Spain and Portugal power grid collapse

[LittleInch]

Widely reported, the Spanish and Portuguese electricity supply collapsed 28th April after it lost 15GW of supply (about half of its consumption) in 5 seconds. Not surprisingly the interconnected to France the European grid tripped and the grid collapsed.

This M is nearly un heard of and lights just how much we all rely on Grid power. Basically nothing worked. No mobile coverage, precious little Internet, no ATM or even if you had cash the tills didn't work. Trains stuck in tunnels or out in the middle of no where and traffic gridlock.

Some standby power, but limited and also limited in duration for hospitals, airports etc.

If there are some grid sparkies out there, please do some digging and see why this happened? No one so far as I can see can say why supposed high vibrations or fluctuations in the HVgrid caused such a dramatic loss of supply.

Seems to be slowly recovering today, but I can imagine bringing an entire country back on line is not straightforward.
This what the head of the Spamish Grid said. Anyone able to interpret this?

" Sánchez said that the power cut originated at 12.33pm, when, for five seconds, 15 gigawatts of the energy that was being produced – equivalent to 60% of all the energy that was being used – suddenly disappeared.

“That’s something that has never happened before,” he added. “What prompted this sudden disappearance of the supply is something that the experts still haven’t been able to determine. But they will … All potential causes are being analysed and no hypothesis or possibility is being ruled out.”

Sánchez thanked France and Morocco for sending additional electricity to Spain, and said the current shortfall would be eased using gas and hydroelectric power.

The Portuguese operator, REN, said the outage was caused by a “rare atmospheric phenomenon”, with extreme temperature variations in Spain causing “anomalous oscillations” in very high-voltage lines.


REN said the phenomenon, known as “induced atmospheric vibration”, caused “synchronisation failures between the electrical systems, leading to successive disturbances across the interconnected European network”. "

 

[Alistair_Heaton]

Thats how i understand it.

I must have 80 of those gu10 on the farm.

And you can't buy tungsten light bulbs any more in Europe.

 

[FacEngrPE]

Back to the OP's subject.
It happened here already.
2022 Odessa Texas Disturbance
ERCOT Presentation September 13, 2022

• On June 4, 2022, @ 12:59 PM CDT, Phase-B to ground fault occurred due to lightningarrestor failure in the Odessa area• Fault cleared within 3 cycles, consequentially tripping off 542 MW of thermal generation
• Additional 309 MW lost from combined cycle plant in South Texas
• Non-consequential loss of 1,709 MW of solar generation from 14 different sitesfollowing the fault• Combined loss of 2,560 MW of generation
• 1,116 of Load Resources provided Responsive Reserve Service automatically• Categorized as NERC Cat 3a event (generation loss > 2000 MW)

This event shows that a very short event can create enough upset in a power system to trip it off line quickly - although in the Odessa Texas event the system recovered.
Practical Engineering

 

[Alistair_Heaton]

Never heard of voltage phase jump before

 

[FacEngrPE]

This sounds a bit like blowing smoke

IEEE 1547-2018 Clause 6.5.2.6: Voltage Phase Angle Changes Ride-Through​

... IEEE 1547-2018, describes the ride-through performance requirements for single-phase and multi-phase DER for sub-cycle-to-cycle phase angle changes (referred to as “phase jump”) often caused by fault events or line switching operations on the distribution system or BPS

 

[GregLocock]

Here's the Australian spec for grid forming rather than grid following inverters. https://aemo.com.au/-/media/files/i...f?la=en&hash=F8D999025BBC565E86F3B0E19E40A08E

 

[stevenal]

NERC take on the blackout

 

[waross]

IEEE 1547-2018 Clause 6.5.2.6: Voltage Phase Angle Changes Ride-Through

Is this a new name for "Pole Slipping"?

 

[FacEngrPE]

Poll slipping occurs in rotating generators when displacement between rotor and stator magnetic fields does not generate enough torque to keep them in sync, the result is a very violent torque event, jumping to the next alignment that generates sufficient torque.

Pole Slipping can't occur in a device with no poles - IE an inverter, not sure what it should be called. The closest thing to this sort of event I have observed is the result of an older thrystor drive that occasionally was fooled by line disturbances into gating into a 3 phase bolted fault, resulting in all of the very expensive fuses attempting to clear fast enough to protect the drive (not always successfully).

I think the name Voltage Phase Angle Changes Ride-Through is supposed to describe the line side input to either event.

Poll slipping on the Eastern Grid is an extremely rare event. One was reported during the wild power swings leading into the Northeast blackout of 2003.

The FERC report called this excessive phase angle error leading to an out of step condition.

August 14, 2003, Blackout Final NERC Report Section IV Cascading Failure of the Power System; Published July 13, 2004; Page 78
The large power surge into Michigan, beginning at 16:10:38, occurred when Toledo and Cleveland were
still connected to the grid through Detroit. After the Bayshore-Monroe line tripped at 16:10:39, Toledo
and Cleveland separated into their own island, dropping a large amount of load off of the Detroit system.
This suddenly left Detroit with excess generation, much of which greatly accelerated in angle as the
depressed voltage in Detroit (caused by the high demand in Cleveland) caused the Detroit units to begin
to pull out of step with the rest of the grid. When voltage in Detroit returned to near-normal, the
generators could not sufficiently decelerate to remain synchronous. This out-of-step condition is evident
in Figure IV.23, which shows at least two sets of generator “pole slips” by plants in the Detroit area between 16:10:40 and 16:10:42. Several large units around Detroit: Belle River, St. Clair, Greenwood,
Monroe, and Fermi Nuclear all tripped in response.

 

[Alistair_Heaton]

Do any of you know about the smart grid stuff with changing the output PF of solar inverters.

I know my kostal can do it. But haven't read of anyone using it.