Got a shilling for the meter?

[kiloran]

Or probably a pound these days.

This is a biggie: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-48652686

Wouldn't like to sort out that mess

--kiloran

[scotia]

Ouch! And it could happen here
In the Electricity Supply Industry there are plans for a "Black Start" - i.e. getting the supply back up and running after a catastrophic failure as has happened in S America. With the loss of flexible conventional coal and oil fired plant, and the heavy reliance on inflexible renewables this has become a much more difficult task than in the past. It is likely that it would be attempted by splitting the UK system into islands, and it has been suggested that it would take several days before supply returned to Scotland. SSE have submitted a "Black Start" proposal to install 31 diesel generators providing 18MW at Peterhead Power Station. These would simply act as standby to be used to re-start the main generators if a Black Start is required. I'm sure our Power Engineers will be taking considerable interest in the S American power failure.

[Slarti]

Surely Dinorwig, the Blaenau Ffestiniog hydroelectric pumped storage scheme and the similar one in Scotland would poivide enough power, on demand, to do a "Black Start"?

Slarti

[bungeejumper]

Much amusement was caused in the bungee household the other day by the proposal that Britain's railways might one day be run on solar power. The idea, as I understand it, is that they want to set up solar farms alongside the railways which will feed electricity directly through to the railways without passing through the National Grid at all.

A fine and heroic concept, which can surely only be aided by the steady advance of global warming. But presumably it'll be a fat lot of use on cloudy days, when output falls right off? (Middle of the night won't be so great either.)

I can see the station platform noticeboards already. "Intercrappy Commuter Rail apologises to customers for the cancellation of the 17.20 service from London Paddington to Bristol Temple Meads. This is due to the wrong kind of daylight."

BJ

[UncleEbenezer]

Much amusement was caused in the bungee household the other day by the proposal that Britain's railways might one day be run on solar power.
BJ

Don't knock it.

A colleague I knew briefly in about 1993/4 had built himself a solar-powered boat. Canopy covered in solar panels, backed by battery like a hybrid car. And the technology has come a long way since then!

[scotia]

Surely Dinorwig, the Blaenau Ffestiniog hydroelectric pumped storage scheme and the similar one in Scotland would poivide enough power, on demand, to do a "Black Start"?
Slarti

You are correct that pumped-storage schemes can be a valuable tool in the event of a sudden change in load - but they need electrical power to operate them! The other problem with conventional or pumped-storage Hydro is their limited long-term capacity.
I remember (many years ago) In an older conventional Hydro Power Station there was a small auxiliary generator which could be hand-started, and which should give enough power to start up the main turbines. It was nominated as part of a black start scenario. And this could be used to start up coal and oil fired plants. But times have changed - with a huge reliance on Wind generation which requires a connection to an energised, stable network controlled by high inertia (coal/oil/gas fired) generators (of which there are now few). So its a much more difficult task. There has been a lot of discussion on this in the various journals. Opinions vary - but clearly SSE feel that Peterhead will be an essential tool - provided it has 18MW of standby Diesel generation.

[Rhyd6]

Our electricity supply has always been hit and miss, though to be fair we haven't had a power cut for about 5 months, almost a record. OH and some friends are exploring using water power to generate electricity but I'm not sufficiently au fait with what they're doing to explain what's happening. I hope that they manage to crack it because it would be great to be prepared for a situation when we lose power. I dread the fact that a government might take it into their heads to ban log/multi fuel burners as at least when we do have power cuts we can still cook and keep warm with our wonderful Esse.

R6

[Slarti]

Mind you, reading between the lines, the problem in the Argentina story isn't power generation, but distribution, which is a whole other ball game.

Slarti

[scotia]

Mind you, reading between the lines, the problem in the Argentina story isn't power generation, but distribution, which is a whole other ball game.
Slarti

The source of a large power system failure is frequently the network which distributes the electricity. For a simple example if area A has power generation of 150MW, but only requires 100MW, while it exports its additional 50MW to Area B which requires 100MW, but only has 50MW of its own generation - then all is well. But if the connector between A and B fails, then the Generators in Area B can no longer supply the load, and will trip out. Now we have a problem, even if we can reinstate the broken link - since Area A cannot supply 100MW to Area B without itself tripping out. This is where the islanding of Area B is essential - i.e. deliberately splitting off areas from supply so allowing the 50MW from Area A to cope, and permit the Generation in Area A to restart. Then the islanding can be corrected. In practice in a large interconnected system, modelling all eventualities can be a problem - especially when certain assumptions (which are difficult to predict) prove wrong - e.g. the infamous London blackout in 2003, all due to the wrong "fuse" https://www.theguardian.com/business/2003/sep/10/uknews