The Spanish Grid Drop-out - recently released information....

[Bill Sloman]

One of my LinkedIn contacts - an IEEE contact in this case - posted some
new data on LinkedIn, from a \"Simon Gallagher, Managing Director at UK
Networks Services | CEng | FIET | FEI | MBA \"

\"We have had an update from ENTSO-E on the Spanish complete power
failure. It is limited, but it helps to build the picture. I have
updated our charts with the new information.

Updated timeline:

1. Large generators in the South of Spain started to trip at 12:32:57
CET. Over a period of 20 seconds a total of 2.2GW was lost – this is
well beyond largest infeed so not secured against

2. The frequency looks to have been contained by system reserves until
what looks like a large trip at 12:33:16

3. At this stage, the frequency falls at about 0.5 Hz/s for 4 seconds,
until a rapid collapse starts

4. By 12:33:21 the frequency has crashed to 48 Hz. At this stage the AC
interconnectors to France trip

5. Low Frequency Disconnect was activated, but looks to have had no
effect because 3 seconds later the system has collapsed completely

6. At 12:33:24 the system has completely collapsed, 27 seconds after the
first trip.

Some key comments from me:
- LFDD/UFLS seems to have had no impact on the fall of frequency, I
suspect RoCoF relays were operating by this stage, showing how unstable
the grid was

- I suspect a lack of rotating mass did mean that there was not enough
time for LFDD to have an impact

- A large divergence of frequency opened up between Spain and France for
about 5 seconds. This must have meant a very large phase angle and large
power flows

- The previous data that showed the frequency only dropping to 49 Hz
must have been a result of local generators kicking in where the
Gridradar devices were connected to the network (UPDATE this has now
been confirmed by Gridrader, their sensor in Malaga was switched over to
a UPS and then generator at 12:33:20.7, prior to the disconnection of
the Iberian Peninsula and therefore missing some of the frequency drop)\"

I haven\'t cut and pasted all of it. This paragraph struck me as interesting.

\"While I think a lack of inertia had an impact here, that does not mean
that the level of solar and wind was to blame - rather it is how it has
been integrated - more grid forming inverters, more rotating mass is
needed, I suspect.\"

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

 

[John Robertson]

On 2025-05-10 9:46 a.m., Bill Sloman wrote:

One of my LinkedIn contacts - an IEEE contact in this case - posted some
new data on LinkedIn, from a \"Simon Gallagher, Managing Director at UK
Networks Services | CEng | FIET | FEI | MBA \"

\"We have had an update from ENTSO-E on the Spanish complete power
failure. It is limited, but it helps to build the picture. I have
updated our charts with the new information.

Updated timeline:

1. Large generators in the South of Spain started to trip at 12:32:57
CET. Over a period of 20 seconds a total of 2.2GW was lost – this is
well beyond largest infeed so not secured against

2. The frequency looks to have been contained by system reserves until
what looks like a large trip at 12:33:16

3. At this stage, the frequency falls at about 0.5 Hz/s for 4 seconds,
until a rapid collapse starts
...

\"While I think a lack of inertia had an impact here, that does not mean
that the level of solar and wind was to blame - rather it is how it has
been integrated - more grid forming inverters, more rotating mass is
needed, I suspect.\"

Perhaps for systems that have large solar or wind arrays they could use
a number of large rotating masses to smooth over these burps? Vacuum and
magnetic bearings...

I imagine a series of rotating masses so if any single or several fail
(earthquake, etc.) the system wouldn\'t collapse.

As you say, there is little inertia in these solar systems unlike water
or fuel generated power.

John :-#)#

 

[Bill Sloman]

On 11/05/2025 2:58 am, John Robertson wrote:

On 2025-05-10 9:46 a.m., Bill Sloman wrote:
One of my LinkedIn contacts - an IEEE contact in this case - posted
some new data on LinkedIn, from a \"Simon Gallagher, Managing Director
at UK Networks Services | CEng | FIET | FEI | MBA \"

\"We have had an update from ENTSO-E on the Spanish complete power
failure. It is limited, but it helps to build the picture. I have
updated our charts with the new information.

