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Europe still has many megawatts of solar with inverters that disconnect when detecting any grid disruption. This is the absolute worst thing to do when there i

Europe still has many megawatts of solar with inverters that disconnect when detecting any grid disruption. This is the absolute worst thing to do when there is a shortage of power - you immediately make the shortage worse and more grid disconnects. The real fix is a grid with second by second pricing based on system frequency, and every individual user allowed to set a daily 'spend cap' of euros/dollars, letting them choose how much they are willing to pay for reliability. Such an market has a huge stabilizing effect on demand, meaning a major incident would probably only have fairly small impacts on system frequency and embedded solar wouldn't disconnect.

0xTJ 2y ago
This sounds more like a dystopian novel, where only the wealthy can afford stable power and everyone else is left without.
- londons_explore 2y ago
  The current system is that everyone pays equally for X amount of stability, and for some people they don't get as much stability as they desire (eg. These people in Spain), whilst others pay more money and than they'd like when they would be fine with 5 minutes outages once a year. That made sense before technology became available for everyone to make their own choice - but that is no longer the case.
- doix 2y ago
  That is basically what happens in South Africa today. There are rolling blackouts and rich people with backup generators and batteries are unaffected. It's gotten to the point where richer cities (like Capetown) have their own power sources to mitigate the problem.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
littlestymaar 2y ago
This comment is Dunning-Kruger effect in action… Believe it or not, but maintaining an electricity grid is a massive undertaking, and the people in charge of it knows the topic much better than you do. The problem isn't a market problem, it's a physics problem: having a synchronized grid of AC current with many producers over a wide area is a real challenge, even when the underlying issue is resolved it takes a lot of time to add the power plants (or renewable equivalent) to the grid because they must be synchronized.
- rightbyte 2y ago
  Having such interdependent grids seems like a market or political problem not a physics problem to me.
  - pjc50 2y ago
    Interdependent grids are usually good: they allow you to average out the effect of a single power station failure over a much larger area, and to amortize prices from a wider area of suppliers.
    - rightbyte 2y ago
      Sure but if you can't cut off failing parts in a sane way it seems like a liability. Like, what can you do, use some 1000 of MW to melt iron rods or something to give the power stations time to slow down? Free wheels?
      - littlestymaar 2y ago
        What the heck are you talking about? Don't you realize that the smaller the grid, the more important the instantaneous load variations can be in relative term and the harder it is to keep things running smoothly? It's not a theoretical concern, it's why electric networks on islands are much harder to work with and much more prone to collapse than bigger networks.
        2y ago
dist-epoch 2y ago
Texas had a pretty free market, with many users on a floating price, didn't work that well either a few years ago when their grid went dawn.
- Dma54rhs 2y ago
  EU electricity market is very similar to it, but interconnected and probably more free market style. A lot of people pay the spot price depending on county and their provider of course.
- xp84 2y ago
  I didn’t really find anything problematic from an economic standpoint with the Texas power disaster. On the surface, the main problem there was just that a bunch of people were on spot energy plans, in order to save tremendous amount of money as long as the spot price stayed low. This is simply gambling. Those people after some period of savings suddenly cried foul when their gamble went south as prices spiked. The only issue I see here is if they weren’t adequately informed of that possibility. Obviously, the people who got the $2000 electricity bills are going to be the decide they weren’t informed adequately, and I’m sure it was spelled out in a document the size of an iTunes license agreement that literally no customer ever read. But anyway those people had themselves to blame as that plan was not mandatory or default.
ajsnigrutin 2y ago
Oh god. Let's skip the technical problems in your theory and focus on the social. People need power to survive. You know, food, hot water, light, work, internet, mobile phones, entertainment, etc. This requires stability, not second by second pricing. When you put a chicken in an oven, you want to cook that chicken and eat it, feed your family. Electricity price rising in the next few minutes would mean that you either have to risk disease (chicken staying in the dangerous temperatures until the electricity price drops) or being hungry and throwing food away. This is not how you want society to function.
acc_297 2y ago
You require inertia in the grid to maintain frequency and other stability stuff. Solar PV is great but is mostly grid-following so cannot operate on it's own. As I understand it you need a minimum fraction of power generation to be large spinning turbines. I think this problem can be mitigated with add-on rotational mass style kinetic energy batteries or something like that. I don't think variable energy pricing will help if it's an issue with over-demand the grid managers can do rolling blackouts to manage while fixing the supply problems. The grid is just broken at the moment and the solar can't maintain the grid alone. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverter-based_resource https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverter-based_resource
- thyristan 2y ago
  Large Inverter Based Resources (IBR) such as huge solar parcs, grid-scale batteries or high-voltage direct-current (HVDC) lines can be programmed to behave like rotating generators, or even to smooth out smaller ripples. They also don't necessarily need a leading grid frequency but can be used to generate their own frequency normal to cold-start or resync a grid. Only "small stuff" IBRs need a leading frequency from the grid and disconnect outside their safety corridor because those usually aren't controllable from some central grid authority. Thus the stupid-but-safe behaviour mandated for them.
  - eldaisfish 2y ago
    While this is plausible, this solution works in the world of simulations. We do not have a solid understanding of how inverter-based fast frequency response works with an existing grid that uses physics-based inertia.
- VagabundoP 2y ago
  What about large scale distributed containerised Iron Salt batteries? I've seen some papers saying that they help stabilise grids.
eldaisfish 2y ago
This is the exact kind of techbro nonsense that I’ve come to expect from this website. No empathy for your fellow humans and dressed with a side of “computers and code plus finance”. I thank the heavens that the people who run the electricity system do not share your opinions.

