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On Saturday (8th of Feb), Baltic countries will disconnect from the Russian power grid and synchronise with the Continental European electricity system. They wi
by RvdV 2y ago
On Saturday (8th of Feb), Baltic countries will disconnect from the Russian power grid and synchronise with the Continental European electricity system. They will operate in "island mode" for 33 hours, and then synchronize with the European grid frequency.
The frequency is a key parameter of the grid. If there is too much load, it goes down, and if there is too much production it goes up. A lot of critical grid infrastructure relies on the frequency being in the 49.5-50.5 Hz range.
I built a tool together with some colleagues to track the grid frequency in real time during this operation over the past few days to follow this process in real time!
If you're curious for more details, there is also a great post on the Estonian TSO's website about the process:
https://elering.ee/en/synchronization-continental-europe https://elering.ee/en/synchronization-continental-europe
- bz_bz_bz 2y agoSurprised this isn’t already available. Does Estonia only publish 5 minute frequency data?
- 1970-01-01 2y agoOff-topic; Why does America use 60Hz? I've never found a satisfactory answer.
- clarionbell 2y agoThese frequencies are often inherited from whoever was the first grid operator, and electricity producer. Same goes for lot of other parameters.
- Retric 2y agoA better question is why does Japan use Both 60 Hz and 50 Hz in different areas? And that’s really just a legacy from early decisions at different companies when the grid was first introduced, and there’s never been a sufficiently compelling reason for either to swap. 60 Hz is slightly better in terms of flickering, but neither has enough advantages to really be a determining factor on their own.
- mywittyname 2y agoIsn't this a side effect of one area of Japan building their electrical grid with components from British manufactures while the other used American-made components?
- nom 2y agoyeah, they had to buy what they can get. IIRC it was German AEG and General Electric
- sidewndr46 2y agoUS did the same, Southern California was 50 Hz at first. It didn't convert until after WWII
- applied_heat 2y agoThere was 25 Hz infrastructure in Ontario until the 1950s https://www.lifebynumbers.ca/history/the-rise-and-fall-of-25-cycle-hz-electricity-in-ontario/ https://www.lifebynumbers.ca/history/the-rise-and-fall-of-25...
- cf100clunk 2y agoYep, the government had to go house-by-house, building-by-building replacing all electrically powered devices that could not be adapted. Thankfully it also happened early in the era of electronic devices.
- sidewndr46 2y agoit's substantially easier to run modern electronics off random frequency power than other stuff like an induction motor. A typical power supply is rated for 47 Hz- 63 Hz. But it'll happily run off almost anything higher than 10 hz and lower than 1000 hz. universal motors in particular do not care at all about frequency
- sidewndr46 2y ago
- SideburnsOfDoom 2y agoThings are the way they are because they got that way over time. Civil infrastructure is legacy systems all the way down. Once a choice is made, it's hard to change. In the city where I am, some of the design decisions date back to the Romans.
- mmooss 2y agoWhoever chose it must have been aware of the use of 60 in time measurement and its practicality: 60 min/hr, 60 sec/min, 60 cycles/sec.
- 1970-01-01 2y agoTime traveling Babylonians are proud to have 60Hz electricity.
- causality0 2y ago50 and 60Hz were about equal in transmission efficiency but in 1891 Westinghouse engineers decided 60Hz produced less perceptible flickering in light sources.
- zokier 2y ago> They were disposed to adopt 50 cycles, but American arc light carbons then available commercially did not give good results at that frequency and this was an important feature which led them to go higher "The origins of 60-Hz as a power frequency" https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/628099 https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/628099 Better question is why did Germans pick 50 Hz, I'm not aware of any comparable benefits of having lower frequency
- cedilla 2y agoIf I read your source correctly, there is no real advantage of 60 Hertz or 50 Hertz, and the decision was usually due to circumstantial reasons, like supporting some existing arc-lights or difficulties with induction motors. Induction motors are also the reason why some railways chose to use 16⅔ Hertz, still in use to this day. In the end, there is no real difference between 50 or 60 Hz, there is no clear advantage to either, especially with modern components. But you do have to choose as the whole network is synchronous.
- SECProto 2y ago50 Hz is a lot easier to math (50 Hz = 0.02/s, 60 Hz = 0.0166666). Don't know if that's why, but it very easily could be.
- bonzini 2y ago60 is the easier one, in that you can divide it by 3/4/6/12 and have an integer frequency. Probably the reason why a lot of Babylonian math used base 60, which is where our time and angle measurements come from.
- foobarian 2y agoI am endlessly fascinated that the grid frequency across an area the size of entire countries/continents gets driven, at the end of the day, mechanically by countless titanic sized spinning machines that slow down when more load is offered, and vice versa.
- emchammer 2y agoThe shafts are so enormous and heavy that they must be driven by an auxiliary motor when not in use in order to prevent them from permanently sagging.
- mrweasel 2y agoThe "European" grid also expands to northern Africa[0]. The Wikipedia map is a little weird, because I remember doing consulting for an energy company at the time the two Danish grids were combined. I suppose it has to do with transmission capacity, but technically Denmark can route power from west to east (the other way is typically less useful as the majority of the power generation is in the west). Western Denmark also has cable running to at least Sweden and so does Germany, so why it's not viewed as one network seem strange. 0) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synchronous_grid_of_Continental_Europe https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synchronous_grid_of_Continenta...
- adolph 2y agoFor other folks who find grid identity as a shared frequency fascinating, this week's Complex Systems podcast won't disappoint. https://www.complexsystemspodcast.com/episodes/electricity-grids-travis-dauwalter/ https://www.complexsystemspodcast.com/episodes/electricity-g...