Updated timeline:

1. Large generators in the South of Spain started to trip at 12:32:57
CET. Over a period of 20 seconds a total of 2.2GW was lost – this is
well beyond largest infeed so not secured against

2. The frequency looks to have been contained by system reserves until
what looks like a large trip at 12:33:16

3. At this stage, the frequency falls at about 0.5 Hz/s for 4 seconds,
until a rapid collapse starts
...

\"While I think a lack of inertia had an impact here, that does not
mean that the level of solar and wind was to blame - rather it is how
it has been integrated - more grid forming inverters, more rotating
mass is needed, I suspect.\"

Perhaps for systems that have large solar or wind arrays they could use
a number of large rotating masses to smooth over these burps? Vacuum and
magnetic bearings...

Why bother? If you\'ve got a grid scale battery to supply the right
levels of current, just feed in the same current as rotating mass would.

I imagine a series of rotating masses so if any single or several fail
(earthquake, etc.) the system wouldn\'t collapse.

Batteries are less disturbed by earthquakes than rotating masses.

As you say, there is little inertia in these solar systems unlike water
or fuel generated power.

But - given enough a big enough reservoir of energy - you can simulate
any rotating mass you like.

About the first thing the South Australia grid did after they\'d
installed the world\'s first grid scale battery in 2017, was to reserve
half it capacity for short term frequency management.

https://hornsdalepowerreserve.com.au/

The web site talks about \"Tesla inertia services\" which isn\'t all that
informative.

It the Spanish didn\'t bother - or more likely made a hash of the
regulation algorithms they installed - that\'s just incompetence.
Probably incompetent administration, in partitioning the job in a way
that made it difficult to get the component parts to work together
properly, but still incompetence.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

 

[piglet]

Bill Sloman <bill.sloman@ieee.org> wrote:

One of my LinkedIn contacts - an IEEE contact in this case - posted some
new data on LinkedIn, from a \"Simon Gallagher, Managing Director at UK
Networks Services | CEng | FIET | FEI | MBA \"

\"We have had an update from ENTSO-E on the Spanish complete power
failure. It is limited, but it helps to build the picture. I have
updated our charts with the new information.

Updated timeline:

1. Large generators in the South of Spain started to trip at 12:32:57
CET. Over a period of 20 seconds a total of 2.2GW was lost – this is
well beyond largest infeed so not secured against

2. The frequency looks to have been contained by system reserves until
what looks like a large trip at 12:33:16

3. At this stage, the frequency falls at about 0.5 Hz/s for 4 seconds,
until a rapid collapse starts

4. By 12:33:21 the frequency has crashed to 48 Hz. At this stage the AC
interconnectors to France trip

5. Low Frequency Disconnect was activated, but looks to have had no
effect because 3 seconds later the system has collapsed completely

6. At 12:33:24 the system has completely collapsed, 27 seconds after the
first trip.

Some key comments from me:
- LFDD/UFLS seems to have had no impact on the fall of frequency, I
suspect RoCoF relays were operating by this stage, showing how unstable
the grid was

- I suspect a lack of rotating mass did mean that there was not enough
time for LFDD to have an impact

- A large divergence of frequency opened up between Spain and France for
about 5 seconds. This must have meant a very large phase angle and large
power flows

- The previous data that showed the frequency only dropping to 49 Hz
must have been a result of local generators kicking in where the
Gridradar devices were connected to the network (UPDATE this has now
been confirmed by Gridrader, their sensor in Malaga was switched over to
a UPS and then generator at 12:33:20.7, prior to the disconnection of
the Iberian Peninsula and therefore missing some of the frequency drop)\"

I haven\'t cut and pasted all of it. This paragraph struck me as interesting.

\"While I think a lack of inertia had an impact here, that does not mean
that the level of solar and wind was to blame - rather it is how it has
been integrated - more grid forming inverters, more rotating mass is
needed, I suspect.\"

Fascinating. Thanks. That ties in with my earlier post wondering if older
inverters with too strict rocof cutoffs were at least partially responsible
for collapse.

