6 ms·

Spain-Portugal blackouts: what happened

56 points by VagabundoP 1y ago

VagabundoP 1y ago
Systemic failures, too much power generation and not enough stability.
- therein 1y ago
  Pretend you're surprised when they ramp up on blocking the sun. Edit: Downvote this if it will help you remember when they do it soon. But by downvoting you are hereby agreeing to not to act like you are surprised when it happens.
- anthk 1y ago
  In my zone we got the power back two hours after the blackout.
timmg 1y ago
I'm having a hard time understanding how we can move the bulk of our energy to renewables without some kind of massive storage system. The wind can die for long periods. It can get abnormally cloudy for long periods. There's nighttime and winter. I'm no expert, but is there any storage system that is practical that can store the amount of energy we'd need to have most (all) electricity come from renewables?
- lxgr 1y ago
  Some hydroelectric plants can pump water back up and both absorb excess supply and provide stabilization during demand spikes. I have no idea if it’s feasible to fill longer-term gaps during extended cloudy/windless days and nights using that alone, though. Other than that, there are already large-scale battery plants deployed in some cities. Another approach is to control the demand side: When air conditioning or heating with electricity, minutes usually don’t matter, and dropping/providing extra load at very short notice should be feasible in a smart grid.
  - padjo 1y ago
    It is entirely infeasible to used pumped hydro alone to solve our energy storage problems. They’re a great component of the solution but they’re big expensive environmentally disruptive projects and there are limited suitable sites.
    - grues-dinner 1y ago
      They're also quite inefficient (75% ish, which is not horrible, but still something) as you lose energy both in pumping and generation. So the more you use them, the more energy you need in the first place, so you try not to use them too much. And the worst thing for a capital intensive business is to not get used much. Even with the arbitrage advantage, it takes a long time to pay it off. The grid may pay a "retainer" to sweeten the deal but you can't just build more and expect them all to get that benefit. It's similar to the problem that "use excess energy to electrolyse water into hydrogen" has: no-one running a multi-billion electrolyser really wants to run it a few hours a day only when the grid is oversupplied. And in top of that, risk being cut off at the knees decades before breakeven if someone comes along with a cheaper/more profitable way to deal with the oversupply.
- Tagbert 1y ago
  That’s why Grid Storage is a major topic in power generation and renewables. The technology and economics are evolving. A lot of people are working on finding a storage solution that is both durable and economical. One solution is probably not going to solve for all situations. In the meantime, load sharing is used to distribute power across a power grid for cases where one area has more power and another area needs power. For instance, wind may die out in one area but over larger areas there are usually still areas with wind. It’s harder with solar, of course.
  - asdefghyk 1y ago
    RE "....load sharing is used to distribute power across a power grid ....." TO distribute power across the grid - on a large scale fashion , would require a new power ( very expensive) power distribution network. The base problem with renewable solar and wind is its not reliable. an have outages for SEVERAL days
- padjo 1y ago
  We can do the bulk of it, i.e. more than 50%, by geographic and modal aggregation fairly easily. Doing all of it from renewables is still an unsolved problem that would require better energy storage.
  - bryanlarsen 1y ago
    There's always wind or sun somewhere in Europe, there has never been an hour without both across the entire continent in the last 30 years.
    - Animats 1y ago
      > There's always wind or sun somewhere in Europe. Not necessarily enough wind to be useful. If you look at graphs of wind turbine output across entire large power grids, you see 4:1 variations in a day over the PJM and CAISO regions. That's irrelevant to this blackout, anyway. This blackout occurred during a period when supply far exceeded demand.
- Someone 1y ago
  Having enormous synchronized grids helps a bit with that. It’s highly unlikely to be abnormally cloudy/calm over the whole of Europe, for example, so Europe’s large grid (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continental_Europe_Synchronous_Area https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continental_Europe_Synchronous...) can be used to move electricity from where there’s excess energy from solar or wind to where there’s a deficit. That requires large capacity connections, though that aren’t everywhere yet.I understand electricity was restored in the south of France much more rapidly last week than in Spain and Portugal because it’s much better connected to the rest of Europe.
  - JetSpiegel 1y ago
