up one of the ~7MW main generators on an oil rig. During commissioning, a black start test simulates a scenario where all power sources on the rig are exhausted, and the emergency backup systems must be used to bring the rig back to life. Starting the main generators on an oil rig is no easy feat. It takes a significant amount of power to get these massive machines running, and it's not as simple as pulling a cord like you would with a lawnmower. In normal circumstances, the rig uses tanks of compressed air to start the generators, but during a black start test, these tanks are assumed to be empty. So, how do you start the main generators in this situation? The answer is with a special emergency hand-cranked air compressor. By cranking (and cranking, and cranking) this compressor, you can generate enough air to start a small air compressor, which in turn is used to pump up the air tank and start the 1.5MW emergency generator. Once the emergency generator is running, it can be used to power the compressors that fill the large tanks needed to start the main generators. Watching this process unfold is truly a unique experience. To see a massive oil rig slowly come to life, all thanks to one person cranking away at a small air compressor, is truly impressive.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- blamazon 4y ago
  Unrelated but fun fact: some heavy duty air-brake trucks can also use compressed air to start the engine, but what if your tank is flat? You can hook up one of the tires and use that to start the engine! Really neat. Also, many trucks have both an electric starter and an air starter. I one day aspire to those kind of redundancies in a vehicle I own.
- throwayyy479087 4y ago
  Sounds like the hand crank would be better as bicycle pedals
- tetha 4y ago
simonbarker87 4y ago
This is one of the services that interconnectors provide to the grid in the UK. Should a black start be needed and Europe can still provide power then an interconnector can be used for black start.
airbreather 4y ago
Only skimmed thru, but seems to neglect to talk about the capacitive charging needed to energise the transmission network, grid where I live is isolated and needs 25MW plus just to bring the transmission network up.
hanche 4y ago
Amusingly, I encountered the same sort of problem on a vastly smaller scale: An electric car with a fully charged 400 V, 64 kWh battery that I could not start for lack of electric power. Said electric power normally to be delivered by a small conventional 12 V car battery that was, unfortunately, almost completely discharged. To get my car started, that battery has to provide power to some electronics and to close a relay connecting the 400 V battery to a power inverter providing power to the car – including power to charge that 12 V battery. The owner of a gas car that I asked to help me jumpstart my car would not believe me at first, but I got the help I needed, thus saving the Christmas party I was going to on that occassion.

217 points by bumbledraven 4y ago

hoseja 4y ago

Can we have abundant appliance town-scale fusion generators already.

krallja 4y ago
Only 50 years away!

Arnavion 4y ago

As one of the comment threads on the Youtube video mentions, this setup of having tiered power generation comes up naturally in the video game Factorio. You have mining drils feeding coal to boilers, and the boilers feeding steam to steam engines. If the power runs out, the system can't start back up because the drills need power. So you end up automating the setup so that if the steam reserves drop too low, the rest of the factory gets disconnected from the steam engines until it builds back up. Furthermore, some mods make it so that even pumping the water to the boilers requires power (*), and add a separate "burner generator" that directly burns coal to produce power. So you end up setting the automation so that tier one power generation uses the burner generators to build up water reserves, then tier two power generation turns off the burner generators and uses the boilers to build up steam reserves, and then finally switches on the rest of the factory once steam reserves have been built up. (*) In the base game the water pumps magically work without needing electric power, because the devs don't want to complicate the experience of setting up power. So it's an amusing situation where the Factorio character starts with the innate knowledge of how to build magic water pumps and steam engines out of iron plates and gears, but needs to "research" more trivial things like dumping rocks into a lake to landfill it and create a buildable surface.