--
piglet

 

[Don Y]

On 5/10/2025 9:58 AM, John Robertson wrote:

Perhaps for systems that have large solar or wind arrays they could use a
number of large rotating masses to smooth over these burps? Vacuum and magnetic
bearings...

I imagine a series of rotating masses so if any single or several fail
(earthquake, etc.) the system wouldn\'t collapse.

As you say, there is little inertia in these solar systems unlike water or fuel
generated power.

The sun is *still* shining. Why can\'t *it* supply the power
to all of the distributed inverters around the country at the
appropriate phase angle? You only need storage if your
actual source of power disappears, relative to the load.

I.e., turn excess generation capacity to \"braking mass\"

 

[john larkin]

On Sun, 11 May 2025 02:46:34 +1000, Bill Sloman <bill.sloman@ieee.org>
wrote:

One of my LinkedIn contacts - an IEEE contact in this case - posted some
new data on LinkedIn, from a \"Simon Gallagher, Managing Director at UK
Networks Services | CEng | FIET | FEI | MBA \"

\"We have had an update from ENTSO-E on the Spanish complete power
failure. It is limited, but it helps to build the picture. I have
updated our charts with the new information.

Updated timeline:

1. Large generators in the South of Spain started to trip at 12:32:57
CET. Over a period of 20 seconds a total of 2.2GW was lost – this is
well beyond largest infeed so not secured against

2. The frequency looks to have been contained by system reserves until
what looks like a large trip at 12:33:16

3. At this stage, the frequency falls at about 0.5 Hz/s for 4 seconds,
until a rapid collapse starts

4. By 12:33:21 the frequency has crashed to 48 Hz. At this stage the AC
interconnectors to France trip

5. Low Frequency Disconnect was activated, but looks to have had no
effect because 3 seconds later the system has collapsed completely

6. At 12:33:24 the system has completely collapsed, 27 seconds after the
first trip.

Some key comments from me:
- LFDD/UFLS seems to have had no impact on the fall of frequency, I
suspect RoCoF relays were operating by this stage, showing how unstable
the grid was

- I suspect a lack of rotating mass did mean that there was not enough
time for LFDD to have an impact

- A large divergence of frequency opened up between Spain and France for
about 5 seconds. This must have meant a very large phase angle and large
power flows

- The previous data that showed the frequency only dropping to 49 Hz
must have been a result of local generators kicking in where the
Gridradar devices were connected to the network (UPDATE this has now
been confirmed by Gridrader, their sensor in Malaga was switched over to
a UPS and then generator at 12:33:20.7, prior to the disconnection of
the Iberian Peninsula and therefore missing some of the frequency drop)\"

I haven\'t cut and pasted all of it. This paragraph struck me as interesting.

\"While I think a lack of inertia had an impact here, that does not mean
that the level of solar and wind was to blame - rather it is how it has
been integrated - more grid forming inverters, more rotating mass is
needed, I suspect.\"

Any hints at the precipating cause?

Maybe some modest local event triggered a fundamentally unstable
system.

 

[john larkin]

On Sat, 10 May 2025 11:22:20 -0700, Don Y
<blockedofcourse@foo.invalid> wrote:

On 5/10/2025 9:58 AM, John Robertson wrote:
Perhaps for systems that have large solar or wind arrays they could use a
number of large rotating masses to smooth over these burps? Vacuum and magnetic
bearings...

I imagine a series of rotating masses so if any single or several fail
(earthquake, etc.) the system wouldn\'t collapse.

As you say, there is little inertia in these solar systems unlike water or fuel
generated power.

The sun is *still* shining. Why can\'t *it* supply the power
to all of the distributed inverters around the country at the
appropriate phase angle? You only need storage if your
actual source of power disappears, relative to the load.

I.e., turn excess generation capacity to \"braking mass\"

If every solar inverter was networked and controlled in
voltage/current/phase angle, by some intelligent system controller,
one might not be so dependant on rotating mass.

As solar and wind get to be dominant, micromanagement of power sources
and loads will be necessary to ensure uptime.

(That\'s a big part of the green agenda: control everything.)

 

[Chris Jones]

On 11/05/2025 5:04 am, john larkin wrote:

As solar and wind get to be dominant, micromanagement of power sources
and loads will be necessary to ensure uptime.