    The reason why the Iberian grid is not better connected to France might have something to do with French Nuclear not wanting to be bankrupted by cheap renewables from southern countries, this was the word on the street a ehi'e back, when the push for renewables in Spain in Portugal was starting up. This is a political problem, having Mitteleuropa depend on power from Putin is apparently OK, but on lazy southerners is verboten. Hopefully this blackout changes that (but I'm not holding my breath).
    - Someone 1y ago
      I would think the original reasons are the Pyrenees and the relatively low population density around it. If you look at the European road and rail networks, you’ll find France and Spain aren’t well-connected, either.
      - JetSpiegel 1y ago
        The network connection doesn't really depend on the population density around there. I'm not saying it's a simple technical problem, but it's not insurmountable either.
- bryanlarsen 1y ago
  We have very detailed continental weather readings for over a century and can build very good statistical models. So you just ask a supercomputer to find the lowest cost solution for 99.99% electrical coverage without using any carbon sources. It's quite possible -- over the previous 30 years we've never had an hour where there was no wind & sun anywhere in Europe. So we could theoretically solve it without storage, but that would require an insane amount of overbuild and interconnect. Imagine supplying all of Europe's electricity needs with just wind power from the south shore of Ireland. Adding a few days worth of storage reduces the interconnect & overbuild needs dramatically, putting 99.99% carbon free within the realm of the possible.
  - timmg 1y ago
    > So you just ask a supercomputer to find the lowest cost solution for 99.99% electrical coverage without using any carbon sources. Sure... but my expectation is that that 90% solution would include an unreasonable amount of storage (assuming you want most/all renewables). I guess was my point. > It's quite possible -- over the previous 30 years we've never had an hour where there was no wind & sun anywhere in Europe. But "some" wind or sun is not enough to support the whole grid.
    - bryanlarsen 1y ago
      I wouldn't assume all or even most renewables. I would assume you'd continue to use existing hydro and nuclear. The nuclear would help a little, but the hydro helps a lot. It's capacity can be saved for times when wind and solar are low. In that scenario 90% is very easy to hit. A couple of hours worth of storage, maybe. > But "some" wind or sun is not enough to support the whole grid. The less there is, the more you have to over build to compensate. Doesn't make it impossible.
- VagabundoP 1y ago
  This is my favourite tech as its cheap and safe: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_redox_flow_battery https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_redox_flow_battery Its commercially available right now as well. Its not as efficient as lithium or as energy dense, but that doesnt matter if you're putting them in wind/solar farms.
briandw 1y ago
I asked O3 for an analysis on how much battery power would have been needed to prevent this from happening again. The TLDR is: 1. The grid went dark because 15 GW of generation vanished in five seconds. 2. Need to bridge for 10mins -> 2.5GWh needed, with margin 3-4GWh 3. Need a 6C system, 15 GW / 3 GWh 4. Cost ≈€3 B all‑in, or €55 per Iberian resident However the lead time is going to be an issue: Need 7500 Tesla Megapacks and thats 4‑5 months of combined annual capacity for Tesla. Currently there is a 18 to 24 month backlog. Then there is 6-9 month installation time. So 3 years to fix this, min. It's a shame that these renewable energy transitions are managed so poorly. This was a predictable outcome and it's negligence that they went ahead with switching so much of the grid to renewable without accounting for the needed for stability. It hurts the mission of switching to renewable energy.
- johnea 1y ago
  An interesting calculation, but why do you assume all the battery storage would have to come from tesla? I'm looking at whole-house battery backup for a little construction projct underway here. This is a boom market at the moment, and there are many other manufacturers in production. I can only assume this is also the case for industrial scale storage...
  - VagabundoP 1y ago
    Exactly finding other non-lithium battery tech to use for these just makes sense: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_redox_flow_battery https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_redox_flow_battery
    - briandw 1y ago
      Sounds great, but when will that be commercially available at scale? I didn't find any installations in a quick search.
      - VagabundoP 1y ago
        https://voltstorage.com/en/solutions/the-voltstorage-iron-salt-battery https://voltstorage.com/en/solutions/the-voltstorage-iron-sa... These have commercial products already I believe. I'm not sure if they have any installed yet. They have moved from vanadium batteries.
hyperman1 1y ago
I've seen a few articles of The Conversation/Europe on HN, and it seems an interesting news source. Wikipedia also gives some insight. I've just subscribed. Does HN know about their agenda's, biases, blind spots. Not necessarily to shoot them down, just to be aware of them. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Conversation_(website) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Conversation_(website)
