Brian Zinchuk: Too much wind, not enough wind? What’s going on in Alberta?
Weird things have been happening in Alberta’s electrical grid over the last week. Interties to BC and Montana are down due to maintenance. Many hours have seen zero dollars paid for power. Wind and solar have been in such surplus numerous facilities have shut down at times to clear the glut. The grid frequency has had numerous variances, including “due to sudden variability of renewables.” Is the Alberta grid pushing the limits of how much wind and solar it can take?
That would be my guess. I’m surprised how hard it is to get people to understand that the inconsistencies of renewables at scale will destabilize the grid. It’s just a no-brainer.
H
My take-away from the essay.
The system needs to religiously maintain 60 hertz. Renewables are causing too much fluctuation and will bring the system down if the fluctuation isn’t stopped. The $0 price seems to be a byproduct of relying on unreliable renewables.
SaskPower seems to not be watching at all, they are fully comitted to the suicide path.
Why can no-one in the electrical power industry recognize the sh!tstorm they are making with this renewable crap. We used to have competent people there, now – what, is it all diversity hires?
…because most of saskpower’s board of directors know diddly and squat about electricity. They are politically appointed by the government via the crown investment corporation (CIC). Being a cynic, I suspect that financial incentives and conflicts of interest are rampant in the CIC. Those who work in power production, transmission and distribution and grid control know the absurdity of intermittent energy sources but no one listens to them.
Wind and solar make the grid less stable. There is no workaround for that. So the greater they penetrate, the more you are f’d.
No other way to put it.
The past 24 hours from AESO:
Frequency deviation to 59.89HZ internal to AIES
Frequency deviation to 59.65HZ internal to AIES
Frequency deviation to 59.86 due to sudden variability of renewables.
Frequency deviation to 59.86 due to sudden variability of renewables.
That’s just in 24 hours. And the 59.65 is getting close to the danger zone. I don’t know how long that lasted.
And note, I’ve never seen these frequency deviations posted before. They may have been, but I’ve never seen it.
http://ets.aeso.ca/ets_web/ip/Market/Reports/RealTimeShiftReportServlet?contentType=html
I’m intrigued and pretty much limited to changing a light bulb. Can you tell us about the dangers of the deviations? Or maybe post a link for our edification???
Thanks
I tried to explain it in the piece. But basically, frequency is generally never a problem until it is, and then when it is, it becomes a massive problem, potentially catastrophic. As in components like generators can explode sort of thing.
This is part of what Joseph Fournier, a scientist who occasionally write for me, explained it on LinkedIn this morning: The danger for us in this scenario of seasonal low demand, is catastrophic failure as load and generation loose synchronicity as the AC frequency of the grid begins to drop below the 60 Hz frequency of the load connected to the grid.
See first comment for a meme that represents these physical principles.
When I say “catastrophic”, I mean quite literally that. Physical infrastructure can explode if asynchronicity exceeds certain fundamental limits.
These issues would not exist if our power market regulators and legislators provided rules of conduct for independent power producers. Right now, wind and solar PV producers are not required to curtail production when weather conditions favor excess production.
Instead, dispatchable power units are forced to step down their output. However, dispatchable power plants also provide the grid with its frequency stability due to their large rotation inertia that is designed to maintain synchronicity to 60 Hz load.
While wind and solar PV units use inverter based regulators (IBR) to match output to the 60 Hz grid, they do not dynamically respond like large thermal power plants due to the latter’s rotational inertia.
Alberta desperately needs regulations that requires solar PV and wind power producers to install sufficient behind the fence storage that they behave like dispatchable power units that by design follow variable demand. At present, they flood the grid with power irrespective of variable load.
Furthermore, as wind and solar PV units earn “carbon credits”, they are not incentivized to reduce output when the pool price collapses to $0 per MWh
The short version is that if they get outside of between 59.7 to 60.3 Hz, protection equipment starts tripping (like a breaker) potentially resulting in complete grid failure, similar to what happen in the 2003 Northeast blackout (which was caused by a different issue, in this case, a power line was overloaded).
