European Power Outage 3

[jraef]

Given the fragile nature of the grid then, why not just tell the cruise ship they cannot navigate those waters if their height problem cannot be resolved on the ship? Again, it comes down to money. The almighty tourist dollar was too much of a temptation to impose the necessary restrictions. Now a lot of people shared in the losses instead of just the ship's destination.

JRaef.com
"Engineers like to solve problems. If there are no problems handily available, they will create their own problems." Scott Adams
For the best use of Eng-Tips, please click here -> faq731-376

 

[itsmoked]

Actually jraef the waterways came before the power companies. "Navigable" waters normally by law must remain navigable.. It's not like they can lower the river for the ships so the burden lies with the entities that are encroaching.

Keith Cress
Flamin Systems, Inc.-

http://www.flaminsystems.com

 

[ScottyUK]

I'm no expert on European generation but my understanding is France is very heavily dependent on nuclear generation, about 80% of total, while Germany and the Eastern nations are largely powered by coal. Skogsgurra can probably comment better than I can on Scandinavian generation if he's reading this. My very limited knowledge of the industry over there is that hydro and nuclear are the primary means of generation, supplemented by wind in the case of Denmark. The following link gives an idea of the amount of nuclear generation by nation:

http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/nuclear/page/nuc_generation/gensum2.html

The UK generation has a split roughly as follows: gas 37%; coal 34%; nuclear 20%; renewables 5%, oil 1%, other 3% from DTI figures 2005. The huge dependence on gas is a problem because native reserves are running out and the country is increasingly dependent on imported gas. Much of it will originate in the political hotspots around the world, which should be sending a shiver through the UK's government. I think nuclear new-build is almost inevitable, and a resurgence in coal may take place when the IGCC plants come out of the research phase into mainstream use. Sadly our coal reserves will remain in the ground because we will have lost the skills to extract it and we will import coal instead. The UK isn't part of the main European supergrid, although we have a DC link across the channel to France. Whether our largely self-contained generation is for better or worse will no doubt become clearer over the next few years. As a nation we urgently need to start building new generating plant to replace the large coal stations which are approaching 50 years old.


----------------------------------

Sometimes I only open my mouth to swap feet...

 

[benta]

jraef: "Given the fragile nature of the grid then, why not just tell the cruise ship they cannot navigate those waters if their height problem cannot be resolved on the ship?"
Keith: "Odd that they had to turn off power for a cruise ship.. You'd think it would either be common or fixed."

Actually, this was a kind of "one-off". It was a cruise ship, but it came from the shipyard (which apparently is up-river), it was NOT in regular service.
The clearance from funnel to high-voltage lines was reported to be 4...5 m, which apparently is too little for a 400 kV line.
The blackout did not occur until 30 min. after the line was disconnected, so this was not the direct cause. I read that a second high power line was out of commission as well, this probably aggravated the problem.
Third, there are reports that the windpower plants in the north of Germany were delivering too much to the grid at the time causing instability.
All this together seems to have caused the blackout.

Benta.

 

[itsmoked]

Thanks benta that really makes a bunch more sense of things.

Keith Cress
Flamin Systems, Inc.-

http://www.flaminsystems.com

 

[integrator2000]

Does anyone know (or advise) approx how much of wind energy is acceptable to inject in a Power Grid to keep stability during heavy load variations, obviously to ensure the grid can recover properly from a sudden underfrequency state without the need of making power cuts.
I heard about 12% of wind energy can be injected but I am not sure?

Integration and Participation for better coordination of the EU Electric Grid.

 

[bacon4life]

The November/December 2005 IEEE Power and Energy Magazine had several great articles on how much wind energy several different grids could support. From memory, it seemed like some grids had trouble with 4%, while Ireland was approaching 20%. A lot of it depends on what type of wind generator it is and the other kinds of resources available.

For the New York area check out:

http://www.nyserda.org/publications/wind_integration_report.pdf

"Based on the results of this study, it is expected that the NYSBPS can reliably accommodate at least 10% penetration, 3,300 MW, of wind generation with only minor adjustments to its existing planning, operation, and reliability practices."