- aaron695 1y ago
  [dead]
- VagabundoP 1y ago
  Yeah they seem good: https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/the-conversation/ https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/the-conversation/
grandinj 1y ago
This article starts by saying "we dont know what actually happened here, or why" and then goes on to make various insinuations and suppositions, and then proposes policy based on that. This not useful. More data is required.
- readthenotes1 1y ago
  "The diagnosis This unusual situation points to a perfect storm of poor grid management and inadequate connections of solar facilities to the grid, as well as other unknown faults. In my opinion, there is a good chance ..." We don't really know, I don't really know, but I'm going to write a long post about it.
- Animats 1y ago
  Agreed. He's just running off press reports. We haven't yet seen the sequence of breaker trip events. We haven't yet seen the graphs of power flows at tie points, and of frequency and voltage error. The closest thing to a useful fact visible from Google seems to be: "The network lost 15 gigawatts of electricity generation in five seconds at around 1033 GMT, the Energy Ministry said on Monday evening, without explaining the reason for the loss." That's not a cause. Losing 15GW all at once, more power than any one plant generates, indicates some previous event had caused breaker trips somewhere. No indication of the previous event. We do know this wasn't a supply shortage. There was plenty of generating capacity online. Here's an analysis of the US Northeast blackout of 2003.[1] Until we start to see that level of detail, it's just blithering. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northeast_blackout_of_2003 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northeast_blackout_of_2003
  - b112 1y ago
    Unless someone diverted all that power for some purpose. Classic scifi might be a time traveller trying to get home, or someone opening an interdimensional gateway, or maybe an AI becoming conscious and needing the power to ascend.
    - Calwestjobs 1y ago
johnea 1y ago
> However, variable renewable sources, such as solar photovoltaic, do not have this capability. They generate direct current which is converted to alternating current at 50 Hertz, but they cannot react automatically to frequency variations. This part didn't make sense to me. The rotating machinery of hydroelectric, or nuclear's steam generators, produce the frequency of AC in synchronization with their mechanical rotation, but the inverters converting solar's DC into AC are making a purely synthesized waveform under control of high speed digital electronics. I would think they should be the most able to modify the AC sine wave they are generating. Maybe someone can comment and correct my logic...
- hencq 1y ago
  I remember reading an article about exactly that some time last year: https://spectrum.ieee.org/electric-inverter https://spectrum.ieee.org/electric-inverter The technology is grid forming inverters, unlike the normal grid following converters. I'm definitely not an expert, but I think the part you're quoting is hinting at the following: > Grid-following inverters operate only if they can “see” an existing voltage and frequency on the grid that they can synchronize to. They rely on controls that sense the frequency of the voltage waveform and lock onto that signal, usually by means of a technology called a phase-locked loop. So if the grid goes down, these inverters will stop injecting power because there is no voltage to follow. A key point here is that grid-following inverters do not deliver any inertia.
  - asdefghyk 1y ago
    From the linked ieee articale ..... Not yet commercially available .... For photovoltaics and wind, grid-forming inverters are not yet commercially available at the size and scale needed for large grids, but they are now being developed by GE Vernova, Enphase, and Solectria......
    - ViewTrick1002 1y ago
      Stick a battery with your renewable plant and they are available. Like the article also says.
jmole 1y ago
> To facilitate this synchronisation, stable base-load power is required, which is normally provided by nuclear and other large gas and hydroelectric facilities. These sources act as a natural buffer against disturbances, helping to keep the frequency stable in the face of sudden changes in generation or demand. In theory, it seems like you could instrument a photovoltaic array to carry some "inertia" with the right control system. If you need to feed power, you run some power point tracking algorithm, and if you need to consume power, you just overbias the cells and heat them up.
- padjo 1y ago
  Yep it’s called synthetic inertia. Solar and wind can both offer it. Wind can actually offer loads of it it’s just not as easy since it’s not synchronous.
- anonymousiam 1y ago
