Readit News logoReadit News
leomca commented on Widespread power outage in Spain and Portugal   bbc.com/news/live/c9wpq8x... · Posted by u/lleims
carlos-menezes · 4 months ago
Who would be responsible for writing the postmortem? Are they required to?
leomca · 4 months ago
I think it's ENTSO-E, here's their most recent report into an incident on 21 June 2024: https://www.entsoe.eu/publications/system-operations-reports...

For that incident, an expert panel was set up in July, the interim report was published in November, and the final report in Feburary 2025: so it'll take a few months.

leomca commented on Widespread power outage in Spain and Portugal   bbc.com/news/live/c9wpq8x... · Posted by u/lleims
mike_hearn · 4 months ago
They're definitely doing a black start:

https://x.com/RedElectricaREE/status/1916818043235164267

We are beginning to recover power in the north and south of the peninsula, which is key to gradually addressing the electricity supply. This process involves the gradual energization of the transmission grid as the generating units are connected.

I see load dropping to zero on that graph, or rather, load data disappears an hour ago.

If the grid frequency goes too far out of range then power stations trip automatically, it's not an explicit decision anyone takes and it doesn't balance load, quite the opposite. A station tripping makes the problem worse as the frequency drops even further as the load gets shared between the remaining stations, which is why grids experience cascading failure. The disconnection into islands is a defense mechanism designed to stop equipment being too badly damaged and to isolate the outage.

leomca · 4 months ago
BBC reporting the head of Spain's electricity grid saying restoring power could take "between six and ten hours": https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/c9wpq8xrvd9t?post=asset%3A85...
leomca commented on Widespread power outage in Spain and Portugal   bbc.com/news/live/c9wpq8x... · Posted by u/lleims
mike_hearn · 4 months ago
They're definitely doing a black start:

https://x.com/RedElectricaREE/status/1916818043235164267

We are beginning to recover power in the north and south of the peninsula, which is key to gradually addressing the electricity supply. This process involves the gradual energization of the transmission grid as the generating units are connected.

I see load dropping to zero on that graph, or rather, load data disappears an hour ago.

If the grid frequency goes too far out of range then power stations trip automatically, it's not an explicit decision anyone takes and it doesn't balance load, quite the opposite. A station tripping makes the problem worse as the frequency drops even further as the load gets shared between the remaining stations, which is why grids experience cascading failure. The disconnection into islands is a defense mechanism designed to stop equipment being too badly damaged and to isolate the outage.

leomca · 4 months ago
Interesting, but in terms of load I think think the data may just be delayed by ~1 hour. Switching to UTC, to avoid timezone confusion, it's currently 13:10:

Last actual load value for Spain at 12:15: https://transparency.entsoe.eu/load-domain/r2/totalLoadR2/sh...

Last actual load value for France at 12:00: https://transparency.entsoe.eu/load-domain/r2/totalLoadR2/sh...

leomca commented on Widespread power outage in Spain and Portugal   bbc.com/news/live/c9wpq8x... · Posted by u/lleims
mike_hearn · 4 months ago
This sounds big enough to require a black start. Unfortunately, those are slow and difficult.

If an entire nation trips offline then every generator station disconnects itself from the grid and the grid itself snaps apart into islands. To bring it back you have to disconnect consumer loads and then re-energize a small set of plants that have dedicated black start capability. Thermal plants require energy to start up and renewables require external sources of inertia for frequency stabilization, so this usually requires turning on a small diesel generator that creates enough power to bootstrap a bigger generator and so on up until there's enough electricity to start the plant itself. With that back online the power from it can be used to re-energize other plants that lack black start capability in a chain until you have a series of isolated islands. Those islands then have to be synchronized and reconnected, whilst simultaneously bringing load online in large blocks.

The whole thing is planned for, but you can't really rehearse for it. During a black start the grid is highly unstable. If something goes wrong then it can trip out again during the restart, sending you back to the beginning. It's especially likely if the original blackout caused undetected equipment damage, or if it was caused by such damage.

In the UK contingency planning assumes a black start could take up to 72 hours, although if things go well it would be faster. It's one reason it's a good idea to always have some cash at home.

Edit: There's a press release about a 2016 black start drill in Spain/Portugal here: https://www.ree.es/en/press-office/press-release/2016/11/spa...

leomca · 4 months ago
It seems Spain lost 15GW of load, but is still running 10GW of load: https://transparency.entsoe.eu/load-domain/r2/totalLoadR2/sh...

Would this suggest the grid hasn't snapped apart, or is it just not possible to tell from the data?

Coal, pumped hydro, and nuclear generation all went to 0 around the same time, but presumably that's those sources being disconnected from the grid to balance demand? https://transparency.entsoe.eu/generation/r2/actualGeneratio...

leomca commented on Widespread power outage in Spain and Portugal   bbc.com/news/live/c9wpq8x... · Posted by u/lleims
nacnud · 4 months ago
There's a map of realtime load flow here: https://gridradar.net/en/wide-area-monitoring-system (currently shows Spain and Portugal as 'offline')
leomca · 4 months ago
The best source for data seems to be the European grid operator themselves: https://transparency.entsoe.eu/dashboard/show

Spain's demand: https://transparency.entsoe.eu/load-domain/r2/totalLoadR2/sh...

Spain's generation: https://transparency.entsoe.eu/generation/r2/actualGeneratio...

Spain's import/export with France: https://transparency.entsoe.eu/transmission-domain/physicalF...

The filters can be used to see similar data for Portugal

leomca commented on Widespread power outage in Spain and Portugal   bbc.com/news/live/c9wpq8x... · Posted by u/lleims
tux3 · 4 months ago
You can see the crash on the ENTSO-E live data: https://transparency.entsoe.eu/generation/r2/actualGeneratio...

Three quarter of the production disconnects from the grid between 12:30 and 13:00, with only a bit of solar and onshore wind sticking around.

leomca · 4 months ago
Spain loses around 15GW of demand at the same time: https://transparency.entsoe.eu/load-domain/r2/totalLoadR2/sh...

I don't think we're able to tell from the data if one is the cause of the other, are we? Since if production was lost, load would have to be shedded to balance the grid, and if load was lost (e.g. due to a transmission failure), production would have to be disconnected to balance the grid.

leomca commented on Widespread power outage in Spain and Portugal   bbc.com/news/live/c9wpq8x... · Posted by u/lleims
terom · 4 months ago
That graph doesn't seem to make a very clear distinction between historical, real-time and predicted values... I think the event happened at 12:30 local time or so.

There seems to be some kind of recurrent daily pattern where the French - Spanish interconnect switches from Spain -> France imports to France -> Spain exports at around that time, and then back again in the late afternoon.

leomca · 4 months ago
Yes, France was importing 884MW from Spain at 12:45, 198MW at 13:00, no net flow at 13:15, and Spain has been importing up to 265MW since: https://transparency.entsoe.eu/transmission-domain/physicalF...

u/leomca

KarmaCake day46March 2, 2022View Original