4 ms·

>Beef up black start capability for energy grids, so that in the event of a major failure, power is 90% back up in an hour. Test this annually. From the hypoth

>Beef up black start capability for energy grids, so that in the event of a major failure, power is 90% back up in an hour. Test this annually. From the hypothetical scenarios detailed after the Texas winter shutdown a few years ago, this rule sounds unhinged from reality without mucho mucho dollars. Up to an including spare power plant(s) "just in case" a black start would be required. I could believe it takes multiple hours just to fully start a single coal plant. Let alone align the frequencies across multiple stations in the grid.

butlerm 3y ago
I imagine in most black start scenarios the coal plant would already be warm. If black start takes a day and the coal plant cannot operate without external power then maybe not so much. I don't think you need spare power plants so much as backup generators that can provide internal power to start a black start capable power plant up. If you do not have enough black start capable power plants that is not a good thing of course.
- XorNot 3y ago
  But it's not just that: to black start the grid you have to shed load - that is, you need to trip all the breakers along the grid, and then very carefully restore loads to avoid knocking yourself offline again. You just plain aren't going to do that in an hour when you're offline because someone trashed your automated systems - resetting and restoring the grid would require people on site, in communication. That's not happening in an hour without staggering expense.
darkclouds 3y ago
I think all recent wars have demonstrated including the Ukraine war, that there are enough guided missiles to take out all power generating facilities, if you wanted to reap havoc on a country. So at the top, all the leaders are just trolling the populace.
Animats 3y ago
There's an industry group working on this.[1] They're worried. One big concern that hasn't been well addressed is the interaction between natural gas infrastructure and electrical power generation. The 2021 Texas outage made this clear. "Five times more natural gas than wind power had been lost. When power was cut, it disabled some compressors that push gas through pipelines, knocking out further gas plants due to lack of supply."[2] If more of the Texas grid had gone down (it was close), it would have taken far longer to restart. Especially with frozen water in the pipelines. Nuclear, coal, hydro, solar, and wind plants have their own local fuel supply, but natural gas plants usually do not. The pipeline system and compressors need to be brought up first. This is especially a concern after the 2021 pipeline ransomware attack.[3] PJM's internal 2019 study has concerns about this.[4] [1] https://protectourpower.org https://protectourpower.org [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2021_Texas_power_crisis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2021_Texas_power_crisis [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colonial_Pipeline_ransomware_attack https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colonial_Pipeline_ransomware_a... [4] https://www.pjm.com/-/media/committees-groups/committees/oc/20191210-special/20191210-fuel-requirements-for-black-start-resources-q-and-a.ashx https://www.pjm.com/-/media/committees-groups/committees/oc/...
- jkhdigital 3y ago
  > When power was cut, it disabled some compressors that push gas through pipelines Every Factorio player knows you never power your generator pumps with the primary power source

butlerm 3y ago

I imagine in most black start scenarios the coal plant would already be warm. If black start takes a day and the coal plant cannot operate without external power then maybe not so much. I don't think you need spare power plants so much as backup generators that can provide internal power to start a black start capable power plant up. If you do not have enough black start capable power plants that is not a good thing of course.

XorNot 3y ago
But it's not just that: to black start the grid you have to shed load - that is, you need to trip all the breakers along the grid, and then very carefully restore loads to avoid knocking yourself offline again. You just plain aren't going to do that in an hour when you're offline because someone trashed your automated systems - resetting and restoring the grid would require people on site, in communication. That's not happening in an hour without staggering expense.

darkclouds 3y ago

I think all recent wars have demonstrated including the Ukraine war, that there are enough guided missiles to take out all power generating facilities, if you wanted to reap havoc on a country. So at the top, all the leaders are just trolling the populace.

Animats 3y ago

There's an industry group working on this.[1] They're worried. One big concern that hasn't been well addressed is the interaction between natural gas infrastructure and electrical power generation. The 2021 Texas outage made this clear. "Five times more natural gas than wind power had been lost. When power was cut, it disabled some compressors that push gas through pipelines, knocking out further gas plants due to lack of supply."[2] If more of the Texas grid had gone down (it was close), it would have taken far longer to restart. Especially with frozen water in the pipelines. Nuclear, coal, hydro, solar, and wind plants have their own local fuel supply, but natural gas plants usually do not. The pipeline system and compressors need to be brought up first. This is especially a concern after the 2021 pipeline ransomware attack.[3] PJM's internal 2019 study has concerns about this.[4] [1] https://protectourpower.org https://protectourpower.org [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2021_Texas_power_crisis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2021_Texas_power_crisis [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colonial_Pipeline_ransomware_attack https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colonial_Pipeline_ransomware_a... [4] https://www.pjm.com/-/media/committees-groups/committees/oc/20191210-special/20191210-fuel-requirements-for-black-start-resources-q-and-a.ashx https://www.pjm.com/-/media/committees-groups/committees/oc/...

jkhdigital 3y ago
> When power was cut, it disabled some compressors that push gas through pipelines Every Factorio player knows you never power your generator pumps with the primary power source