Tek-Tips is the largest IT community on the Internet today!

Members share and learn making Tek-Tips Forums the best source of peer-reviewed technical information on the Internet!

Register Log in
  • Congratulations JAE on being selected by the Eng-Tips community for having the most helpful posts in the forums last week. Way to Go!

Spain and Portugal power grid collapse | Report Released

Sort by date Sort by votes
A quote from the minister:

"The minister said the voltage surge itself was caused by oscillations in the frequency at which the electrical current changes direction. Some oscillations were natural, she said, but one was “atypical”. The unusual change originated from a solar power plant in south-west Spain near the city of Badajoz, the government report said."
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Someone is going to say we need more battery backup to stabilize the grid. I'm putting this out here early so we'll be ready for them when they do.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Probably all going to turn out that all the resources should have been in Volt var control rather than in power factor control.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Fingers being pointed all over the place from what I've read. Hopefully someone who actually understands the issue is responsible for fixing it, but (a) this Spain and (b) the government is involved and (c) it is affected by the quasi religious beliefs of the elite. I wonder where the real report is hidden?

The fix for the South Australia system black in 2016 seems to be more interconnectors back to coal fuelled power stations, a bunch of fossil fuelled emergency generators, synchronous condensers, and revised settings on the inverters at the wind farms. It hasn't happened again so that /may/ have worked.
 
Last edited:
Upvote 0 Downvote
There is a HVDC transmission line near me. It's a substantial inverter source, probably the majority of power to the region. It has been successful. Is lack of inertia really the problem or is it a lack of coordination when there are too many inverters on a grid?
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
What do you think about the information Telegraph posted on may?

The experiment that plunged Spain into darkness, the cause of the power outage is revealed, how the government in Madrid hid it​

https://a2news.com/english/rajoni-b...rr-spanjen-zbulohet-shkaku-i-shkeput-i1148782

"Brussels have told that the authorities were conducting an experiment before the system collapsed. "


The fact is that nobody of the Spanish goverment had made any comment about this experiment.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
From the linked IEEE Article talking about reactive power and Spain's outdated grid rules are a problem.

"So, the fact that more renewable energy is often more distributed than conventional sources may have contributed to a different reactive power profile on the Iberian grid. Yet “other operators, such as in the U.S., require or reward grid participants for helping balance this reactive power,” Lara says. Spain could do that, too, given its commitment to expanding the role of renewable, and therefore distributed, power. Yet its reactive power rules predate the flood of solar and wind energy that has reshaped the country’s grid (the main rules are from 2000, with a 2014 partial update). Today’s rules also exempt renewable plants from helping to lower voltage peaks, Gómez says, which is a mistake: “Today’s grids, with their high renewable penetration, can’t be managed like grids of the 20th century when everything was fossil fuels and hydroelectric plants.”

And article even mentions increasing grid storage capacity as expected.

"The recommendations include updating the 25-year-old Operational Procedure 7.4, a draft of which has been in the hands of the national competition regulator for the past five years, and which would enable better voltage control. The council also recommended improving the electrical grid’s demand response, storage capacity, technical regulations, and interconnections with neighboring countries. —IEEE Spectrum"

The article also gets into the reactive power issues with distributed solar power generation that is only grid-following, not grid-forming.

Thus confirms the way politics and governance runs things, going against sound system engineering analysis, design, and implementation, and nothing the sound engineering did not already know...


spectrum.ieee.org

How Did Renewables Impact Spain's Blackout?

Could reactive power be the missing link in understanding the Iberian blackout?
spectrum.ieee.org spectrum.ieee.org
 
Last edited:
Upvote 0 Downvote
It’s only fair, Greg. The synchronous condensers replace the inertia of those “dirty” fossil fuels and it’s those dirty fossil fuels that should pay! 😉
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
At the very beginning, the prime minister said that the nuclear plants had been a problem in recovering the electricity supplyo_O. In the following weeks, the government started to blame private electricity companies. Then, some audio files of the conversations between Redeia and the operators were posted. Indeed, the operators had advised some hours before about the high instability of the supply:rolleyes: . Finally, the responsibility now falls on Redeia, the company responsible for the network and planning the energy mix. We could say that Redeia is a public company...
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
100 year old technology was just sitting on the shelf ready for Spain insertion into their grid operations......................... Logic would imply if you have distributed power generation, you would also require distributed reactive power control.

