Bishop Hill That blackout
May 12, 2014 Energy: grid Energy: wind Readers may recall the story I posted about a major power cut in the North of Scotland last month and the speculation that the underlying cause was windfarms. This has officially been put down to a faulty relay, but today Euan Mearns notes a letter by an electrical engineer in a local newspaper which tells another story:
SIR, I was amazed to learn that a Scottish Hydro Electric transmission spokeswoman said “repairs are being carried out on the faulty relay” that allegedly caused the power cut on April 16 (“works to fend off blackouts”, P&J, May 10).
I have been an electrical engineer for over 40 years and have never heard of anyone “repairing” a hermetically sealed relay switch.
The relay switch operated perfectly on the windy night of April 16 when it detected a sudden surge of voltage and frequency that fell outside acceptable parameters.
A relay switch has two states: on and off. All of these relay switches operated perfectly on the night, independent of the relay switch at Knocknagael Substation which is, itself fed by at least two windfarms, Farr and Moy.
This was what is known as a “rolling blackout”. It is ludicrous to suggest that all lights went out all over the north at 8.30pm exactly. My area went out at 8.43pm when the blast of wind reached Novar windfarm and toggled the relay switch to off to protect its local circuit and so on up the coast.
Grid operators can switch windfarms on and off remotely – if there is a risk of too much wind generating too much “wrong time” low-grade electricity with what is known in the industry as “flicker”. The grid cannot handle more than 10% of flicker contaminated electricity at any given nanosecond and this limit was exceeded on the night.
The operators were caught on the hop. With no electricity, all the windfarms had to be isolated manually.
The spokeswoman goes on to say that they will be making changes to how the protective equipment operates. This is code for shutting down windfarms even earlier in windy conditions so that the operators get more and more constraint payments for not generating when the wind speed is just right.
Andrew H Mackay, Tain
Reader Comments (55)
and the response from Scottish Hydro ....?
fx: sound of wind
ah .... thought so.
At least someone who knows. Lucky Scots.
Repeat after me wind farms are infallible they cannot be at fault they are sacrosanct. Now go pay your F.I.T penance.
The delicious irony "....With no electricity, all the windfarms had to be isolated manually."
Cue the ambulance chasers - will the Wind Farm Operators be demanding constraint payments for the entire period they were subsequently 'off'?
Do 'constraint payments' apply when a windmill is not generating because it is broken (as opposed to being switched off)? Just asking...
I think an FOI is in order here.
Good post, well written letter from a brave expert who actually knows what he is talking about.
Don
Already done. To Scottish Government. It might be worth trying DECC too if you can be bothered.
Drax up-date - is it me? Drax (our largest coal fired power station) has six boilers. One has already been converted to bio-mass (i.e. lovely carbon absorbing forests) and a further two are under conversion, all attracting huge subsidies and achieving negligible reductions in carbon emissions. This change has "freed up" the operator's allowance (30 kta) of sulphurous emissions so Drax is now importing dirty cheap coal from the US to use up its allowance. Thus, DECC and its cohorts have in one move achieved an insignificant reduction to benign carbon emissions while maximising the output of filthy acid-rain forming sulphurous emissions, and making the operator loads more dosh. Verily the lunatics are in charge of the asylum.
Vernon
"negligible reductions in carbon emissions"
I think when you take the not inconsiderable transport element into account, the wood-fired section generates more CO2. It's only creative accounting that makes it even worth considering.
If Mr. Mackay is correct, and he ought to know what he is talking about, the spokeswoman for Scottish Hydro was actually lying, or, to put it more diplomatically, being economical with the truth.
I am not a lawyer but isn't an organisation that deliberately gives its customers false information guilty of some sort of offence?
I wonder what all those trolls will say about an electrical engineer telling it like it is. It's amazing how much green crap and lies is given out by the generating and other companies supplying our electricity in order to stay on side with the Governments (Scotland and UK) and thus in order to keep their profits rolling in from the renewable energy scam.