  In a system of micro-inverters, they need something to synchronize with. There needs to be a "truth" reference, so they can push their power onto the grid by slightly leading the phase of that. If some critical mass of PV micro-inverters exceeds the traditional generators, they'll push so hard that the grid itself will change phase, and blackouts are the result. One possible solution might be to use a better oscillator in the micro-inverter and limit the rate of phase shift. Unfortunately, the grids of the world have been moving in the opposite direction and now allow more drift than in the past, so where do you draw the line? https://medium.com/@brandonvar/power-grid-stability-issues-aaeb41865718 https://medium.com/@brandonvar/power-grid-stability-issues-a...
  - Calwestjobs 1y ago
    apparent vs real power is your answer.
  - robocat 1y ago
    > they'll push so hard that the grid itself will change phase That's a thundering herd problem: where all invertors have the same set-points and they all are synchonised to push in the same direction at once. In networks, thundering herd problems are fixed by given each sender different random delays. For power networks we could choose statistical methods to get individual solar generators to lead or lag so that the frequency becomes an aggregate vote. Given that part of the blackout was due to large amounts of solar going offline at the same time, it's possible that all invertors with common software were tripped at the same set-point. So trip conditions also need to be randomly fuzzy. E.g. if frequency drops below 49Hz +/- random spread of 0.5Hz. Although it's difficult to match financial incentives against random variations (individual generators are incentivised to power outside of boundaries to keep getting paid, and a trip event can be expensive - due to restart costs). Electricity market design is hard because the design needs to be resilient to perverse incentives.
throw09093 1y ago
> At that time the price of electricity on the official market was in the negative at around -1€/MWh. > Current evidence therefore points to a problem in the synchronisation of the grid. All sources feeding power into the grid must be synchronised at the same frequency, 50 Hertz. To facilitate this synchronisation, stable base-load power is required, which is normally provided by nuclear and other large gas and hydroelectric facilities. These sources act as a natural buffer against disturbances So: - price is negative, so solar automatically disconnects not to pay for providing electricity - nuclear is overloaded at unexpected time, it also disconnect due to safety. Seems like a bug in accounting software for solar power plants. It disconnected too many power plants too quickly! I bet like 40% of solar plants are using the same software for managing connectivity.
Calwestjobs 1y ago
I stopped reading after this, sorry you totally lost me, im blocking this website: "However, variable renewable sources, such as solar photovoltaic, do not have this capability. They generate direct current which is converted to alternating current at 50 Hertz, but they cannot react automatically to frequency variations. " Nonsense. Go to any solar installer and ask him about this capability. or go to your roofs PV inverters manual and look up section about inputting "grid parameters". Writer is either total ignorant or bad actor.
- anonymousiam 1y ago
  I'm fairly knowledgeable on this topic, and I disagree that the author is ignorant or malicious. I think he was just trying to "dumb it down" for the masses. https://theconversation.com/profiles/j-guillermo-sanchez-leon-997458 https://theconversation.com/profiles/j-guillermo-sanchez-leo...
- throw09093 1y ago
  I read quite lot about connecting Ukraine power grid to EU. Small variations in frequency and phase are quite real problem. It is quite a big problem to synchronise large international grids, and tiny PV inverter is really not build to do that! Plus from manual, most AC inverters have parasitic power factor on AC side. Some part of power inverter sends to grid, can be out of sync junk! Large spinning turbines with generator, are capable of absorbing out of sync junk to huge extend. But that may put turbine out of phase slightly. Current power grid was build around huge wheels spinning at the very same frequency.
agarsev 1y ago
> much of the available energy was being used to pump water from low lying river basins into reservoirs – the only practical way to store energy on a large scale. However, this capacity has a limit and, with the reservoirs almost full, it cannot continue to be stored indefinitely. There has been unusually heavy rain in Spain for an unusual length of time now, and reservoirs are well beyond average capacity.[1] I wonder if this anomalous situation has anything to do with the blackout. Maybe the inability to continue pumping water led to the shutdown of the solar, maybe for economic reasons as is suggested in some other comment? [1] https://www.embalses.net/ https://www.embalses.net/
- howard941 1y ago
  Can the excess water be dumped out to waste generating just enough power for grid stability?
LargoLasskhyfv 1y ago
Fu....g Ghost Riders in the Sky happened. Yippie Yah Hoo, Yippie Yah Yay! Try https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0TPOj4CTGKs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0TPOj4CTGKs if you don't get it ;-)
insane_dreamer 1y ago
Sure more data is required, but the article is not useless. This shouldn't have been flagged.