This is largely unnecessary - if the control signal that was being sent
out by the central controller to micromanage each power source was
derived from a function of the frequency, phase, voltage etc., then
rather than trying to distribute the result of this calculation to
millions of devices with low latency, it is better to distribute just
the formula (once every few years or as necessary), and run it on a
microcontroller in the inverters several times every mains cycle. They
already have more than enough processing power.

I believe that there are some new regulatuions in at least one Austrlian
state, driven by the (fossil-fuel-stoked) fear of \"too much solar
destabilising the grid\", which require new home solar inverters to stop
exporting power, unless they receive continuous \"permission to export\"
signals from our overlords, the network operators. In other words,
rather than exporting power in the case of communications failure, it
goes into the state of \"export no power\" in case of communications
failure, because otherwise people might unplug their internet to export
more scary solar power if exporting power was allowed when the internet
connection fails. This is a fairly new requirement, so not many
compliant devices are installed now, but once a few gigawatts of these
inverters are running, it will be interesting to see what happens when
there is a major internet outage on a hot summer day, and all of those
gigawatts suddenly go away. Hopefully they thought of that but I doubt it.

The rapid control algorithms should be distributed, and the only
low-latency communication signals they should rely upon are frequency
and voltage.

 

[Bill Sloman]

On 11/05/2025 4:22 am, Don Y wrote:

On 5/10/2025 9:58 AM, John Robertson wrote:
Perhaps for systems that have large solar or wind arrays they could
use a number of large rotating masses to smooth over these burps?
Vacuum and magnetic bearings...

I imagine a series of rotating masses so if any single or several fail
(earthquake, etc.) the system wouldn\'t collapse.

As you say, there is little inertia in these solar systems unlike
water or fuel generated power.

The sun is *still* shining.  Why can\'t *it* supply the power
to all of the distributed inverters around the country at the
appropriate phase angle?  You only need storage if your
actual source of power disappears, relative to the load.

I.e., turn excess generation capacity to \"braking mass\"

The sun disappears every night, and less sunlight gets through when the
sky clouds over. Extra solar panel area and grid scale storage makes
this easier to deal with.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

 

[Bill Sloman]

On 11/05/2025 5:04 am, john larkin wrote:

On Sat, 10 May 2025 11:22:20 -0700, Don Y
blockedofcourse@foo.invalid> wrote:

On 5/10/2025 9:58 AM, John Robertson wrote:
Perhaps for systems that have large solar or wind arrays they could use a
number of large rotating masses to smooth over these burps? Vacuum and magnetic
bearings...

I imagine a series of rotating masses so if any single or several fail
(earthquake, etc.) the system wouldn\'t collapse.

As you say, there is little inertia in these solar systems unlike water or fuel
generated power.

The sun is *still* shining. Why can\'t *it* supply the power
to all of the distributed inverters around the country at the
appropriate phase angle? You only need storage if your
actual source of power disappears, relative to the load.

I.e., turn excess generation capacity to \"braking mass\"

If every solar inverter was networked and controlled in
voltage/current/phase angle, by some intelligent system controller,
one might not be so dependant on rotating mass.

As solar and wind get to be dominant, micromanagement of power sources
and loads will be necessary to ensure uptime.

(That\'s a big part of the green agenda: control everything.)

Only in climate change denial propaganda, which is paid for by the
fossil fuel extraction industry, which wants to continue to control
everything.

Paradoxically, because solar panel can be distributed much more easily
than oil wells and oil refineries, solar power lends itself a lot more
easily to the kind of local control and negotiated interaction between
larger areas that the anarcho-syndicalists prefer.

John Larkin would probably see that as disadvantage if he understood
what it meant, he prefers to be hoodwinked by the people who have always
manipulated his opinions.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

 

[Bill Sloman]

On 11/05/2025 12:22 pm, Chris Jones wrote:

On 11/05/2025 5:04 am, john larkin wrote:

As solar and wind get to be dominant, micromanagement of power sources
and loads will be necessary to ensure uptime.

