solar flare

Hello,

wavelength at 50Hz is about 6000km, which is more or less the distance from the Arctic Circle down to Sicily IIRC. And you are right. There are some HVDC transmission lines in the North sea, the English Channel and the Mediterranean Sea. The point is that the grid is split if frequency goes down. And I don't know exactly how restarting a grid on this scale works. I can imagine that it would be an... adventure . You can just connect all segments and everything is fine again.

Regards
Gyro

 

Hello,

earlier in this thread I said that in the big cities the riots begin after about three days or so. Looks like a good estimation . Anyway, that's the sad part of story. But there is a fascinating part, too. Imaging a satellite picture from Europe or the US. All is bright, you can see Berlin, New York, Paris and all the crowded areas of the continents. Five minutes later in the next picture everything, except a little spot here and there, is dark. I like this idea.

Regards
Gyro

 

oil powered reserve power station, 2miles down river from Pittsburgh Pa.. It has everything needed to supply a small amount of energy should the Nuclear station go down @ Shippingport Atomic Power Station -
How they would get all the grids together up and running>? we may never know..

 

Ah well, I'm screwed then

 

That’s an eerie looking power station unlike the one that failed back in 1977; and which I captured a few years ago during a trip to niagra falls





Hotwater

 

Hello,

I guess it needs a family size package of Zuendfix to restart the power grid :



Regards
Gyro

 

Generally the grid isn't split (as in into multiple autonomous blocks) in such an instance, as doing that would just make things unmanageable and lead to synchronisation problems. Loads are just disconnected until the power shortfall is met, heavy industry usually goes first.

There are usually enough redundant links to not need to shut down large blocks of the grid if there's a series of disconnects, but sometimes it's necessary to disconnect an area if a bottleneck or other nasty is forming.

 

Hello,

maybe we talk about the same thing and my weak knowledge of the English language is the problem here. If more power is requested than it is floating in the power grid the frequency goes down and the grid is split into parts to disconnect areas that consume power from those that produce power. 'Lastabwurf' is the term in my native language.This cascades automatically until every power plant is its own grid. This happens if the frequency goes down to 47Hz or 48 Hz IIRC. Of course, in this state the segments are not synchronized. Somewhere I have a photocopy back from eighties IIRC that shows an f over t plot where we nearly reach the first level of a split.

Regards
Gyro

 

I see what you mean now.
Disconnecting power consumers from power producers is effectively the same as shutting down the grid and free-wheeling the power-producers until you can shut them down too. That's a fairly extreme action and usually wouldn't be necessary, more a last resort emergency cut-off.

The other thing that google/wikipedia seems to think Lastabwurf means is a rolling blackout, which would probably be done before shutting down the grid in the way you explained, if possible...