56 points by VagabundoP 1y ago

VagabundoP 1y ago

Systemic failures, too much power generation and not enough stability.

therein 1y ago
Pretend you're surprised when they ramp up on blocking the sun. Edit: Downvote this if it will help you remember when they do it soon. But by downvoting you are hereby agreeing to not to act like you are surprised when it happens.
anthk 1y ago
In my zone we got the power back two hours after the blackout.

timmg 1y ago

I'm having a hard time understanding how we can move the bulk of our energy to renewables without some kind of massive storage system. The wind can die for long periods. It can get abnormally cloudy for long periods. There's nighttime and winter. I'm no expert, but is there any storage system that is practical that can store the amount of energy we'd need to have most (all) electricity come from renewables?

lxgr 1y ago
Some hydroelectric plants can pump water back up and both absorb excess supply and provide stabilization during demand spikes. I have no idea if it’s feasible to fill longer-term gaps during extended cloudy/windless days and nights using that alone, though. Other than that, there are already large-scale battery plants deployed in some cities. Another approach is to control the demand side: When air conditioning or heating with electricity, minutes usually don’t matter, and dropping/providing extra load at very short notice should be feasible in a smart grid.
- padjo 1y ago
  It is entirely infeasible to used pumped hydro alone to solve our energy storage problems. They’re a great component of the solution but they’re big expensive environmentally disruptive projects and there are limited suitable sites.
  - grues-dinner 1y ago
    They're also quite inefficient (75% ish, which is not horrible, but still something) as you lose energy both in pumping and generation. So the more you use them, the more energy you need in the first place, so you try not to use them too much. And the worst thing for a capital intensive business is to not get used much. Even with the arbitrage advantage, it takes a long time to pay it off. The grid may pay a "retainer" to sweeten the deal but you can't just build more and expect them all to get that benefit. It's similar to the problem that "use excess energy to electrolyse water into hydrogen" has: no-one running a multi-billion electrolyser really wants to run it a few hours a day only when the grid is oversupplied. And in top of that, risk being cut off at the knees decades before breakeven if someone comes along with a cheaper/more profitable way to deal with the oversupply.
Tagbert 1y ago
That’s why Grid Storage is a major topic in power generation and renewables. The technology and economics are evolving. A lot of people are working on finding a storage solution that is both durable and economical. One solution is probably not going to solve for all situations. In the meantime, load sharing is used to distribute power across a power grid for cases where one area has more power and another area needs power. For instance, wind may die out in one area but over larger areas there are usually still areas with wind. It’s harder with solar, of course.
- asdefghyk 1y ago
  RE "....load sharing is used to distribute power across a power grid ....." TO distribute power across the grid - on a large scale fashion , would require a new power ( very expensive) power distribution network. The base problem with renewable solar and wind is its not reliable. an have outages for SEVERAL days
padjo 1y ago
We can do the bulk of it, i.e. more than 50%, by geographic and modal aggregation fairly easily. Doing all of it from renewables is still an unsolved problem that would require better energy storage.
- bryanlarsen 1y ago
  There's always wind or sun somewhere in Europe, there has never been an hour without both across the entire continent in the last 30 years.
  - Animats 1y ago
    > There's always wind or sun somewhere in Europe. Not necessarily enough wind to be useful. If you look at graphs of wind turbine output across entire large power grids, you see 4:1 variations in a day over the PJM and CAISO regions. That's irrelevant to this blackout, anyway. This blackout occurred during a period when supply far exceeded demand.
Someone 1y ago
Having enormous synchronized grids helps a bit with that. It’s highly unlikely to be abnormally cloudy/calm over the whole of Europe, for example, so Europe’s large grid (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continental_Europe_Synchronous_Area https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continental_Europe_Synchronous...) can be used to move electricity from where there’s excess energy from solar or wind to where there’s a deficit. That requires large capacity connections, though that aren’t everywhere yet.I understand electricity was restored in the south of France much more rapidly last week than in Spain and Portugal because it’s much better connected to the rest of Europe.
- JetSpiegel 1y ago
  The reason why the Iberian grid is not better connected to France might have something to do with French Nuclear not wanting to be bankrupted by cheap renewables from southern countries, this was the word on the street a ehi'e back, when the push for renewables in Spain in Portugal was starting up. This is a political problem, having Mitteleuropa depend on power from Putin is apparently OK, but on lazy southerners is verboten. Hopefully this blackout changes that (but I'm not holding my breath).
  - Someone 1y ago
    I would think the original reasons are the Pyrenees and the relatively low population density around it. If you look at the European road and rail networks, you’ll find France and Spain aren’t well-connected, either.
    - JetSpiegel 1y ago
      The network connection doesn't really depend on the population density around there. I'm not saying it's a simple technical problem, but it's not insurmountable either.
bryanlarsen 1y ago
We have very detailed continental weather readings for over a century and can build very good statistical models. So you just ask a supercomputer to find the lowest cost solution for 99.99% electrical coverage without using any carbon sources. It's quite possible -- over the previous 30 years we've never had an hour where there was no wind & sun anywhere in Europe. So we could theoretically solve it without storage, but that would require an insane amount of overbuild and interconnect. Imagine supplying all of Europe's electricity needs with just wind power from the south shore of Ireland. Adding a few days worth of storage reduces the interconnect & overbuild needs dramatically, putting 99.99% carbon free within the realm of the possible.
- timmg 1y ago
  > So you just ask a supercomputer to find the lowest cost solution for 99.99% electrical coverage without using any carbon sources. Sure... but my expectation is that that 90% solution would include an unreasonable amount of storage (assuming you want most/all renewables). I guess was my point. > It's quite possible -- over the previous 30 years we've never had an hour where there was no wind & sun anywhere in Europe. But "some" wind or sun is not enough to support the whole grid.
  - bryanlarsen 1y ago
    I wouldn't assume all or even most renewables. I would assume you'd continue to use existing hydro and nuclear. The nuclear would help a little, but the hydro helps a lot. It's capacity can be saved for times when wind and solar are low. In that scenario 90% is very easy to hit. A couple of hours worth of storage, maybe. > But "some" wind or sun is not enough to support the whole grid. The less there is, the more you have to over build to compensate. Doesn't make it impossible.
VagabundoP 1y ago
This is my favourite tech as its cheap and safe: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_redox_flow_battery https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_redox_flow_battery Its commercially available right now as well. Its not as efficient as lithium or as energy dense, but that doesnt matter if you're putting them in wind/solar farms.