This is largely unnecessary - if the control signal that was being sent
out by the central controller to micromanage each power source was
derived from a function of the frequency, phase, voltage etc., then
rather than trying to distribute the result of this calculation to
millions of devices with low latency, it is better to distribute just
the formula (once every few years or as necessary), and run it on a
microcontroller in the inverters several times every mains cycle. They
already have more than enough processing power.

I believe that there are some new regulations in at least one Australian
state, driven by the (fossil-fuel-stoked) fear of \"too much solar
destabilising the grid\", which require new home solar inverters to stop
exporting power, unless they receive continuous \"permission to export\"
signals from our overlords, the network operators.

It is cruder than that. They\'ve just stopped paying any realistic kind
of feed-in tariff to people with roof-top solar, and as a result 40% of
new roof-top solar in Australia is now being installed with Tesla
Powerwall or similar battery. It more than doubles the cost of the
installation, but reduces the pay-back time for the whole installation
to about seven years, and save you negotiating with your power supplier
about their derisory feed-in tariffs.

In other words,
rather than exporting power in the case of communications failure, it
goes into the state of \"export no power\" in case of communications
failure, because otherwise people might unplug their internet to export
more scary solar power if exporting power was allowed when the internet
connection fails. This is a fairly new requirement, so not many
compliant devices are installed now, but once a few gigawatts of these
inverters are running, it will be interesting to see what happens when
there is a major internet outage on a hot summer day, and all of those
gigawatts suddenly go away. Hopefully they thought of that but I doubt it.

It\'s more that they haven\'t yet got enough poles and wires in the right
places to move the roof-top power to where it could be used.

The fundamental problem is that the network got privatised about twenty
years ago, and the ownership structure that got set up was designed to
make it easy to sell shares in the old hardware - it is totally
unsuitable for any kind of distributed system.

The rapid control algorithms should be distributed, and the only
low-latency communication signals they should rely upon are frequency
and voltage.

Sounds sensible, but the current ownership structure wasn\'t designed
with that in mind.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

 

[Don Y]

On 5/10/2025 7:22 PM, Chris Jones wrote:

This is largely unnecessary - if the control signal that was being sent out by
the central controller to micromanage each power source was derived from a
function of the frequency, phase, voltage etc., then rather than trying to
distribute the result of this calculation to millions of devices with low
latency, it is better to distribute just the formula (once every few years or
as necessary), and run it on a microcontroller in the inverters several times
every mains cycle. They already have more than enough processing power.

I think any reliance on a \"central controller\" is inherently flawed.
Model the network. Then, develop a distributed algorithm where
every cogenerator understands its role in generation -- not just that
of dumping power into the network but, also, of constraining the
*overall* network\'s response.

I.e., instead of thinking that the cogenerator needs to disconnect
in an anomalous situation, teach it to rectify that situation
within the constraints taht the network model imposes.

I believe that there are some new regulatuions in at least one Austrlian state,
driven by the (fossil-fuel-stoked) fear of \"too much solar destabilising the
grid\", which require new home solar inverters to stop exporting power, unless
they receive continuous \"permission to export\" signals from our overlords, the
network operators. In other words, rather than exporting power in the case of
communications failure, it goes into the state of \"export no power\" in case of
communications failure, because otherwise people might unplug their internet to
export more scary solar power if exporting power was allowed when the internet
connection fails. This is a fairly new requirement, so not many compliant
devices are installed now, but once a few gigawatts of these inverters are
running, it will be interesting to see what happens when there is a major
internet outage on a hot summer day, and all of those gigawatts suddenly go
away. Hopefully they thought of that but I doubt it.

The rapid control algorithms should be distributed, and the only low-latency
communication signals they should rely upon are frequency and voltage.

Exactly. It is surprising how many algorithms that we think of as
centralized can, in fact, be distributed. But, that has to be
a factor in the algorithm\'s design; you can\'t just convert an
algorithm designed with the idea of centralized control into
one where multiple actors are involved and add an \"escape clause\"
to handle the corner cases that you failed to anticipate.