tehbeard 4y ago
I mean in theory that research involves understanding how best to layer the rocks to prevent erosion, shifting or flooding of the foundation of a new section of the factory. We were taught the basic physics of the Newcomen engine in school as part of history on the industrial revolution, but nothing about geo-engineering for land reclamation.
- jeffrallen 4y ago
  Grady's got a video on that too...
blibble 4y ago
with the mods: how do you start that process at all? the steam engine is the only (early) way to produce electricity, and the pump needs electric, and the steam engine needss water (I tried googling for the mod but came up short)
- FeepingCreature 4y ago
  AAI Industries? [1] There's a separate building (Burner Turbine Generator) to generate electricity from combustion without needing water - though less efficiently. https://mods.factorio.com/mod/aai-industry https://mods.factorio.com/mod/aai-industry
- Arnavion 4y ago
  Like I said, there's a coal burner generator that burns coal directly into electricity. Its efficiency (energy produced per energy consumed) is less than the water boiler + steam engine, so you have an incentive to switch to steam once you've researched it. But you need to keep the burner generators around for re-bootstrapping.
  - cesarb 4y ago
    Another step you forgot to mention is that, in both the base game and the modded (AAI Industry) game, there's a much less efficient kind of mining drill (burner mining drill) which is directly powered with coal (or other solid fuels), instead of electricity; when mining coal with it, you usually loop back its output to its input (through a burner inserter, another device powered directly with coal or other solid fuels instead of electricity), so the only thing you need to start up the whole system is a single piece of wood as the fuel for the farthest burner mining drill.
    - krallja 4y ago
      You can also mine coal by hand, so you don't even need wood. Which is convenient, if you start on a desert biome.
- rcxdude 4y ago
johannes1234321 4y ago
> (*) In the base game the water pumps magically work without needing electric power The bigger magic: hand crafted belts work for transporting goods reliably over long distance without any energy supply. Quite some engineering there.
- mat_epice 4y ago
  Perhaps they have very long tendrils extending into the ground that can allow them to use geothermal energy! I'd usually say built-in solar and batteries, but they work even if you place them at night.
Aloha 4y ago
In the games where I've reserved spare coal capacity, I kept burning loaders there, so if there is an issue with the main coal line, it can restart.
xeromal 4y ago
There's a game called Satisfactory that I've played that is kind of similar. When I played, there was no way to automated those breakers so I'd cut the lines to my power grid when I had an outage. I'd then have to fire up my biofuel generators to kick start everything including the coal miners. lol. Loved that game. You did need to power the water pumps and it sucked depending on the distance.
- mrguyorama 4y ago
  I built "power hubs" that had 8 coal generators with an included set of backup batteries which I connected a modded wind generator to (literally free constant minuscule energy) so everything could be self restarting with the flip of like one switch to turn off power distribution.
- LorenPechtel 4y ago
  Factorio liquid handling sucks. And it's just water pumps that don't need power--because your first power generation technology is coal-fired burners and they need water to convert to steam to run the steam turbines. They gave us magic pumps rather than provide some means of making power without water. Likewise, magic belts because belts come far earlier than power.
jcranmer 4y ago
My initial setup is to use burner inserters (which don't need an electrical connection to move) to feed the boilers, combined with priority splitters so that the ore smelters only get whatever coal the power doesn't get. Combined with overprovisioning of steam power, it means that the factory will start shutting down before the power grid gets overheated to the point that it can't keep itself up. Later, I move to nuclear power, where fuel use is such that even glacial low-power inserters can keep the facilities fed through a power spiral. Although my massive 12-reactor facility did rely on pumps to keep the steam moving fast enough through my flowmeter to regulate power... but when you have a 12 reactor powerplant, power death spirals take long enough to occur that you will have ample time to fix them before things start needing black start.
- LorenPechtel 4y ago
  I haven't played it that much, I've normally worked from an overprovisioning approach. Extra power plants are a trivial cost compared to your research. Even vast solar fields aren't all that expensive. I do agree that if you try to go for a most optimum setup you do risk getting in a black start situation. My current game I'm trying a totally different idea--I'm trying to play it with no defenses at all, rely purely on killing biter bases before they get upset.

rob74 4y ago

This article (or rather transcript) got me thinking that building and maintaining a power grid with all connected power stations, lines etc. while power consumers keep popping up automatically would make a good RTS game a la Mini Metro (ok, maybe make it a little more realistic, but not as detailed as Factorio)...

imrejonk 4y ago
The first thing that comes to mind is ENTSO-E's Power Flow Tool. It had a number of simulations of Europe's power grid with typical demand scenario's, prompting you to take care of grid balancing when a power line suddenly failed during peak load. Unfortunately I just discovered that they removed it from their website somewhere this year. I've asked them to restore it. For now you can play with this copy in the Internet Archive: https://web.archive.org/web/20220124003709/https://www.entsoe.eu/data/powerflow-tool/ https://web.archive.org/web/20220124003709/https://www.entso...
- epilys 4y ago
  The disclaimer is probably unintentionally funny: This demonstration tool is not connected to our real grids: therefore you can feel free to go to the limits and test out all constellations that interest you.

ggm 4y ago

South Australia had to test one for real in the big storms a few years back. "It's harder than it looks" time. Two contracted gas turbine black start sources didn't work and had pretty major contractual penalty issues.

