Washing Machine in Bathroom

[littlespark]

The same sort of thing that happened at Heathrow? Too many “safety” systems kicking in and the whole thing drops out.

How stable is the UK grid do you all think? Could we suffer the same widespread blackouts across the country?

 

[James]

uk grid is surprisingly robust,
it is, in theory able to cope with multiple simultaneous faults.

however the thing with any grid that has multiple sources of energy and varying loads is that it all has to remain perfectly balanced.

if the frequency drops by more than1 Hz then protection devices may start tripping, when one goes, it can cause a cascade and it all falls like a domino run.

Large traditional generators, as you have in power stations are huge rotating masses that will resist changing speed because of their inertia. this means that they can cope with huge overloads for a short period of time.

a lot of the green machines like solar and small scale wind turbines use dc generators and inverters.
they are not able to deal with large overloads so the grid frequency will slow down. when it hits a threshold then they will disconnect from the grid. and that can start a chain reaction also known as a cascade failure.

 

[James]

RED Eléctrica de España, Spain’s electricity board, has released a preliminary timeline of the outages:


At 12:33pm, the grid suffers an “event” akin to loss of power generation.


Almost immediately, the grid self-stabilises and recovers


About 1.5 seconds later, a second “event” akin to loss generation hits


About 3.5 seconds later, Spain-France is interrupted due to grid instability


Immediately afterwards, a “massive” loss of renewable power hits the system


The power grid cascades into a collapse

 

[mainline]

Wood burning stove and candle lighting it should be mandatory for all new builds

 

[LastManOnline]

Wood burning stove and candle lighting it should be mandatory for all new builds

Agreed.In every home I have lived in ,the most important piece of furniture (for me ,not the wife) has been a wood burning stove.For the simple reason that its the only form of heat that I truly enjoy.
However ,during storm "Eowyn" ,we lost electricty for a while . I discovered that my wood burning stove had numerous other benefits. Been able to fry an egg and boil water for a coffee was a huge relief