 

[Bill Sloman]

On 11/05/2025 4:58 am, john larkin wrote:

On Sun, 11 May 2025 02:46:34 +1000, Bill Sloman <bill.sloman@ieee.org
wrote:

One of my LinkedIn contacts - an IEEE contact in this case - posted some
new data on LinkedIn, from a \"Simon Gallagher, Managing Director at UK
Networks Services | CEng | FIET | FEI | MBA \"

\"We have had an update from ENTSO-E on the Spanish complete power
failure. It is limited, but it helps to build the picture. I have
updated our charts with the new information.

Updated timeline:

1. Large generators in the South of Spain started to trip at 12:32:57
CET. Over a period of 20 seconds a total of 2.2GW was lost – this is
well beyond largest infeed so not secured against

2. The frequency looks to have been contained by system reserves until
what looks like a large trip at 12:33:16

3. At this stage, the frequency falls at about 0.5 Hz/s for 4 seconds,
until a rapid collapse starts

4. By 12:33:21 the frequency has crashed to 48 Hz. At this stage the AC
interconnectors to France trip

5. Low Frequency Disconnect was activated, but looks to have had no
effect because 3 seconds later the system has collapsed completely

6. At 12:33:24 the system has completely collapsed, 27 seconds after the
first trip.

Some key comments from me:
- LFDD/UFLS seems to have had no impact on the fall of frequency, I
suspect RoCoF relays were operating by this stage, showing how unstable
the grid was

- I suspect a lack of rotating mass did mean that there was not enough
time for LFDD to have an impact

- A large divergence of frequency opened up between Spain and France for
about 5 seconds. This must have meant a very large phase angle and large
power flows

- The previous data that showed the frequency only dropping to 49 Hz
must have been a result of local generators kicking in where the
Gridradar devices were connected to the network (UPDATE this has now
been confirmed by Gridrader, their sensor in Malaga was switched over to
a UPS and then generator at 12:33:20.7, prior to the disconnection of
the Iberian Peninsula and therefore missing some of the frequency drop)\"

I haven\'t cut and pasted all of it. This paragraph struck me as interesting.

\"While I think a lack of inertia had an impact here, that does not mean
that the level of solar and wind was to blame - rather it is how it has
been integrated - more grid forming inverters, more rotating mass is
needed, I suspect.\"

Any hints at the precipating cause?

\"1. Large generators in the South of Spain started to trip at 12:32:57
CET. Over a period of 20 seconds a total of 2.2GW was lost – this is
well beyond largest infeed so not secured against.\"

This is a pretty clear statement. It doesn\'t say anything about why the
large generators - type unspecified - lost 2.2GW of generating capacity
over a twenty second period, and I haven\'t seen anything any more
specific anywhere.

Maybe some modest local event triggered a fundamentally unstable
system.

Too modest to have been noticed. Power generation systems are quite busy
- people are connecting any disconnecting stuff all the time - so it
would have taken a rather improbable modest event, or collection of
modest events to to trigger this hypothetical mode of instability.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

 

[Chris Jones]

On 11/05/2025 4:18 pm, Bill Sloman wrote:

I believe that there are some new regulations in at least one
Australian state, driven by the (fossil-fuel-stoked) fear of \"too much
solar destabilising the grid\", which require new home solar inverters
to stop exporting power, unless they receive continuous \"permission to
export\" signals from our overlords, the network operators.

It is cruder than that. They\'ve just stopped paying any realistic kind
of feed-in tariff to people with roof-top solar, and as a result 40% of
new roof-top solar in Australia is now being installed with Tesla
Powerwall or similar battery. It more than doubles the cost of the
installation, but reduces the pay-back time for the whole installation
to about seven years, and save you negotiating with your power supplier
about their derisory feed-in tariffs.

No, they say:

\"What happens if my solar inverter loses internet connectivity?

If your solar inverter loses internet connectivity, the excess energy
you export to the grid will automatically be reduced. This ensures it
can be safely managed.\"
( from here:
https://www.energy.vic.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0019/701911/Emergency-backstop-customer-factsheet-June-2024.pdf
)

So if all of the inverters lose internet, which is entirely likely at
some point bearing in mind our telcos, we can expect a blackout too, all
so that \"it can be safely managed.\" The blackout will no doubt help the
telcos to get back online promptly. Fun times ahead.

