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European Power Outage
3

European Power Outage

European Power Outage

(OP)
I heard on the news that there was a significant power outage in Europe Saturday night/Sunday morning; principally in France and Germany.  Of course there wasn't much detail.  Anybody know more about what happened?

RE: European Power Outage

2
Hi David,

This is the best I could find - not much technical detail as yet.

http://news.sky.com/skynews/article/0,,30200-1239721,00.html

The temperature in North-Western Europe has dropped about 10°C in the last week, so I guess the demand has surged as a result.

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  Sometimes I only open my mouth to swap feet...

RE: European Power Outage

The NIMBY's are winning.

rmw

RE: European Power Outage

And the Germans are blaming the Norwegians - who are not in the EU. So it seems the whole thing wasn't an EU affair after all...

Gunnar Englund
www.gke.org
--------------------------------------
100 % recycled posting: Electrons, ideas, finger-tips have been used over and over again...

RE: European Power Outage

And a "knock-on power cut" is what?  Weird terminology.

Keith Cress
Flamin Systems, Inc.- http://www.flaminsystems.com

RE: European Power Outage

"knock-on" appears to be the "domino effect"

RE: European Power Outage

I think knock-on refers to step load change or block load change.

RE: European Power Outage

Hello to any members in the affected areas,

Does anyone know if this UCTE which apparently has "guidelines" for operating the grid, but no centrallized authority to manage it, has the ability to isolate individual countries?  It would seem to me that a country which has generating capacity to serve it's needs would be hesitant to give up the control of it's domestic power generating and distrubution grid to another country or organization.  Are some of the individual European countries totally dependant on other EU members for power?  I find it odd that the UCTE bulletin states that a wind power generating system in Germany, was actually delivering powere to countries in the "2nd Island".  It also states that there was an "under generation" condition which dropped the frequency to 49Hz.  Is not the power normally generated at 50 Hz?  Is the system sensitive enough to this condition to initiate the alarms and shutdown sequences?
  
It seems this system is in an even more precarious condition than our system here in the Northeast US and Canada was back in '04.  Out here in the western US, specifically California, we are facing a potentially disastrous condition.  As demand keeps growing in Southern California, the transmission system from the Pacific northwest and northern California is becoming extremely close to it's maximum potential capacity.  The utility companies keep railing about it, but the infrastructure upgrade cost estimates keep going up every year.  Point of use generation and renewable source generation systems are becoming economically more attractive-as is the peace of mind they offer.  The next few years are going to be very interesting on this front.

RE: European Power Outage

(OP)
Actually if there was substantial restoration within 90 minutes of the outage this event was very different than the August 14, 2003 event in the Northeast US, Southeast Canada.  But, yes, it looks from the map like the bulk of the European generation is in the east and the bulk of the load in the west; sort of like the north/south split of generation and load in the western grid (US & Canada).  49Hz on a 50Hz grid would be the same as 58.8Hz on a 60Hz grid.

RE: European Power Outage

Before we know it, we'll be reading our Eng-Tips by candle light!

JRaef.com
"Engineers like to solve problems.  If there are no problems handily available, they will create their own problems."   Scott Adams  
For the best use of Eng-Tips, please click here -> FAQ731-376

RE: European Power Outage

Odd that they had to turn off power for a cruise ship..  You'd think it would either be common or fixed.

Keith Cress
Flamin Systems, Inc.- http://www.flaminsystems.com

RE: European Power Outage

Good one jraef.
LOL.
yours
Bill

RE: European Power Outage

itsmoked--

Just a guess, but likely that the HV power line spanning a ship channel has restrictions on clearance.  The ship can physically pass under, but the clearance isn't enough to guarantee that there will be no ground fault due to the nearby and very well grounded ship underneath it.

old field guy

RE: European Power Outage

I recognize that.  My point it somewhere a cruise ship goes is usually a regular event and other ships may pass too.  I'd think they'd raise the lines to stop semi-regular outages and the risk of the eventual "ship that didn't notice".

Here; A bridge wasn't noticed.


M/V Karen Danielsen -- her entire command bridge, mast, radars & 2 cranes are missing!

From:http://www.cargolaw.com/2000nightmare_singlesonly8.html#Karen-Danielsen

Keith Cress
Flamin Systems, Inc.- http://www.flaminsystems.com

RE: European Power Outage

In partial answer to EEJaime,

Quote:

I find it odd that the UCTE bulletin states that a wind power generating system in Germany, was actually delivering powere to countries in the "2nd Island".  It also states that there was an "under generation" condition which dropped the frequency to 49Hz.  Is not the power normally generated at 50 Hz?  Is the system sensitive enough to this condition to initiate the alarms and shutdown sequences?

