2 ms·
At an extremely abstract level, it is conceptually simple, but most inverters are designed with safeguards to prevent exactly this. They only produce power when
by myself248 1y ago
At an extremely abstract level, it is conceptually simple, but most inverters are designed with safeguards to prevent exactly this. They only produce power when the grid is up, and in phase with it.
Because if not sequenced and interlocked, islanding behavior can result in back-powering parts of the grid that are supposed to be disconnected and down for maintenance, or creation of desynchronized islands that then cause more damage when reconnected.
This is absolutely a problem that operators need to solve. Radio synchronization is possible, neighborhood islanding could be beneficial, etc. There are entire village-wide micro-grids in remote places where everyone's inverters do perform these functions, it just hasn't been embraced in monopoly environments yet.
For instance, relays that close isolated parts back onto the main network would need to be phase-aware, to only reconnect if it's safe to do so. You could mandate that all island-mode inverters center themselves around 50.1 or 60.1Hz in the absence of outside influence so there's certain to be phasing opportunities. Distribution networks would need more switches to provide positive isolation during maintenance. And all of these things would need huge amounts of interoperability testing. It's possible, but it has a cost.
- zeristor 1y agoThanks for the excellent insight. I’m guessing this could be more of a thing in the future to make the grid more robust. Didn’t Australia have a similar issue a few years back, which Tesla built a large grid battery to resolve, not just for storage but for stability.
- LorenPechtel 1y agoIt's not just a matter of monopolies, but risk tolerance. Only dance to the master's tune is a failsafe measure, ensuring a malfunctioning (or deliberately hacked--think of people using gay extension cords to plug generators into their house rather than the expense of a proper transfer switch) inverter doesn't electrocute a lineman. If everyone's inverter can feed the line you have a situation where you can never be confident the line is dead and you must always work the line as if it were hot.