OT: synchronous condensers

newshound · 2021-02-15T21:35:04+00:00

bit of technology I had not come across before (although apparently they used to be found at some sub-stations back in the 60's to 70's).

newshound 5 years ago

This depends on scale.

From Wikipedia:

"The electrical power grid that powers North America is not a single grid, but is instead divided into multiple wide area synchronous grids."

Russia has a single grid, China has two.

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Paul 5 years ago

One of the reasons for not gridding excessively large areas with AC transmission systems, is solar flares.

We had some sort of long line here, knocked out by a solar flare. I don't remember any details though, it was likely a while ago.

You could distribute power with HVDC setups, but who knows, maybe solar flares take those out by induction too. Maybe you'd have to raise the rating of the line, to make it more flare-proof.

The news reporting on solar flares has been quiet for some time.

It's possible the HVDC setups are a bit on the expensive side, but they are still building new ones. The East Coast of Canada has a hydro project underway, where a certain "fixed link" between provinces was run in reverse, the link being finished before the generators were online, and an event came up where reversing the flow was a distinct advantage. There's nothing like having spare wires sitting around in an emergency (just ask Texas :-) ).

This is why having an "energy basket" and diversifying is so important. I don't think Texas missed that, but it's possible they scheduled a bit too much down-time for their resources at a bad moment. Nuclear reactors are great, but some of them don't stay online as much as they should (60% uptime means you have to "buy two to get one"). That's why one of the design objectives for a paper design here, aims for 90%. Then of course, reality kicks in, and some lower number is the result (refurbs always seem to take a long time). The Candu reactors here, can be fueled while they're running, by a robot. Which protects the uptime a bit.

Paul

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The Natural Philosopher 5 years ago

As with most things, the simple one dimensional thinking of the Art Student - 'A is better than B' - is inadequate.

Large area grids are good because one part can prop up another part in extreme conditions leading to lower overall cost.
Large area AC grids are not effective because the time delays over the network start to impact on efficiency
Large area DC grids are starting to sort of happen.
If the large area grid cannot be split then under fault conditions it all goes down together

Its the old EU argument for freedom of movement. Like the Titanic, who needs watertight doors that restrict passenger movement? Until you have a hole in the side of the ship...or a pandemic, or unlimited hostile immigration

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