briandw 1y ago

I asked O3 for an analysis on how much battery power would have been needed to prevent this from happening again. The TLDR is: 1. The grid went dark because 15 GW of generation vanished in five seconds. 2. Need to bridge for 10mins -> 2.5GWh needed, with margin 3-4GWh 3. Need a 6C system, 15 GW / 3 GWh 4. Cost ≈€3 B all‑in, or €55 per Iberian resident However the lead time is going to be an issue: Need 7500 Tesla Megapacks and thats 4‑5 months of combined annual capacity for Tesla. Currently there is a 18 to 24 month backlog. Then there is 6-9 month installation time. So 3 years to fix this, min. It's a shame that these renewable energy transitions are managed so poorly. This was a predictable outcome and it's negligence that they went ahead with switching so much of the grid to renewable without accounting for the needed for stability. It hurts the mission of switching to renewable energy.

johnea 1y ago
An interesting calculation, but why do you assume all the battery storage would have to come from tesla? I'm looking at whole-house battery backup for a little construction projct underway here. This is a boom market at the moment, and there are many other manufacturers in production. I can only assume this is also the case for industrial scale storage...
- VagabundoP 1y ago
  Exactly finding other non-lithium battery tech to use for these just makes sense: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_redox_flow_battery https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_redox_flow_battery
  - briandw 1y ago
    Sounds great, but when will that be commercially available at scale? I didn't find any installations in a quick search.
    - VagabundoP 1y ago
      https://voltstorage.com/en/solutions/the-voltstorage-iron-salt-battery https://voltstorage.com/en/solutions/the-voltstorage-iron-sa... These have commercial products already I believe. I'm not sure if they have any installed yet. They have moved from vanadium batteries.