Basically, if demand outstrips supply, the frequency drops. Think of a truck that’s overloaded – the RPMs drop. But if it gets outside of about 1 % (might be half a per cent) then really bad things happen. It’s like riding a bike with the brake on, but also with a rim that gets increasingly wobbly. Much of the major components of the grid are set up to detect these frequency variations, and if the variance goes too deep for too long, they will disconnect themselves, causing cascading failures. As more generation drops off the grid, frequency drops more, and more fall off. Texas was within 4 minutes 37 seconds of having the entire grid collapse in February, 2021, if it had remained below I think 59.4 Hz for that much longer. What we call “blackouts” is actually a misnomer. A better term might be power failure. A true blackout means the whole grid went down. As generators are coiled wires forming electromagnets to create more power, you need power to start with. It takes power to make power, essentially. So then to restart the grid, there’s a specific and difficult sequence to bring on generation and balance it with load one bit at a time. It can take weeks. This happens exceedingly rare – New York, southern Ontario (Remember Peter Mansbridge being brought back from holidays wearing a beard?) But when it does happen, society can start to break down (New York rioted.) So see how it’s not a problem until it is?
Yes, saskpower has black start protocols and procedures to deal with a total grid failure but it takes time to get everything back online after tripping. With winters on the Canadian prairies getting to temps of -30C or -40C and brutal winter storms, taking days to restart is life threatening. Saskatchewan and Alberta can’t afford to be stupid and reckless with grid reliability.
My advice : get a generator for backup and have an electrician do the proper electrical work for safe installation.
Frequency issues are a big problem with wind as they rely on variable wind velocities. I believe the latest iteration of large turbines is to generate in DC and use inverters to assure grid friendly frequency. Wind and solar should not be used on the grid unless their proponents sell grid reliable power providing their own spinning or battery backup and are competitive.
Major loads will trip off the grid if they see too high or too low frequency.
Pre retirement I worked at an AB facility drawing abt 60 MVA (similar to MW) and then a SK facility drawing abt 80 MVA. Iirc the frequency trips were set at low of 59 Hz and high of 61 Hz. The bulk of the load were synchronous motors which help stabilize the grid frequency and keep PF at unity at the incoming to the switch yard.
Losing large loads like that suddenly would make a bad grid situation worse.
So many government’s have forgotten their purpose. In this case, government has forgotten that their purpose Is to ensure affordable and reliable power, not chasing climate change hobgoblins, carbon credits, kickbacks, international attaboys etc. I doesn’t mean that politicians need to own power production like saskpower but they must ensure that reliable, affordable power for citizens is maintained. I don’t think anyone will realize the importance of baseload power until it’s too late and there’s a crisis that should have been avoided.
Politicians at all levels are failing at energy security just like they are failing in most of their other responsiblities – budgeting, health care, crime and justice, immigration, infrastructure, protecting basic rights and election integrity. We are been governed by corrupt and weak-minded fools.
Frequency deviations ?
Actually reported?
Somebody is covering their ass.
For that is a rare and very damning admission.
I have been observing these “alternate energies” since 1976..They continue to fail and politicians continue to use them as a license to steal.
Storage has been the major stumbling block, but the diffuse nature of the energy produced is still a killer.
The frequency deviations caused by generating power as Dc and then inverting it to AC using grid frequency as the reference may just be too complicated for any reporter or politician..
After all these are people who keep telling us “Power comes from batteries” and “Intermittent Energies are free”.
Australia had a state wide outage some years ago,caused by clouds.
And a reliance to Wind,there was none, and solar,backed by a grid battery.
The report ,of the investigation, is hilarious..
The clouds rolled in.
The battery took over.
Held the grid alive for 8 minutes.
None of the rotating plant got the message,in the form of frequency drop off.
After 8 minutes the inverters shut down (low battery).
Dropped full grid load onto idling diesels.
The protection systems worked great.
Darkness for all.
Blame was smeared all round.
Frequency variation went unmentioned.
So yeah,this is a major concession.
“The frequency deviations caused by generating power as Dc and then inverting it to AC using grid frequency as the reference may just be too complicated for any reporter or politician..”
Well, I’m doing the best that I can for an engineering dropout and former ditch digger.
Hmmmmm, Better change the oil in the generator…
Gonna get cold in the near future.
Great article Brian. Again.