[HN Gopher] The Baltic states are reconfiguring their electric g...
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The Baltic states are reconfiguring their electric grids
Author : sohkamyung
Score : 24 points
Date : 2020-08-15 10:32 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.economist.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.economist.com)
| 082349872349872 wrote:
| Interesting that the US grid is not national, according to
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Wide_area_synchronous_gri...
|
| Am I misunderstanding "synchronous"? Would it really be possible
| to mis-frequency only part of the IPS/UPS grid without bricking
| the rest?
| brudgers wrote:
| Combined, the Baltic States are about 67k square miles. This is
| smaller than Missouri. Smaller than nearly half of the US
| states. Alaska by itself is ten times their area. And though
| you might say, "but that's Alaska" that's exactly why comparing
| the US to European nations at the national level is usually a
| category error. Individually, the Baltics would rank in the
| smallest ten if they were US states.
|
| Or to put it another way, for things like utility grids and
| high speed rail, a national level system in the US is
| comparable to a pan-european system that includes everything
| from Lisbon, to Oslo, to Bucharest and Belgrade and Istambul.
| sitharus wrote:
| > Or to put it another way, for things like utility grids and
| high speed rail, a national level system in the US is
| comparable to a pan-european system that includes everything
| from Lisbon, to Oslo, to Bucharest and Belgrade and Istambul.
|
| Which is exactly what exists, and what the Baltic states are
| joining: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synchronous_grid_of_
| Continen...
|
| It doesn't go as far north as Oslo, but does include Morocco,
| Algeria and Tunisia.
| [deleted]
| sandworm101 wrote:
| >> Smaller than nearly half of the US states. Alaska by
| itself is ten times their area.
|
| I wonder if there is something between those states, maybe
| some sort of land bridge linking Alaska to the more southern
| states? The north american grid is very multinational, with
| the US generally a net importer of Canadian power, especially
| in the east. Except texas. They are weird.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:NERC-map-en.svg
|
| (And be careful when talking about the size of US states.
| Americans don't like being reminded how small they are.)
| senkora wrote:
| This is considered a feature, because having multiple
| independent systems reduces the probability of a complete
| failure. IIRC, some national security-sensitive facilities are
| duplicated on two grids.
|
| The really weird thing is that Texas has its own grid.
| Especially since electricity is significantly cheaper on the
| Texas grid than on the other two.
| gameswithgo wrote:
| we do what we want! which is wind power somehow
| HarryHirsch wrote:
| Isn't it that chokepoints are what causes failures in the
| electric grid, not general connectedness? If you are looking
| at security holes in control equipment it doesn't matter of
| you are connected to a grid, when you've got the
| NSA/KGB/Chinese Ministry of State Security inside your
| generating station you've lost anyway.
| etimberg wrote:
| Yes, North America is not a single synchronous grid. All of it
| operates at 60Hz, but interconnections between the regions are
| done using either HVDC or VFTs because electrical signals from
| both regions would not be in-phase (i.e. have synchronized
| peaks)
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_Interconnection has
| details on how the Western Interconnection works.
| nippoo wrote:
| Another interesting recent reminder of the interconnectedness of
| politics and electricity grids happened a couple of years ago,
| when all of Europe's frequency (and lots of grid-synced clocks)
| went out of spec because of a Kosovo/Serbian spat:
| https://www.theverge.com/2018/3/8/17095440/europe-clocks-run...
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(page generated 2020-08-16 23:00 UTC)