
The Baltic states are reconfiguring their electric grids - sohkamyung
https://www.economist.com/europe/2020/08/15/why-the-baltic-states-are-reconfiguring-their-electric-grids
======
JackPoach
This article is completely off point. The three Baltic states have inherited
Soviet power system and back then they produced more power than they needed
and they were net power exporters. However, in order to join the EU, they had
to comply with very strict environmental regulations. For instance, Lithuania
had to shut down Ignalina nuclear power plant, this was a required condition
from the EU or Lithuania wouldn't be able to join the Union. Last year Estonia
had to decommission their shale plants (yes, they used to burn shale) due to
CO2. In order to get power from somewhere, a series of interconnectors were
built, with Sweden and Finland (which is funny, 40% of Sweden's power comes
from nuclear) and those interconnectors had 16 outages within a very short
period of time, which happens when you build new grids, you need to work all
kinks out. As the result of this, the price of power in the Baltic states
increases by about 30% each year. So, this is the background story that you
need to understand before reading the article. If you first destroy your power
generation capacity and become depended on imports - yeah, you become
vulnerable. Excess capacity is unprofitable BUT it's much safer to have it.
Right now excess capacity for the Balitc states is Russia and they want to
change it to the EU. But physics doesn't care about your political views. It's
always smart to have internal excess capacity rather than depend on outside
parties.

~~~
alephnil
> Lithuania had to shut down Ignalina nuclear power plant, this was a required
> condition from the EU or Lithuania wouldn't be able to join the Union

> which is funny, 40% of Sweden's power comes from nuclear

I think the issue there was that this was RBMK-type reactors, which is the
same type as in Chernobyl, and it is generally considered unsafe, even with
the safety upgrades that was done to it.

~~~
JackPoach
You are correct. And there we talks to build a new nuclear plan for all three
Baltic states but they don't seem to have any progress. Moreover, Belarus has
built a new nuclear plant 30 miles away from the Lithuanian border (the first
reactor is being loaded as we speak) and Lithuania has actually banned any
purchases from that plant, while Latvia and Estonia have not. So, there's a
lot of politics around nuclear power there as well.

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nippoo
Another interesting recent reminder of the interconnectedness of politics and
electricity grids happened a couple of years ago, when all of Europe's
frequency (and lots of grid-synced clocks) went out of spec because of a
Kosovo/Serbian spat: [https://www.theverge.com/2018/3/8/17095440/europe-
clocks-run...](https://www.theverge.com/2018/3/8/17095440/europe-clocks-
running-slow-electricity-frequency-kosovo-serbia)

~~~
_nalply
Interesting. I don't understand everything so I have a question to the experts
here: It seems that a small part of Kosovo stopped paying for electricity, so
the electricity producers stopped producing for the parts. However this didn't
work out, electricity still flowed to the nonpayants, because it seems that
nobody cut the wires. This created an inbalance distorting the grid frequency,
such that clocks in Europe ran a bit late (6 minutes). Sort of an Europe-wide
soft brown-out. It's not told in the article, but I think the voltage was also
a bit lower than it should be.

Did I understand this correctly?

~~~
probablypower
It is pretty much right.

Neither country took responsibility for the demand (X), and so the market
wasn't aware of the demand, and therefore the generation provided by the
market was lacking X. When there is more energy being taken out of the grid
than being provided, generators start to slow down. That is, the power is
extracted from their rotational energy (inertia), meaning their rotational
speed slows down (frequency decreases).

There are mechanisms in place that fix any frequency deviations, but the
assumption is that deviations in frequency are symmetrically distributed
around 50 Hz (or 60 Hz for you americans). When you have consistently skewed
errors (i.e. frequency always being pulled down by Kosovo), you end up with a
'time error' [0].

The time error was noticed fairly quickly (frequency and analogs to 'time
error' are monitored in control rooms), but the issue was that no-one took
responsibility for it and because it became a political issue it was difficult
for other grid operators to step in and fix it.

I'm not sure about voltage being lower in this case. Voltage is a very local
phenomena, and it would be very unusual for control rooms to allow voltages to
be 'lower than they should be', especially over a considerable time period. To
do so they would be in violation of their grid codes.

[0]
[https://www.nerc.com/docs/oc/rs/NERC%20Balancing%20and%20Fre...](https://www.nerc.com/docs/oc/rs/NERC%20Balancing%20and%20Frequency%20Control%20040520111.pdf)

------
jve
> A giant outage in Latvia on June ninth concentrated minds

"Giant" per what definition? It happened because of damaged isolation for
330kV line and automatics just shut it off. It also brought overflow within
110kV line affecting 160k people in capital and around it.

Communications was affected (apparantly they didnt test their energy backup
systems), traffic, homes. Diesel generators were put to work where needed. Our
datacenter was up and running, being backed up by other electricity lines and
diesel.

Yeah, a MAJOR outage, but in LESS than 2 hours everything was restored.

Nothing to do with frequency. Why even mention it and try to associate with
Russia?

~~~
the-dude
Russia is an enormous threat to Western civilization, haven't you heard? /s

~~~
Stierlitz
>> Nothing to do with frequency. Why even mention it and try to associate with
Russia?

