How do you cut the power supply to two whole countries and 48m people in one go?

[woodenhead]

How does this happen - a power cut covering all of Argentina and Uruguay, parts of Brazil all at the same time.

 

On an Election Day too!!

 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-48652686

[Southernman46]

Very, very, simply - it's something like ....................... One overload / fault - trips somewhere - overloads next system - trips - and so on & if the respective Control Engineers cannot load shed or switch in additional capacity quick enough - the system will only stop overload tripping until it finds its own equilibrium when the load matches the supply capacity ..................... by then lots of people are without power ................

 

Back in 1990 during commissioning of the City Thameslink scheme due to an error in the test schedule, "we" managed to trip both 11kV supplies from Cannon Street SS to London Bridge Signalbox at 17:13 in the evening .......................... fairly quickly recovered but disruptive nevertheless ...................

[Nearholmer]

There are all sorts of design and operational actions that are used to minimise the probability of this sort of thing, but minimise can’t practically mean ‘reduce to zero’, and “thin and straggly” power systems, which I would guess much of these are, are particularly difficult to keep highly secure.

 

The real test in eventualitylike this is how quickly they can get it all back up again.

 

Anyone remember the Great Storm in 1987, and how London lost power for a period? That shutdown was largely deliberate, to avoid an uncontrolled tripping-out, because it allowed more rapid restoration.

Edited June 16, 2019 by Nearholmer

[Enterprisingwestern]

 

DCC?

 

Mike.

[davknigh]

Similar things have been done before .

 

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northeast_blackout_of_2003#/media/File:Jasonp_blackout2003_toronto_UnionStnInt.jpg

 

The main cause? Dodgy software and lousy maintenance.

 

Cheers,

 

David

Edited June 16, 2019 by davknigh
Clearing drooping words

[pH]

16 minutes ago, davknigh said:

Similar things have been done before .

 

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northeast_blackout_of_2003#/media/File:Jasonp_blackout2003_toronto_UnionStnInt.jpg

 

The main cause? Dodgy software and lousy maintenance.

 

Cheers,

 

David

 

And there was another in the same area almost 40 years before:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northeast_blackout_of_1965

 

It even had a song written about it:

https://youtu.be/RBjYGu1fpfY

 

[PMP]

Easy peasy I’ll show you. Watch th

[davknigh]

4 hours ago, pH said:

 

And there was another in the same area almost 40 years before:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northeast_blackout_of_1965

 

It even had a song written about it:

https://youtu.be/RBjYGu1fpfY

 

I remember that one well. I had a long walk home from school that night as I was on a trolley bus when the power went out. Sadly the power came back on in time for me to do my homework :-(

 

Cheers,

 

David

[Colin_McLeod]

The first scene is obviously what happened: 

 

 

 

[BR60103]

In 1965, I was at a talk on stage lighting at the University. The presenter asked for the house lights to be turned down and it got darker and then the emergency lights came on. After a long wait the talk was cancelled.

 

[Enterprisingwestern]

9 hours ago, davknigh said:

I remember that one well. I had a long walk home from school that night as I was on a trolley bus when the power went out. Sadly the power came back on in time for me to do my homework :-(

 

Cheers,

 

David

 

I thought homework was done on the bus to school the following morning?

 

Mike.

[ejstubbs]

13 hours ago, davknigh said:

Similar things have been done before .

 

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northeast_blackout_of_2003#/media/File:Jasonp_blackout2003_toronto_UnionStnInt.jpg

 

A better link (not just to a picture of some people in the dark) is: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northeast_blackout_of_2003

 

As it says in the article, 55 million people were affected - but not as big as the 1999 Southern Brazil blackout which affected an estimated 75 to 97 million people.  And there have been bigger ones by that measure, as listed here.

[57xx]

Quote

"A massive failure in the electrical interconnection system left all of Argentina and Uruguay without power," electricity supply company Edesur said in a tweet.

 

 

Edited June 18, 2019 by 57xx

[AndrewC]

Chris Grayling denied that he recently changed the plug on his toaster. 

[truffy]

There wasn't, by any chance, a break in a major TV event, and all the viewers went to put the kettle on?

[APOLLO]

I blame these wind farms. It'll happen over here soon ------

 

Brit15