hyperman1 1y ago

I've seen a few articles of The Conversation/Europe on HN, and it seems an interesting news source. Wikipedia also gives some insight. I've just subscribed. Does HN know about their agenda's, biases, blind spots. Not necessarily to shoot them down, just to be aware of them. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Conversation_(website) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Conversation_(website)

aaron695 1y ago
[dead]
VagabundoP 1y ago
Yeah they seem good: https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/the-conversation/ https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/the-conversation/

grandinj 1y ago

This article starts by saying "we dont know what actually happened here, or why" and then goes on to make various insinuations and suppositions, and then proposes policy based on that. This not useful. More data is required.

readthenotes1 1y ago
"The diagnosis This unusual situation points to a perfect storm of poor grid management and inadequate connections of solar facilities to the grid, as well as other unknown faults. In my opinion, there is a good chance ..." We don't really know, I don't really know, but I'm going to write a long post about it.
Animats 1y ago
Agreed. He's just running off press reports. We haven't yet seen the sequence of breaker trip events. We haven't yet seen the graphs of power flows at tie points, and of frequency and voltage error. The closest thing to a useful fact visible from Google seems to be: "The network lost 15 gigawatts of electricity generation in five seconds at around 1033 GMT, the Energy Ministry said on Monday evening, without explaining the reason for the loss." That's not a cause. Losing 15GW all at once, more power than any one plant generates, indicates some previous event had caused breaker trips somewhere. No indication of the previous event. We do know this wasn't a supply shortage. There was plenty of generating capacity online. Here's an analysis of the US Northeast blackout of 2003.[1] Until we start to see that level of detail, it's just blithering. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northeast_blackout_of_2003 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northeast_blackout_of_2003
- b112 1y ago
  Unless someone diverted all that power for some purpose. Classic scifi might be a time traveller trying to get home, or someone opening an interdimensional gateway, or maybe an AI becoming conscious and needing the power to ascend.
  - Calwestjobs 1y ago

johnea 1y ago

> However, variable renewable sources, such as solar photovoltaic, do not have this capability. They generate direct current which is converted to alternating current at 50 Hertz, but they cannot react automatically to frequency variations. This part didn't make sense to me. The rotating machinery of hydroelectric, or nuclear's steam generators, produce the frequency of AC in synchronization with their mechanical rotation, but the inverters converting solar's DC into AC are making a purely synthesized waveform under control of high speed digital electronics. I would think they should be the most able to modify the AC sine wave they are generating. Maybe someone can comment and correct my logic...

hencq 1y ago
I remember reading an article about exactly that some time last year: https://spectrum.ieee.org/electric-inverter https://spectrum.ieee.org/electric-inverter The technology is grid forming inverters, unlike the normal grid following converters. I'm definitely not an expert, but I think the part you're quoting is hinting at the following: > Grid-following inverters operate only if they can “see” an existing voltage and frequency on the grid that they can synchronize to. They rely on controls that sense the frequency of the voltage waveform and lock onto that signal, usually by means of a technology called a phase-locked loop. So if the grid goes down, these inverters will stop injecting power because there is no voltage to follow. A key point here is that grid-following inverters do not deliver any inertia.
- asdefghyk 1y ago
  From the linked ieee articale ..... Not yet commercially available .... For photovoltaics and wind, grid-forming inverters are not yet commercially available at the size and scale needed for large grids, but they are now being developed by GE Vernova, Enphase, and Solectria......
  - ViewTrick1002 1y ago
    Stick a battery with your renewable plant and they are available. Like the article also says.

jmole 1y ago

> To facilitate this synchronisation, stable base-load power is required, which is normally provided by nuclear and other large gas and hydroelectric facilities. These sources act as a natural buffer against disturbances, helping to keep the frequency stable in the face of sudden changes in generation or demand. In theory, it seems like you could instrument a photovoltaic array to carry some "inertia" with the right control system. If you need to feed power, you run some power point tracking algorithm, and if you need to consume power, you just overbias the cells and heat them up.

