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#poweroutage

2 posts2 participants0 posts today

My recently acquired battery energy backup pack just saved all the food in our Fridge/Freezer during an extended blackout. Can’t live comfortably without one in these days of uncertainty, infrastructure stress, and system failures. Especially when it’s freaking HOT 🔥. So I ordered two more add’l battery packs to enhance the one we already have. Bought the first one with a portable solar power generator which can re-charge it in a few hours of sun. We’ll use that to charge the new ones as well. In an ideal, people-first world, battery backup on a neighborhood scale would be automatically provided by local and regional governments. That would make sense financially over the long run, and save lives right away and in perpetuity. I’m not holding my breath, tho… #energy #PowerOutage #PowerGrid #EnergyGrid #battery

15 California counties to lose power as damaging winds send wildfire risk soaring

Which California counties will lose power?
PG&E has warned that more than 7,000 customers will be affected by the upcoming power outages.

The following counties were at risk of power outages on Thursday:

Alameda
Contra Costa
Fresno
Merced
Monterey
San Benito
San Joaquin
San Luis Obispo
Santa Clara
Shasta
Stanislaus
Tehama
Trinity

Colusa and Glenn counties are also expected to be added to PG&E's "likely" power shutoff list by Friday.
#weather #CAwx #poweroutage
msn.com/en-us/weather/topstori

www.msn.comMSN

"Thousands of students are out of school with many districts closed because of power outages.

Schools are closed in multiple counties, including Kent, Kalamazoo, Ottawa, Muskegon, Van Buren, Allegan, Calhoun, Montcalm and Ionia counties."

mlive.com/news/grand-rapids/20

mlive · 200K without power in Michigan, some schools close after powerful stormsBy John Agar | jagar@mlive.com

Outage leaves nearly 6,000 without power in Santa Cruz Mountains

PG&E says that nearly 6,000 people are without power in the Santa Cruz Mountains.

The outage was reported at around 5:34 p.m. and is estimated to be restored by 10 p.m. #poweroutage #SantaCruzMtns #PGE
msn.com/en-us/weather/topstori

Good morning tooters. Bit of a different morning today, I have no power! No one in my area has power & hasn’t since just after 1am, what fun. Stayed in bed until 7.30am keeping warm & waiting for full light & deciding what to do. It’s around 4c now, so pretty chilly, but only my feet are cold & it will be a lovely day by the time it gets to the max of 23c this afternoon. According to ausnet the power could be out all day. I must admit it has thrown me a bit, it’s been a long time since any real outage here but I can work around it for now. I removed my little portable induction cooking plates & the cover I have over the gas cooktop. Found some matches as the little gun thingy (tech term) has died. I now have a cup of tea & have boiled a couple of eggs. I’ve got the mocha pot out that I use when house sitting & can make coffee. So I’m good for food & cooking - yay! My daughter & the grandkids were going to be coming round later, miss 7 wants to give me something from the schools Mothers Day stall. I’m not sure if I’ll end up down there instead, just waiting for her to get back to me. I would like to be able to fully charge my devices, so may well go down there. I think I might drop into the supermarket too & get another gas lighter gun thing & matches - can you still buy matches 🤷🏼‍♀️. I have candles if necessary for tonight.
Have a great #Sunday everyone. Stay warm & have a lovely day.
#Weather #PowerOutage #MothersDay #Autumn

So, how did we, as a family, cope with the #blackout in Granada?

We bought fresh tomatoes and bread with some spare cash, and fished some canned tuna out from the back of the cupboard.

We played board games, and, with the little one, made an old cathode-ray TV out of a cardboard Bauli colomba box, so we could hear some (unicorn!) news. Then we went to bed and read in the dying light until our eyes flickered shut.

💡 🇪🇸 🇵🇹
LESSON FROM THE POWER OUTAGE

What we learned from the power outage of yesterday in Spain and Portugal is that without hydroelectric and fossil-fuel power stations you can't restart the grid, while nuclear power stations take a long time to restart.

Continued thread

#PowerOutage
But a couple decades ago, I lived outside the city limits on a rural power cooperative with above ground infrastructure and we encountered multiple hour outages every few years. Being also on well water and having a disabled child, our contingencies were: 5 gallon filled water container and a small generator (for some lights, gas furnace fan and ignition and refrigerator).
With our climate crisis and possible deathly heat waves, air conditioning contingency may prove critical. 2/2

#PowerOutage
Reading about the Spain/Portugal widespread and lengthy power outage got me thinking again about contingencies. I live in a city with a large medical center and multiple tech industries, and robust electric power infrastructure. I cannot recall a power outage lasting more than a few minutes in multiple decades. So our contingencies are just battery backups for computer, Wi-Fi, and TV so a 5 minute outage does not even disrupt anything we're doing. 1/x

Continued thread

This very interesting article basically says it was likely to be either human error or a system fault that caused the Iberian apagón or grid shutdown.
Not an excess of wind or solar, not a cyber attack, not a weather abnormality.
However, because of the uneven and rapid expansion of solar and wind, the system relies on quick corrections to rebalance frequency & voltage. Seems likely there was a system fault to do with the rebalancing mechanism.

The Spain/Portugal power outage is fascinating to me, as an energy storage professional.

Lots of theories flying around about the cause. Atmosphere, cyberattack, renewables.

Power grids keep balance via their AC frequency. In the US, it's 60Hz. If the frequency is a little above 60, then there is a surplus of generation. If the frequency is below 60, there is a surplus of demand. Generators and loads respond to this - it's called frequency response.

Last year in Virginia, in data center alley, there was a frequency disturbance that caused a large number of data centers to drop off the grid onto backup power, leaving a huge surplus of generation. It almost collapsed PJM. (I'm actually working on a project to mitigate this using very large batteries).

Spain lost 15GW of generation in seconds. My speculation is frequency went out of spec, for whatever reason, which caused a ton of solar and wind generators to island themselves, and the situation amplified itself. #theory #spain #poweroutage