The European grid is very heavily interconnected with significant power flow between nations. I'm pretty sure the German grid separated within the German national boundary, effectively splitting the country, as a result of cascaded failure of lines tripping on overload. The intentional removal of one line to allow the ship to pass caused overload of the remaining lines which then began to trip in turn. The Western section appears to have had a generation deficit at the time of separation causing the under-frequency. The falling frequency would initiate load shedding of large industrial users who pay a reduced tariff in return for accepting the possibility of a load-shed in order to prevent a system collapse. Europe's grid, in common with the UK's, does not have a huge amount of rotating reserve - plant in service and synchronised but floating idle on the system instead of generating -  to draw upon. Loss of a major infeed from a distant part of the grid and limited local spare capacity would force the network operator to shed load in order to protect remaining customers. I'm unsure what is written into European grid codes, but below 49.5 Hz a British generating station is permitted to deload to protect the turbines down to 95% rated power at 47 Hz (i.e. 2% reduction / Hz). A CCGT station must maintain continuous operation down to 48.8 Hz and allow five minutes grace between 48.8 and 47Hz before under-frequency relays trip the unit. 48.8 Hz is the point at which the UK network operator may initiate automatic load disconnections to maintain system stability. The UK's heavy dependence on CCGT generation makes this a real possibility because without automatic disconnection of load, the result is automatic disconnection of generation.

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  Sometimes I only open my mouth to swap feet...

RE: European Power Outage

Thank you Scotty UK, an excellent explanation.  It is sometimes difficult to digest the critical nature and built-in instabilities these massive yet sensitive systems exhibit.  It was also noted that a large proportion of the power generating capacity in France is Nuclear.  Is that also common in other parts of Europe and the UK?

RE: European Power Outage

Given the fragile nature of the grid then, why not just tell the cruise ship they cannot navigate those waters if their height problem cannot be resolved on the ship? Again, it comes down to money. The almighty tourist dollar was too much of a temptation to impose the necessary restrictions. Now a lot of people shared in the losses instead of just the ship's destination.

JRaef.com
"Engineers like to solve problems.  If there are no problems handily available, they will create their own problems."   Scott Adams  
For the best use of Eng-Tips, please click here -> FAQ731-376

RE: European Power Outage

Actually jraef the waterways came before the power companies.  "Navigable" waters normally by law must remain navigable..  It's not like they can lower the river for the ships so the burden lies with the entities that are encroaching.

Keith Cress
Flamin Systems, Inc.- http://www.flaminsystems.com

RE: European Power Outage

I'm no expert on European generation but my understanding is France is very heavily dependent on nuclear generation, about 80% of total, while Germany and the Eastern nations are largely powered by coal. Skogsgurra can probably comment better than I can on Scandinavian generation if he's reading this. My very limited knowledge of the industry over there is that hydro and nuclear are the primary means of generation, supplemented by wind in the case of Denmark. The following link gives an idea of the amount of nuclear generation by nation: http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/nuclear/page/nuc_generation/gensum2.html

The UK generation has a split roughly as follows: gas 37%; coal 34%; nuclear 20%; renewables 5%, oil 1%, other 3% from DTI figures 2005. The huge dependence on gas is a problem because native reserves are running out and the country is increasingly dependent on imported gas. Much of it will originate in the political hotspots around the world, which should be sending a shiver through the UK's government. I think nuclear new-build is almost inevitable, and a resurgence in coal may take place when the IGCC plants come out of the research phase into mainstream use. Sadly our coal reserves will remain in the ground because we will have lost the skills to extract it and we will import coal instead. The UK isn't part of the main European supergrid, although we have a DC link across the channel to France. Whether our largely self-contained generation is for better or worse will no doubt become clearer over the next few years. As a nation we urgently need to start building new generating plant to replace the large coal stations which are approaching 50 years old.

----------------------------------
  Sometimes I only open my mouth to swap feet...

RE: European Power Outage

jraef: "Given the fragile nature of the grid then, why not just tell the cruise ship they cannot navigate those waters if their height problem cannot be resolved on the ship?"
Keith: "Odd that they had to turn off power for a cruise ship..  You'd think it would either be common or fixed."

Actually, this was a kind of "one-off". It was a cruise ship, but it came from the shipyard (which apparently is up-river), it was NOT in regular service.
The clearance from funnel to high-voltage lines was reported to be 4...5 m, which apparently is too little for a 400 kV line.
The blackout did not occur until 30 min. after the line was disconnected, so this was not the direct cause. I read that a second high power line was out of commission as well, this probably aggravated the problem.
Third, there are reports that the windpower plants in the north of Germany were delivering too much to the grid at the time causing instability.
All this together seems to have caused the blackout.

Benta.

RE: European Power Outage

Thanks benta that really makes a bunch more sense of things.

Keith Cress
Flamin Systems, Inc.- http://www.flaminsystems.com

RE: European Power Outage

Does anyone know (or advise) approx how much of wind energy is acceptable to inject in a Power Grid to keep stability during heavy load variations, obviously to ensure the grid can recover properly from a sudden underfrequency state without the need of making power cuts.
I heard about 12% of wind energy can be injected but I am not sure?

Integration and Participation for better coordination of the EU Electric Grid.


RE: European Power Outage

The November/December 2005 IEEE Power and Energy Magazine had several great articles on how much wind energy several different grids could support.  From memory, it seemed like some grids had trouble with 4%, while Ireland was approaching 20%.  A lot of it depends on what type of wind generator it is and the other kinds of resources available.

For the New York area check out:
http://www.nyserda.org/publications/wind_integration_report.pdf
"Based on the results of this study, it is expected that the NYSBPS can reliably accommodate at least 10% penetration, 3,300 MW, of wind generation with only minor adjustments to its existing planning, operation, and reliability practices."

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