bombcar 4y ago
This is the main problem with a black start; you never get a chance to test it until you're in a black start scenario. And since it is never tested, it's almost guaranteed to fail in some unexpected way. And since that's the case, almost anything is better then getting yourself into a black start scenario, including shedding load in any possible way. Which leads to it never being tested, and more things being unknowingly broken.
- jefftk 4y ago
  I don't see why you can't test it: take one of these contracted sources, disconnect it from the grid, and verify it can start on its own. What am I missing?
  - bombcar 4y ago
    That's testing one source; and you CAN do that but you may find that there are things you didn't realize because the grid was actually UP. For example, the entire station may be disconnected from the grid, but somewhere in the system is a Siemens device that for whatever ungodly reason needs to access the internet, which works when the grid as a whole is operational but fails when it can't get cell service. And even if those stations work correctly, you still haven't verified that the actual plan is operational because you haven't actually done the black start; perhaps the grid divisions are incorrect and the first load you try to apply will brown out the start source.
    - jefftk 4y ago
      I agree there are other things that can go wrong, but the "two contracted gas turbine black start sources didn't work" problem does still seem like something that probably could have been avoided with regular testing?

DrBazza 4y ago

The UK recently demolished one of the few power stations that could restart the national grid via a jet engine. https://www.ianvisits.co.uk/articles/watch-a-power-station-demolition-2-34461/ https://www.ianvisits.co.uk/articles/watch-a-power-station-d... >To be able to restart the plant, it made use of versions of jet engines based on those used on Concorde to jump start the main generators

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gambiting 4y ago
It's frustrating that the article doesn't mention what remaining power plants can restart the grid with this power station gone.
- arethuza 4y ago
  The pumped storage plant at Cruachan is one: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cruachan_Power_Station https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cruachan_Power_Station Edit: Given that the turbine hall is 300m deep in granite that station is probably fairly safe from anything other than a nuke!
  - jcranmer 4y ago
    > Edit: Given that the turbine hall is 300m deep in granite that station is probably fairly safe from anything other than a nuke! 300m deep in granite is safe from a nuke as well.
    - arethuza 4y ago
      Probably not from one of the SS-18 variants that had a single large 20MT or 25MT warhead - don't think the Russians have any of those still deployed though.
- blutack 4y ago
  Dinorwig pumped storage hydro is another: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dinorwig_Power_Station https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dinorwig_Power_Station It's built inside a hollowed out mountain - definitely worth doing the tour if you're in the area. Edit: apparently Drax as well as many of the older plants can too.

yobbo 4y ago

My thoughts are that power plants don't stop completely in blackouts, they disconnect, power down, and idle. The reason they need to disconnect (in chain reactions) is that the load is too high for them to maintain frequency/keep in phase. Starting back up is complex because loads need to be added to the network in some order they can be powered.

tibbydudeza 4y ago
The generators have safety systems in place when the grid tied frequency deviates too much from 50 or 60HZ - they then "trip" and disconnect themselves from the grid to prevent damage. Powering them down to a complete stop is a rather long process taking hours. One silly technician left a spanner in one turbine after maintenance, and it took about 2 years for a replacement part to be installed.
bunabhucan 4y ago
Black start is just that: powering up the whole grid from blackout. It requires stuff you might not think of like the gas turbine stations need a big spark to light the flame so a diesel generator isn't enough if the station breaker is open, you need a hv DC transformer.
zaarn 4y ago
Not all power plants can self-feed the power they need to keep generators working. Often this is a diesel generator on the plant because the only other source of power is 20MW generators that simply can't be tuned down enough to handle the few kilowatts it takes to keep the generators turning. Almost all plants will trip from the grid if it gets bad and remain idling for some time. But if that happens, the grid is still dark and the black start generators are the best equipped to bootstrap the grid. You can't start with the big generators too, so you can initially only bring in small plants until the grid capacity is big enough to not trip out when the big generators come online in a wrong way. There is a good chance that by the time the grid is stable, atleast some power plants will have had to shutdown entirely and spin back up from a black start with only external power.
LorenPechtel 4y ago

tibbydudeza 4y ago

In South Africa we are experiencing major shortfalls in our power generation (coal fleet is aging and breaking down more - poor maintenance and two new mega power stations has been mired with corruption during building) We have a few cycle gas turbines (diesel) and two major hydro schemes which maintains a critical reserve at all times of water, so they just need to open the sluices to jumpstart the system. Also, our grid is tied to our neighbors so they can help out if need be like France does to the UK during shortfalls.

