I’ve seen lots of posts lately on Texas being “minutes and seconds away” from months long blackouts. What could’ve happened, what was avoided that caused that?
In: Engineering
The management of a Power Grid is a balancing of demand and supply, there was a story from England how the Power Plant Operators would watch the soccer games as at intermission so many people would turn on their kettles it would destabilize their grid.
So what happens when your demand exceeds your supply, well the power grid functions at a set voltage and 60 cycles per second and as load exceeds supply all the motors connected slow down, but as they try to keep doing their job the amount of current required increases. All switch gear, transformers and transmission lines have a max ampere rating.
You couple this with the heating load increase due to cold temps and now you are in a situation where if you do not disconnect part of the load to maintain the balance of available generation and load you will overheat and melt switch gear, transformers, transmission lines, you will damage any equipment that is supposed to be protected by disconnects if they melt solid.
You can think of your own home if you plug a kettle and waffle iron and a toaster into the same outlet, the 110 volt breaker for the kitchen would trip as the amperage draw for these three would exceed 12 amperes as designed.
Now your know it all brother in-law puts a 20 amp breaker in the panel and plugs in all 3 appliances but this over-loads the wires in your house and sets it on fire.
Now you don’t have a home. It would have been simpler to unplug 1 or 2 items and manage the load.
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