padjo 1y ago
Yep it’s called synthetic inertia. Solar and wind can both offer it. Wind can actually offer loads of it it’s just not as easy since it’s not synchronous.
anonymousiam 1y ago
In a system of micro-inverters, they need something to synchronize with. There needs to be a "truth" reference, so they can push their power onto the grid by slightly leading the phase of that. If some critical mass of PV micro-inverters exceeds the traditional generators, they'll push so hard that the grid itself will change phase, and blackouts are the result. One possible solution might be to use a better oscillator in the micro-inverter and limit the rate of phase shift. Unfortunately, the grids of the world have been moving in the opposite direction and now allow more drift than in the past, so where do you draw the line? https://medium.com/@brandonvar/power-grid-stability-issues-aaeb41865718 https://medium.com/@brandonvar/power-grid-stability-issues-a...
- Calwestjobs 1y ago
  apparent vs real power is your answer.
- robocat 1y ago
  > they'll push so hard that the grid itself will change phase That's a thundering herd problem: where all invertors have the same set-points and they all are synchonised to push in the same direction at once. In networks, thundering herd problems are fixed by given each sender different random delays. For power networks we could choose statistical methods to get individual solar generators to lead or lag so that the frequency becomes an aggregate vote. Given that part of the blackout was due to large amounts of solar going offline at the same time, it's possible that all invertors with common software were tripped at the same set-point. So trip conditions also need to be randomly fuzzy. E.g. if frequency drops below 49Hz +/- random spread of 0.5Hz. Although it's difficult to match financial incentives against random variations (individual generators are incentivised to power outside of boundaries to keep getting paid, and a trip event can be expensive - due to restart costs). Electricity market design is hard because the design needs to be resilient to perverse incentives.

throw09093 1y ago

> At that time the price of electricity on the official market was in the negative at around -1€/MWh. > Current evidence therefore points to a problem in the synchronisation of the grid. All sources feeding power into the grid must be synchronised at the same frequency, 50 Hertz. To facilitate this synchronisation, stable base-load power is required, which is normally provided by nuclear and other large gas and hydroelectric facilities. These sources act as a natural buffer against disturbances So: - price is negative, so solar automatically disconnects not to pay for providing electricity - nuclear is overloaded at unexpected time, it also disconnect due to safety. Seems like a bug in accounting software for solar power plants. It disconnected too many power plants too quickly! I bet like 40% of solar plants are using the same software for managing connectivity.

Calwestjobs 1y ago

I stopped reading after this, sorry you totally lost me, im blocking this website: "However, variable renewable sources, such as solar photovoltaic, do not have this capability. They generate direct current which is converted to alternating current at 50 Hertz, but they cannot react automatically to frequency variations. " Nonsense. Go to any solar installer and ask him about this capability. or go to your roofs PV inverters manual and look up section about inputting "grid parameters". Writer is either total ignorant or bad actor.

anonymousiam 1y ago
I'm fairly knowledgeable on this topic, and I disagree that the author is ignorant or malicious. I think he was just trying to "dumb it down" for the masses. https://theconversation.com/profiles/j-guillermo-sanchez-leon-997458 https://theconversation.com/profiles/j-guillermo-sanchez-leo...
throw09093 1y ago
I read quite lot about connecting Ukraine power grid to EU. Small variations in frequency and phase are quite real problem. It is quite a big problem to synchronise large international grids, and tiny PV inverter is really not build to do that! Plus from manual, most AC inverters have parasitic power factor on AC side. Some part of power inverter sends to grid, can be out of sync junk! Large spinning turbines with generator, are capable of absorbing out of sync junk to huge extend. But that may put turbine out of phase slightly. Current power grid was build around huge wheels spinning at the very same frequency.

agarsev 1y ago

> much of the available energy was being used to pump water from low lying river basins into reservoirs – the only practical way to store energy on a large scale. However, this capacity has a limit and, with the reservoirs almost full, it cannot continue to be stored indefinitely. There has been unusually heavy rain in Spain for an unusual length of time now, and reservoirs are well beyond average capacity.[1] I wonder if this anomalous situation has anything to do with the blackout. Maybe the inability to continue pumping water led to the shutdown of the solar, maybe for economic reasons as is suggested in some other comment? [1] https://www.embalses.net/ https://www.embalses.net/

howard941 1y ago
Can the excess water be dumped out to waste generating just enough power for grid stability?

LargoLasskhyfv 1y ago

Fu....g Ghost Riders in the Sky happened. Yippie Yah Hoo, Yippie Yah Yay! Try https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0TPOj4CTGKs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0TPOj4CTGKs if you don't get it ;-)

insane_dreamer 1y ago

Sure more data is required, but the article is not useless. This shouldn't have been flagged.