0xTJ 2y ago

This sounds more like a dystopian novel, where only the wealthy can afford stable power and everyone else is left without.

londons_explore 2y ago
The current system is that everyone pays equally for X amount of stability, and for some people they don't get as much stability as they desire (eg. These people in Spain), whilst others pay more money and than they'd like when they would be fine with 5 minutes outages once a year. That made sense before technology became available for everyone to make their own choice - but that is no longer the case.
doix 2y ago
That is basically what happens in South Africa today. There are rolling blackouts and rich people with backup generators and batteries are unaffected. It's gotten to the point where richer cities (like Capetown) have their own power sources to mitigate the problem.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]

littlestymaar 2y ago

This comment is Dunning-Kruger effect in action… Believe it or not, but maintaining an electricity grid is a massive undertaking, and the people in charge of it knows the topic much better than you do. The problem isn't a market problem, it's a physics problem: having a synchronized grid of AC current with many producers over a wide area is a real challenge, even when the underlying issue is resolved it takes a lot of time to add the power plants (or renewable equivalent) to the grid because they must be synchronized.

rightbyte 2y ago
Having such interdependent grids seems like a market or political problem not a physics problem to me.
- pjc50 2y ago
  Interdependent grids are usually good: they allow you to average out the effect of a single power station failure over a much larger area, and to amortize prices from a wider area of suppliers.
  - rightbyte 2y ago
    Sure but if you can't cut off failing parts in a sane way it seems like a liability. Like, what can you do, use some 1000 of MW to melt iron rods or something to give the power stations time to slow down? Free wheels?
    - littlestymaar 2y ago
      What the heck are you talking about? Don't you realize that the smaller the grid, the more important the instantaneous load variations can be in relative term and the harder it is to keep things running smoothly? It's not a theoretical concern, it's why electric networks on islands are much harder to work with and much more prone to collapse than bigger networks.
      - 2y ago

dist-epoch 2y ago

Texas had a pretty free market, with many users on a floating price, didn't work that well either a few years ago when their grid went dawn.

Dma54rhs 2y ago
EU electricity market is very similar to it, but interconnected and probably more free market style. A lot of people pay the spot price depending on county and their provider of course.
xp84 2y ago
I didn’t really find anything problematic from an economic standpoint with the Texas power disaster. On the surface, the main problem there was just that a bunch of people were on spot energy plans, in order to save tremendous amount of money as long as the spot price stayed low. This is simply gambling. Those people after some period of savings suddenly cried foul when their gamble went south as prices spiked. The only issue I see here is if they weren’t adequately informed of that possibility. Obviously, the people who got the $2000 electricity bills are going to be the decide they weren’t informed adequately, and I’m sure it was spelled out in a document the size of an iTunes license agreement that literally no customer ever read. But anyway those people had themselves to blame as that plan was not mandatory or default.

ajsnigrutin 2y ago

Oh god. Let's skip the technical problems in your theory and focus on the social. People need power to survive. You know, food, hot water, light, work, internet, mobile phones, entertainment, etc. This requires stability, not second by second pricing. When you put a chicken in an oven, you want to cook that chicken and eat it, feed your family. Electricity price rising in the next few minutes would mean that you either have to risk disease (chicken staying in the dangerous temperatures until the electricity price drops) or being hungry and throwing food away. This is not how you want society to function.

acc_297 2y ago

You require inertia in the grid to maintain frequency and other stability stuff. Solar PV is great but is mostly grid-following so cannot operate on it's own. As I understand it you need a minimum fraction of power generation to be large spinning turbines. I think this problem can be mitigated with add-on rotational mass style kinetic energy batteries or something like that. I don't think variable energy pricing will help if it's an issue with over-demand the grid managers can do rolling blackouts to manage while fixing the supply problems. The grid is just broken at the moment and the solar can't maintain the grid alone. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverter-based_resource https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverter-based_resource

thyristan 2y ago
Large Inverter Based Resources (IBR) such as huge solar parcs, grid-scale batteries or high-voltage direct-current (HVDC) lines can be programmed to behave like rotating generators, or even to smooth out smaller ripples. They also don't necessarily need a leading grid frequency but can be used to generate their own frequency normal to cold-start or resync a grid. Only "small stuff" IBRs need a leading frequency from the grid and disconnect outside their safety corridor because those usually aren't controllable from some central grid authority. Thus the stupid-but-safe behaviour mandated for them.
- eldaisfish 2y ago
  While this is plausible, this solution works in the world of simulations. We do not have a solid understanding of how inverter-based fast frequency response works with an existing grid that uses physics-based inertia.
VagabundoP 2y ago
What about large scale distributed containerised Iron Salt batteries? I've seen some papers saying that they help stabilise grids.

eldaisfish 2y ago

This is the exact kind of techbro nonsense that I’ve come to expect from this website. No empathy for your fellow humans and dressed with a side of “computers and code plus finance”. I thank the heavens that the people who run the electricity system do not share your opinions.