tibbydudeza 4y ago
We now up to Stage 6 as we call it. I will have no power from 6pm until 8:30pm and then again from 10pm until midnight. Fortunately, we got a gas cooker/inverter for my ONT/Router/WiFi.
- dividedbyzero 4y ago
  > Fortunately, we got a gas cooker/inverter for my ONT/Router/WiFi. Does the ISP keep things working for the duration?
  - tibbydudeza 4y ago
    The fiber box at home is 12V so it is easy to power yourself - the local POP has battery backup since it is installed at the same location as the cellphone masts for our neighborhood. The core routers in probably in a datacenter with battery/diesel backup. We had outages in the beginning because they use DHCP for the fiber box to get an IP address so you can imagine a few thousand ONT terminals all coming online nearly at the same time and hitting one DHCP server

rlt 4y ago

I was just thinking about how decentralization is important for building robust systems, but it’s not simply decentralization, also the ability for the nodes to operate isolated from each other. The grid is “decentralized” but still brittle and at risk of cascading failures. A future where the majority of power is provided by onsite solar + storage is much more robust. Similarly not robust are things like tech stacks with complex “cold boot” plans or unexpected cascading failure modes, etc. I don’t know what the right terminology for this subset of decentralization is.

Ygg2 4y ago
Onsite solar and storage is the big issue. That's why most solar plants come with a peaker gas plant. It's cheaper to provide additional demand via fossil fuels than to rely on storage solutions. You need a huge amount of storage.
- Retric 4y ago
  Many solar power plants come with 3-4h of battery simply to time shift output to peak demand. Because solar is DC you effectively skip inefficiency from DC>AC (Solar to grid) and DC>AC (Grid to battery) conversion. On top of this you can use the same DC>AC equipment for both the batteries and solar plus being able to convert DC>AC to charge batteries from the grid becomes optional.
jillesvangurp 4y ago
Parts of Australia have this. They have so much rooftop solar (and reliable access to plenty of sun) and battery there that effectively centralized power is less and less relevant there and quite a few parts of especially southern Australia effectively run on solar and battery for most of the time. It has indeed made the grid there more reliable; not less. Decentralization is mainly bad for centralized power companies as it erodes their monopoly and forces them to deal with the notion that their power is too expensive most of the time. Intermittent scarcity and over supply of energy (both are a thing) also leads to different consumption patterns. People valuing cheap energy when it is scarce invest in batteries that they charge when there's a surplus. Others buy at a premium or simply shift when they consume their energy. Demand shaping is also something that can be incentivized financially. Of course that works great in Australia but other parts of the world have other options like wind, geothermal, hydro, nuclear, etc. Which is why places like Norway and parts of Canada are also mostly running on clean energy at this point. The key is actually not isolating but interconnecting. Norway is part of a connected grid that spans most of Europe with a market where you can sell energy and buy energy. Norway is an energy exporter at this point and there are plenty of countries importing their power to supplement their own generation when it falls short. That's why countries like Germany are now predominantly wind and solar powered and yet doesn't have blackouts when there's no wind. Like today (gloomy winter day with barely any wind here in Berlin). But there's still plenty of wind elsewhere. Germany imports almost as much power as that it exports each year.

qikInNdOutReply 4y ago

Not mentioned, you need to "harden" your electrics, if your power grid restarts frequently. Cause the spikes and surges fry weak electric devices. So its filters, timers and stability checkers to keep everything intact. South africa has made some experiences there.

jollyllama 4y ago
SA is screwed. Stage 6+ load shedding on the reg means cable theft / looting is skyrocketing; there's not going to be any coming back from that.
- qikInNdOutReply 4y ago
  We should saw the bread bakery into pieces and distribute to the people

StreamBright 4y ago

The future of power grid is to have cheap base load (likely nuclear) and efficient batteries in everything we can put batteries in. When I am talking about batteries, I really talked about NBD style devices[1]. https://ndb.technology/ https://ndb.technology/