 

[Don Y]

On 5/11/2025 3:38 AM, Chris Jones wrote:

If your solar inverter loses internet connectivity, the excess energy you
export to the grid will automatically be reduced. This ensures it can be safely
managed.\"
( from here:
https://www.energy.vic.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0019/701911/Emergency-backstop-customer-factsheet-June-2024.pdf )

Really? Is the internet deterministic in your part of the world? What
do their protocol layers cause to happen when individual messages ARE lost?

Or, is that the next \"design error\" to manifest in their \"engineered\" solutions?

So if all of the inverters lose internet, which is entirely likely at some
point bearing in mind our telcos, we can expect a blackout too, all so that \"it
can be safely managed.\" The blackout will no doubt help the telcos to get back
online promptly. Fun times ahead.

 

[Carlos E.R.]

On 2025-05-11 08:18, Don Y wrote:

On 5/10/2025 7:22 PM, Chris Jones wrote:
This is largely unnecessary - if the control signal that was being
sent out by the central controller to micromanage each power source
was derived from a function of the frequency, phase, voltage etc.,
then rather than trying to distribute the result of this calculation
to millions of devices with low latency, it is better to distribute
just the formula (once every few years or as necessary), and run it on
a microcontroller in the inverters several times every mains cycle.
They already have more than enough processing power.

I think any reliance on a \"central controller\" is inherently flawed.
Model the network.  Then, develop a distributed algorithm where
every cogenerator understands its role in generation -- not just that
of dumping power into the network but, also, of constraining the
*overall* network\'s response.

I.e., instead of thinking that the cogenerator needs to disconnect
in an anomalous situation, teach it to rectify that situation
within the constraints taht the network model imposes.

I see a problem if the network is hacked. Same as routers are hacked today.


.... (distributed algorithms)

--
Cheers, Carlos.

 

[john larkin]

On Sun, 11 May 2025 20:38:51 +1000, Chris Jones
<lugnut808@spam.yahoo.com> wrote:

On 11/05/2025 4:18 pm, Bill Sloman wrote:
I believe that there are some new regulations in at least one
Australian state, driven by the (fossil-fuel-stoked) fear of \"too much
solar destabilising the grid\", which require new home solar inverters
to stop exporting power, unless they receive continuous \"permission to
export\" signals from our overlords, the network operators.

It is cruder than that. They\'ve just stopped paying any realistic kind
of feed-in tariff to people with roof-top solar, and as a result 40% of
new roof-top solar in Australia is now being installed with Tesla
Powerwall or similar battery. It more than doubles the cost of the
installation, but reduces the pay-back time for the whole installation
to about seven years, and save you negotiating with your power supplier
about their derisory feed-in tariffs.


No, they say:

\"What happens if my solar inverter loses internet connectivity?

If your solar inverter loses internet connectivity, the excess energy
you export to the grid will automatically be reduced. This ensures it
can be safely managed.\"
( from here:
https://www.energy.vic.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0019/701911/Emergency-backstop-customer-factsheet-June-2024.pdf
)

So if all of the inverters lose internet, which is entirely likely at
some point bearing in mind our telcos, we can expect a blackout too, all
so that \"it can be safely managed.\" The blackout will no doubt help the
telcos to get back online promptly. Fun times ahead.

Electric power used to be reliable and affordable.

 

[Bill Sloman]

On 11/05/2025 8:38 pm, Chris Jones wrote:

On 11/05/2025 4:18 pm, Bill Sloman wrote:
I believe that there are some new regulations in at least one
Australian state, driven by the (fossil-fuel-stoked) fear of \"too
much solar destabilising the grid\", which require new home solar
inverters to stop exporting power, unless they receive continuous
\"permission to export\" signals from our overlords, the network
operators.

It is cruder than that. They\'ve just stopped paying any realistic kind
of feed-in tariff to people with roof-top solar, and as a result 40%
of new roof-top solar in Australia is now being installed with Tesla
Powerwall or similar battery. It more than doubles the cost of the
installation, but reduces the pay-back time for the whole installation
to about seven years, and save you negotiating with your power
supplier about their derisory feed-in tariffs.