"At the end of 2019, GE celebrated what it called “its 100-year anniversary of supplying synchronous condenser solutions to
utility customers and transmission system operators.” As many transmission networks around the world are struggling with weak grid conditions as a result of retiring legacy thermal generation units and the intermittency of wind and solar power, this technology—once considered nearly obsolete—has reinvented itself and now provides critical support to a transforming grid, the company notes."

"Installed at strategic intervals along a transmission system, synchronous condensers are electrical rotating equipment (essentially electric motors) that produce or absorb reactive power. The company says its “latest synchronous condenser offerings have undergone many developments since 1919, when GE shipped the world’s first high voltage synchronous condenser to Ontario Hydro in Canada.”

"The original 10 MVAr model has evolved over the past century to meet evolving grid demands. GE now offers units ranging from 20 MVAr up to more than 300 MVAr in a single piece of equipment. GE (including predecessor companies, notably Alstom) has supplied more than 200 synchronous condensers to utilities around the globe.



1750439385411.png
Synchronous condenser installation at Templestowe substation, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. Built by ASEA in 1966, the unit is hydrogen-cooled and capable of three-phase power at 125 MVA.
 
Last edited:
Upvote 0 Downvote
Many of the major suppliers have offerings, all being marked as able to improve system stability when the conventional supply of inertia is retired. The difficulty is that in many places VARS are not values sufficiently that merchants are encouraged to connect offerings to the grid. That seems to be the case here.

https://www.siemens-energy.com/global/en/home/products-services/product/synchronous-condenser.html
https://www.gevernova.com/grid-solu...nsmission-systems-facts/synchronous-condenser
https://new.abb.com/motors-generators/synchronous-condensers
https://www.hitachienergy.com/products-and-solutions/facts/synchronous-condenser-system

As any large synchronous motor can provide VARS, an appropriate tariff might also encourage some industries to offer VAR support.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
The solution is so easy and so cheap, but it is not perfection, just excellent.
It has been said that Perfection is the enemy of excellence.
Restart the coal plants.
Run them at just enough output to maintain stability, say 10% of rated output.
Let them act as synchronous condensers to supply reactive power.
The choice:
1. 100% reduction of part of CO2 emissions and an unstable grid. Perfect from the environmentalist point of view.
2. 90% reduction of part of CO2 emissions and a stable grid. Excellent from the engineering point of view.
But the 90% solution has no place in the minds of environmentalists.
There minds are too occupied with booking their plane tickets to the next environmental convention or demonstration.
Here's a thought:
As long as part of the power is supplied by fossil fuel, dial down steam plants rather than taking them off line completely.
The program will have little capital cost.
The program may continue with de-coupling the generators from the steam turbines and converting them to full-on synchronous condensers.
Will it work?
I have seen it done with diesel plants to increase the capacity of a transmission line by reducing reactive voltage drops in a long transmission line.
There is nothing new under the sun.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Upvote 0 Downvote
FacEngrPE said:
On a steam turbine set. the turbine and the generator need to be disconnected from each other
Click to expand...
What is the lowest percentage of rated load that a steam turbine may safely work at?
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
I like rotating mass, but batteries may actually allow a system to remain functional with little inertia. One of the reasons is that batteries can “spin up” much faster than any conventional rotating generation and available wind and solar probably has no headroom. There have been events where battery response brought the system back to stability faster than when the recovery would have been from rotating mass.

But that also presupposes a sane operating strategy and PF control doesn’t qualify.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

LittleInch
  • Question Question
Spain and Portugal power grid collapse
2 3
Replies
44
Views
5K
GregLocock
GregLocock
GregLocock
  • Locked
  • Question Question
Arecibo collapse - long report
Replies
1
Views
2K
Sym P. le
Sym P. le
GregLocock
  • Locked
  • Question Question
Titan sub - audio released
Replies
8
Views
4K
GregLocock
GregLocock
Alistair_Heaton
  • Question Question
Bayesian interim report
Replies
8
Views
8K
Roga50
Roga50
JStephen
  • Question Question
Cabagan–Santa Maria Bridge collapse
Replies
13
Views
12K
waross
waross

Part and Inventory Search

Sponsor

Back
Top