
Major power failure affects homes and transport - zimpenfish
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-49300025
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_Microft
There was confusion on Twitter how a frequency drop could cause a power
outage. It's the other way around: loss of power/a plant leads to a drop in
frequency. Here's why:

Imagine a generator spinning at 50 rpm (for the sake of simplicity). Now if
the load on the generator is larger than the power it can provide, it will be
slowed down and the frequency goes down. If the load is lower than the power
output of the generator though this surplus goes into spinning it up, raising
the frequency.

There are plants that can more easily vary their output which are used to
manage these fluctuation and providing frequency control.

A pretty new and fast one is the Hornsdale Power Reserve in Australia, based
on Tesla Powerpacks which can react in milliseconds, instead of seconds and
minutes.

~~~
matthewmacleod
I’m not an expert - but I understand that while this is true (generator loss
causes frequency to drop), this drop in frequency can in turn trigger actual
“power outages” for users.

Automated systems respond to sagging frequency by shedding loads - reducing
the demand for power, so that the frequency can increase and a new equilibrium
can be achieved. The goal is to avoid an uncontrolled cascade across the power
network as demand outstrips supply; this is substantially harder to manage
than a short interruption.

The UK does have battery-powered frequency management services, but it looks
like it was quite a large and sudden drop in generation capacity that caused
this deviation, and it took several minutes before it was back to normal. Not
totally sure what it was yet, but sounds like a gas turbine generator suddenly
tripped, along with a nearby offshore wind farm, taking out about a gigawatt
of capacity that normal frequency stabilisation couldn’t handle, resulting in
load shedding.

~~~
noir_lord
Weather has been unusual as hell today, sunny one minute 50mph winds and
torrential rain the next.

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Sami_Lehtinen
Here's some information:
[https://mobile.twitter.com/upsideenergy/status/1159870347618...](https://mobile.twitter.com/upsideenergy/status/1159870347618865152)

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zimpenfish
Given the frequent reports we get about the insecurity and fragility of the US
power grid, is the UK grid as bad and is this going to be just a business-as-
usual oopsie or something more sinister?

~~~
matthewmacleod
(Not an expert)

The UK grid is actually pretty well maintained and resilient - and controlled
power outages can actually be a positive thing in this sense. It looks like a
couple of generators failed within a short period, causing a sudden loss of
about a gigawatt. When the frequency drops as a result, automated systems
start tripping to prevent a more widespread collapse - it’s much easier to
restore power to customers who have been isolated than to recover after a more
widespread collapse, like the US northeast blackout in 2003.

~~~
makomk
Yeah, apparently these power outages only lasted a little under an hour for
the folks affected. The big disruption came from it taking out heavily-used
sections of the train network during the evening commute and the operators
seemingly not having an easy way to bring those back into operation.

~~~
Reason077
The problem seems to be that individual trains have faulted and apparently
cannot be restarted without a visit from an engineer. With multiple faulty
trains blocking lines, nothing can move.

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LeoPanthera
The headline (which has since been updated on the BBC) is somewhat misleading,
in that the power outage has affected a large area of the UK and is not
specifically affecting transport infrastructure.

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HocusLocus
"Major power failure affects homes and transport"

Is a HILARIOUS headline! In a region with many electric trains it's double-
funny! In the future they'll be able to make homes levitate on electrical
power (just because they can, and for views and breezes, neighborly one-
upmanship etc)and power outages will have even more spectacular effects!

And it will be funnier still!

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z92
I link a few old news with it : First there was a news that electric grids are
hackable. And Russians might be after those. Then there was a news that White
House called for some of the power transmission switches be turned manual,
which are now automatic. Next there were a bunch of large and sudden power
failures in large cities all over the world. And now this.

Maybe there isn't a link. Just a possibility.

~~~
JBorrow
More likely that the huge storm sweeping the south of england is the cause

~~~
londons_explore
Imagine I were a hacker who had hacked into a big gas turbine power plant.

To create maximum damage, I am going to want to time my attack within moments
of another generator going down. The UK grid can tolerate one big failure, but
not two at the same time.

So I sit... I lie in wait... For maybe months... As soon as I see another big
generator fail and cause a sudden change in frequency, then within a couple of
seconds, I trigger my exploit to shut down my powerstation too.

The storm might have caused one outage, and a hacker the other.

Any decent hacker with this plan in mind will try to hide their tracks.
They'll inject a 'glitchy' sensor reading to trigger the failure. They'll make
sure all their malware auto-uninstalls itself within milliseconds of the
incident, so any investigation sees a glitch in a sensor reading and can't
track down the real cause.

