🚀 go-pugleaf

On Fri, 03 Aug 2012 06:15:44 +1000, Don McKenzie <5V@2.5A> wrote:

>And Inferior equipment?
>-------------------
>
>http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/opinion/politics/indias-disastrous-blackout-is-a-sign-of-wider-power-failure-20120802-23iad.html
>
>Serious allegations of corruption resulting in inferior equipment being bought, including high-voltage switch gear and 
>protection devices, have surfaced in the past.
>
>The authorities have also been blamed for the hasty implementation of unproven and unreliable technology across the 
>national grid. As usual, the government dismissed all criticism.

In an electric system, the production must be exactly as large as the
consumption (+losses). When the consumption increases, the production
should increase by the same amount. Failing this, the generator speed
will drop, dropping the network frequency and finally the frequency
protection in each generator will disconnect the generator from the
network. With tripping generators, large unexpected currents will flow
in interconnects, finally tripping the line, causing even higher
currents in remaining interconnects...

If load shedding is not performed quickly, more and more generators
and interconnect will trip, causing a constantly spreading network
crash.

Reading between the lines, it appears as if the regions refused to
drop loads, hence the blackout was spreading all over the country.

To start a dead network, typically a hydroelectric power plant is spun
to nominal speed, some local load added, then the next generator is
synchronized to this local network and local load is added to it. This
procedure is repeated, until all generators and loads are on-line
again. This can take quite a while to spin out some power plants, a
SCRAMed nuclear power plant can take a day or two.