No, they say:

\"What happens if my solar inverter loses internet connectivity?

If your solar inverter loses internet connectivity, the excess energy
you export to the grid will automatically be reduced. This ensures it
can be safely managed.\"
( from here:
https://www.energy.vic.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0019/701911/Emergency-backstop-customer-factsheet-June-2024.pdf )

What they say isn\'t all that interesting. What they do is discourage
people from trying to sell their excess power back to the grid.

So if all of the inverters lose internet, which is entirely likely at
some point bearing in mind our telcos, we can expect a blackout too, all
so that \"it can be safely managed.\" The blackout will no doubt help the
telcos to get back online promptly. Fun times ahead.

I haven\'t lost my internet recently - the last time it happened it was
not due to anything the telcos had done - the mains supply to my
apartment block had to be cut off for hours while they replaced the
local distribution transformer, which sits just outside our front gate,
and it was entirely local. A few years back it dropped out for couple of
hours due a problem with my telco, but it only affected people served
by that telco, and was confined to a single suburb.

The chance of all the inverters losing internet connectivity at once
doesn\'t seem to be all that high.

--
Bil Sloman, Sydney

 

[Bill Sloman]

On 12/05/2025 12:09 am, john larkin wrote:

On Sun, 11 May 2025 20:38:51 +1000, Chris Jones
lugnut808@spam.yahoo.com> wrote:

On 11/05/2025 4:18 pm, Bill Sloman wrote:
I believe that there are some new regulations in at least one
Australian state, driven by the (fossil-fuel-stoked) fear of \"too much
solar destabilising the grid\", which require new home solar inverters
to stop exporting power, unless they receive continuous \"permission to
export\" signals from our overlords, the network operators.

It is cruder than that. They\'ve just stopped paying any realistic kind
of feed-in tariff to people with roof-top solar, and as a result 40% of
new roof-top solar in Australia is now being installed with Tesla
Powerwall or similar battery. It more than doubles the cost of the
installation, but reduces the pay-back time for the whole installation
to about seven years, and save you negotiating with your power supplier
about their derisory feed-in tariffs.


No, they say:

\"What happens if my solar inverter loses internet connectivity?

If your solar inverter loses internet connectivity, the excess energy
you export to the grid will automatically be reduced. This ensures it
can be safely managed.\"
( from here:
https://www.energy.vic.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0019/701911/Emergency-backstop-customer-factsheet-June-2024.pdf
)

So if all of the inverters lose internet, which is entirely likely at
some point bearing in mind our telcos, we can expect a blackout too, all
so that \"it can be safely managed.\" The blackout will no doubt help the
telcos to get back online promptly. Fun times ahead.


Electric power used to be reliable and affordable.

And it isn\'t now?

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

 

[Don Y]

On 5/11/2025 6:28 AM, Carlos E.R. wrote:

On 2025-05-11 08:18, Don Y wrote:
On 5/10/2025 7:22 PM, Chris Jones wrote:
This is largely unnecessary - if the control signal that was being sent out
by the central controller to micromanage each power source was derived from
a function of the frequency, phase, voltage etc., then rather than trying to
distribute the result of this calculation to millions of devices with low
latency, it is better to distribute just the formula (once every few years
or as necessary), and run it on a microcontroller in the inverters several
times every mains cycle. They already have more than enough processing power.

I think any reliance on a \"central controller\" is inherently flawed.
Model the network.  Then, develop a distributed algorithm where
every cogenerator understands its role in generation -- not just that
of dumping power into the network but, also, of constraining the
*overall* network\'s response.

I.e., instead of thinking that the cogenerator needs to disconnect
in an anomalous situation, teach it to rectify that situation
within the constraints taht the network model imposes.

I see a problem if the network is hacked. Same as routers are hacked today.

It doesn\'t even have to be malignantly hacked. It could just exhibit
atypical behavior that causes a higher percentage of dropped packets
to result in control/status messages (either direction) not reaching
their intended destinations in a timely manner.

(What value the communication network if its timeliness is called
into question?)

... (distributed algorithms)