> Russia is an enormous threat to Western civilization, haven't you heard? /s

Merely yet more anti-russian neocon propaganda, who are nostalgic for the cold
war. It's the $insert_one_of: Chinese, Russian, North Korean, Iranian hackers
who took down the electric grid, hacked hospitals etc.

~~~
M2Ys4U
It's not like Russian agents go around attacking The West, doing things like
interfering in elections or launching chemical warfare in Western nations is
it?

Oh, wait, yes - that's exactly what they've done.

~~~
zwww
Chemical warfare?

~~~
jurip
Meaning assassination with polonium, I guess. I dunno if it's chemical warfare
but not something I expect from a reasonable government.

~~~
M2Ys4U
That too, but I was referring to the Novichok poisonings in 2018:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poisoning_of_Sergei_and_Yulia_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poisoning_of_Sergei_and_Yulia_Skripal)

------
blendergeek
Just a question:

Why does demand exceeding supply cause the frequency to drop?

In my mind it should cause the voltage to drop?

If this question is too long to answer on HN, are there any good resources
that explain this?

~~~
tgsovlerkhgsel
If you add load to a generator, it increases the amount of force needed to
turn it. (There's a nice experiment with a hand crank generator that has a
switched load - it's very noticeable, and logical - the electrical power you
use needs to come from somewhere).

If the amount of force that's available doesn't increase, the generator slows
down. The generators are synchronized to the grid. Of course, as the frequency
drops, power plants regulate by applying more force to the generators (e.g.
increasing the amount of gas or water fed to a turbine).

~~~
econcon
If you've a small load dynamo spins faster as there is much less force
required to make it spin.

So frequency should go up, not down.

As the spin is directly proportional to the frequency

~~~
quietbritishjim
GP comment: Why does increasing load make the frequency go down?

Parent comment: Increasing load makes the frequency go down because ...

Your comment: Decreasing load makes the frequency go up

Your comment is in agreement with everything before, but you said it in a tone
of disagreement. Maybe you misread the parent comment?

~~~
econcon
ah, yes i did. thanks :)

------
082349872349872
Interesting that the US grid is not national, according to
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Wide_area_synchronous_gri...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Wide_area_synchronous_grid_\(Eurasia,_Mediterranean\).png)

Am I misunderstanding "synchronous"? Would it really be possible to mis-
frequency only part of the IPS/UPS grid without bricking the rest?

~~~
brudgers
Combined, the Baltic States are about 67k square miles. This is smaller than
Missouri. Smaller than nearly half of the US states. Alaska by itself is ten
times their area. And though you might say, "but that's Alaska" that's exactly
why comparing the US to European nations at the national level is usually a
category error. Individually, the Baltics would rank in the smallest ten if
they were US states.

Or to put it another way, for things like utility grids and high speed rail, a
national level system in the US is comparable to a pan-european system that
includes everything from Lisbon, to Oslo, to Bucharest and Belgrade and
Istambul.

~~~
sitharus
> Or to put it another way, for things like utility grids and high speed rail,
> a national level system in the US is comparable to a pan-european system
> that includes everything from Lisbon, to Oslo, to Bucharest and Belgrade and
> Istambul.

Which is exactly what exists, and what the Baltic states are joining:
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synchronous_grid_of_Continen...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synchronous_grid_of_Continental_Europe)

It doesn't go as far north as Oslo, but does include Morocco, Algeria and
Tunisia.

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oseityphelysiol
Another thing that's not mentioned in the article is the Astravets nuclear
power plant in Belarus, which is largely subsidized by Russian funds and is
seen as a political maneuver by Russia to threaten Lithuanian sovereignty.
Lithuanian energy situation has been an issue ever since the closing Ignalina
nuclear power plant as a condition of joining the European union. There were
plans to build a new modern nuclear plant in its place, but it has been
canceled, largely as a consequence of the 2008 financial crisis. The Astravets
power plant is seen as a way to force Lithuania to buy cheap electricity from
Belarus and keep close ties to the Russian sphere of influence. It's choice of
location is largely questionable, being built just 50km from Vilnius, the
capital of Lithuania. The power plant is set to start generating electricity
sometime this year and Lithuania is looking to reconfigure its power grid in
time to boycott it.

------
vermilingua
This reminded me of the very interesting (to me) report and discussion on the
failure of the UK national grid last August:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20973513](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20973513)

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ur-whale
[http://archive.is/B1Qx8](http://archive.is/B1Qx8)

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mcswell
I couldn't read most of the original article because paywall. This
[https://www.onlinefinancenews.com/why-the-baltic-states-
are-...](https://www.onlinefinancenews.com/why-the-baltic-states-are-
reconfiguring-their-electric-grids/) is not behind a paywall. It also seems to
be (machine?) translated.

~~~
oseityphelysiol
The Economist paywall can be bypassed by disabling Javascript on the browser.
They used to have a limited number of articles you could read per week for
free, but it looks like that's not the case anymore. It's really a shame
because their journalism is really high quality, but I guess they do have to
pay for it somehow.

