Quote:
Originally Posted by fsr
I'm pretty sure that any concern about this matter was only generated thanks to mass-media yellow press trying to invent catastrophe from thin air, or maybe just trying to give renewable energy a bad image. The numbers may seem large, but as mentioned, any day to night transition would be way worse than any solar eclipse, and yet, nothing explodes.
The eclipse is just a small moving spot where the sun is totally eclipsed, the rest of the area is dimmed. Doesn't seems like such a problematic issue for an interconnected power grid.
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Hi Fernando,
Thanks for the post.
On the contrary, the article was not generated by the mass-media in order
to create hysteria.
It's an article written by electrical engineers with a primary reader target
of other electrical engineers and was published on the Institute of
Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) web site.
The IEEE is the world's peak professional electrical engineering
body. Globally it has some 420,000+ members in 160 countries making
it the world's largest technical professional organization for the
advancement of technology.
It consists of dozens of "societies" ranging across the entire gamut of
electrical and electronic engineering including aerospace, communications,
computing, engineering materials, nuclear engineering, photonics, power
and energy, robotics, signal processing, transportation, biometrics ,
microelectronics and semiconductors, nanotechnology and so on.
It publishes hundreds of journals and magazines and every year
has jurisdiction over 1,800+ global conferences.
It also maintains hundreds of global standards. For example, consider the
up and coming 5G mobile telephone communications technology. That is
an IEEE standard. The way floating point arithmetic is performed in all
computers is an IEEE standard. There are dozens of IEEE standards
governing the design and testing of the electrical, electronic and computing
systems deployed within nuclear power plants. Standards for smart grids.
Standards for photovoltaic modules and power systems. Standards for
power grid designs and operation. Standards for semiconductor clean
rooms. And so on.
In the case of power generation and distribution, the IEEE membership
is responsible for it all. Electrical engineers designed every electrical
power source, both the old non-renewable and the very latest renewable.
The IEEE has its origins in 1894. It started with telegraphy, then a main
focus on AC power generation and distribution, with wired communication,
both telephony and telegraphy being a secondary focus. It started with
people like Edison, Tesla and Bell. Some of its highest awards are named in
their honour.
In the case of the power grid, to the man-in-the-street, they just know that
they flick a power point switch and the power is there.
But behind the scenes, the operation of a power grid requires
day-to-day and moment to moment oversight and management by
operators.
Power grids are complex things. In fact, they are some of the largest
and most complex engineered systems and the physics involved
in transferring power is non-linear. Voltage collapse can rapidly occur
throughout the entire network cascading from a small disruption somewhere.
In worse case scenarios, an entire grid can collapse within a fraction of
a second.
Power stations go on and off line. Coal and gas powered
stations require a continual mechanical feeding of fuel. Winds vary
from time to time at wind turbine locations. Clouds pass over solar
power plant arrays and urban rooftop deployments.
Some of these events the grid can be pre-programmed for or ridden out.
Some are exceptional and perhaps even unexpected, such as a power plant
failure or a storm bringing down power transmission lines.
In the case of the recent eclipse in the US and the one in Europe in 2015,
human intervention was required in the management of the grid otherwise
there was a very real chance that the grid might come down.
But both events were anticipated and planned for and where intervention
was required, it was done so successfully.
So the article is simply one group of engineers saying to other engineers,
"this is how we did it". And they did it calmly, coolly and rationally.
In other words, exactly how they are paid to do it. No hysteria, no
panic. But if they hadn't done it, then what the man in the street takes
for granted may have stopped working.
It also provides an interesting anecdote - interesting at least to engineers
or to people who just love to know how things work - as to the extent of
deployment of solar generation in the US and Europe at this point in
world history.
That a solar eclipse with its finite full and partial shadowing lasting
only a few hours can, in the case of Europe, see an 18 to 25GW
dip in the available power on the grid. That much power is no small
beans and it says a lot about the achievement of designing, constructing
and interconnecting the enormous amount of solar power generation
involved.
It also provides some feel for the enormous amount of energy dissipated
from the Sun. The world has an insatiable appetite for electrical power
and it is remarkable that so much of it can be grabbed out of thin air.
Anyway, I hope you and other readers found the article and this background
interesting. There are professionals working behind the scenes to keep
our technological world running.
Best Regards
Gary Kopff
IEEE Member 39 years
How US power grid operators managed the solar eclipse
If anything, the article is calming.