pfdietz 4y ago
Nuclear is not cheap base load, unless you are given the power plant for free.
- tomatocracy 4y ago
  True, but it's not necessarily expensive either in the current context. The strike price EDF agreed for Hinkley Point C in 2013 was £92.50/MWh in 2012 prices. Wholesale prices (both day-ahead and next-season) have been well above that level for some time now (although it is also delayed and over budget so there is additional subsidy in the form of the pain-share mechanism to account for). For new build baseload coming online in 10-20 years, coal or CCGT with carbon capture are probably the realistic alternatives to nuclear in most countries which don't have the resources to build out significant hydro or geothermal baseload. But it's not clear that carbon capture technology can be scaled enough (especially if we go down the storage rather than reuse route), and those technologies look like they could be equally as, if not more expensive than nuclear at this point. Realistically we need to plan for nuclear to at least potentially be a significant part of the energy mix if we can't solve the current scalability issues with carbon capture, demand reduction and storage. On the plus side the costs per unit should scale down as we build more (as the French did in the 70s/80s), if there is the political commitment.
  - pfdietz 4y ago
    Any new start nuclear plant today would likely be more expensive than renewables + storage (to combine to produce equivalent sythentic baseload) by the time the nuclear plant could come online. I don't think there's any window left for new nuclear plants to make sense, unless their cost can be radically reduced.

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mnw21cam 4y ago

The video which this appears to be a transcript of is over here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uOSnQM1Zu4w https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uOSnQM1Zu4w

gwbas1c 4y ago
The video is also embedded at the top of the page, front and center and 100% obvious.
- cesarb 4y ago
  Some people have Javascript disabled and/or third-party resources blocked by default, in which case the only indication that there is an embedded video (instead of just some kind of blocked advertisement) at the top of the page is the text "[Note that this article is a transcript of the video embedded above.]" at the top of the article. It's easy to miss. (The first time I read an article on that site, it looked a bit strange to me, as if it were stage directions for a video; only by reading the comments here on HN I learned that it had an embedded video, and that the text was just a transcript of it. Unlike this one, that article didn't have a note at the top mentioning that it was a transcript.)
  - gwbas1c 4y ago
    > Some people have Javascript disabled I know that. JavaScript is firmly established as how the web works. I don't think we need to bend over backwards for people who intentionally cripple their browsers.

oilman 4y ago

As an engineer who has spent time commissioning electrical systems on oil rigs, I've had the opportunity to witness some truly fascinating tests. However, out of all the tests I've seen, the black start test is by far the most intriguing. Similar to the article, but at a smaller scale, it takes power to start up one of the ~7MW main generators on an oil rig. During commissioning, a black start test simulates a scenario where all power sources on the rig are exhausted, and the emergency backup systems must be used to bring the rig back to life. Starting the main generators on an oil rig is no easy feat. It takes a significant amount of power to get these massive machines running, and it's not as simple as pulling a cord like you would with a lawnmower. In normal circumstances, the rig uses tanks of compressed air to start the generators, but during a black start test, these tanks are assumed to be empty. So, how do you start the main generators in this situation? The answer is with a special emergency hand-cranked air compressor. By cranking (and cranking, and cranking) this compressor, you can generate enough air to start a small air compressor, which in turn is used to pump up the air tank and start the 1.5MW emergency generator. Once the emergency generator is running, it can be used to power the compressors that fill the large tanks needed to start the main generators. Watching this process unfold is truly a unique experience. To see a massive oil rig slowly come to life, all thanks to one person cranking away at a small air compressor, is truly impressive.

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blamazon 4y ago
Unrelated but fun fact: some heavy duty air-brake trucks can also use compressed air to start the engine, but what if your tank is flat? You can hook up one of the tires and use that to start the engine! Really neat. Also, many trucks have both an electric starter and an air starter. I one day aspire to those kind of redundancies in a vehicle I own.
throwayyy479087 4y ago
Sounds like the hand crank would be better as bicycle pedals
tetha 4y ago

simonbarker87 4y ago

This is one of the services that interconnectors provide to the grid in the UK. Should a black start be needed and Europe can still provide power then an interconnector can be used for black start.

airbreather 4y ago

Only skimmed thru, but seems to neglect to talk about the capacitive charging needed to energise the transmission network, grid where I live is isolated and needs 25MW plus just to bring the transmission network up.

hanche 4y ago

Amusingly, I encountered the same sort of problem on a vastly smaller scale: An electric car with a fully charged 400 V, 64 kWh battery that I could not start for lack of electric power. Said electric power normally to be delivered by a small conventional 12 V car battery that was, unfortunately, almost completely discharged. To get my car started, that battery has to provide power to some electronics and to close a relay connecting the 400 V battery to a power inverter providing power to the car – including power to charge that 12 V battery. The owner of a gas car that I asked to help me jumpstart my car would not believe me at first, but I got the help I needed, thus saving the Christmas party I was going to on that occassion.