I think it's often called the eleventh commandment, Roy:
Well, you can 'repair' by replacement ...
The AGW profiteers have much more of this in store for us if they are not stopped.
Imagine being in a business where the customer is forced to pay when the quality of your product makes it unusable.
And that this commercial condition is imposed by law.
See, that's the problem when *real* engineers (which I presume Mr. Mackay is) with real education, experience, and accreditation (where possible) gets involved with technical issues requiring analysis and logic. Just causes problems to the conventional and accepted wisdom. :-)
"Well, you can 'repair' by replacement ..."
and the cause of the faulty relay..... "a flicker".
and the result....
"shutting down windfarms even earlier in windy conditions so that the operators get more and more constraint payments for not generating when the wind speed is just right."
"the spokeswoman for Scottish Hydro was actually lying"
Almost certainly, but then she probably didn't know enough to know that she was. PR people who knew what they were talking about would lead rather conflicted lives, assuming you could find one who didn't prefer to do something more useful.
ah but you were never a CLIMATE electrical engineer...
Vernon E
The acid-rain-based regulations were also grossly overblown. No trees have been harmed here or anywhere else by not scrubbing SO2 all this time. The USA spent millions investigating it, concluding it existed only slightly and with zero real effect. Hence why the media never mentions it now.
It's customary in many organisations to *not* let the engineers talk to the customers, for exactly this kind of reason. Otherwise the customers might realise that the Marketing and PR folks look like incompetent fools who don't know what they are selling. Or they do know, but are grossly overcharging the unwitting customers. Customers need to be kept in the dark. Usually figuratively, but in this case, literally as well. :-)
So why would SSE and the Scottish Government want to mislead? What is wrong with acknowledging that every now and then wind may cause the system to trip? Well the SNP (Scottish Government) energy policy is to generate the equivalent of 100% of Scotland's electricity from renewable sources by 2020 - just 6 years to go. And as most will be aware we have an independence referendum in September. In an independent (isolated) Scotland's surplus power may have no where to go. And when we are in power need there may be no country (i.e. England) or local FF based generation to provide balancing services and backup. 1.6 GW of Scottish hydro will help but it does not have stamina to cover long lulls.
I think what was meant is that a power monitoring system/device knocked off a safety/switching relay. The monitoring checking for supply quality (frequency and voltage levels +/-). The monitoring data (incl. wind speed/direction) was likely transmitted to the Grid control centre and the controllers had to back off windmill inputs.
No other source able to fill in? Rolling blackouts!
Just imagine where this safety stuff don't work or partially works and the Grid gets a right old bashing.
Get used to it, folks...
The rolling blackouts are coming this winter...
(Unless of course Ed Davey is personally going to run round a giant hamster wheel coupled to an alternator - because, as we all know, he has promised to keep the lights on...)
Well done Andrew!
Personally I think: John Swinney misled Parliament. He should now resign. however don't get excited because from previous experience few of the Scottish press and media will be interested.
For example, on arguably an even bigger scandal when the government lied to the whole parliament about the economic basis for wind and the evidence was very clear it had lied: (the Scottish Climate Change Bill: Gross incompetence & misleading parliament.), only the Dundee Courier carried the story and not one politician took it up.
However, perhaps this time it will be different. With UKIP now neck and neck with the tories for the 6th MEP can either party afford to let this golden opportunity pass them by?
With the independence vote bearing down on us and energy being the key plank of the SNP independence case can the press ignore the fact a government minister
liedmisled on a flagship policy so central to an independent Scotland?As I said on the previous thread:
Ex-pat Colin
The system would be monitored and protected by under/over voltage and frequency relays. These will operate, uncommanded, to protect the system.
Under normal operating or manageable excursion conditions, frequency responsive plant (coal and gas) will sense the change of frequency outside of parameters, and adjust their load up or down accordingly, to maintain the system target frequency.
The problem arises from load excursions outside the capability of the frequency management system, which is designed to cope with a complete trip of Drax off the system. Sudden surges from wind turbines represent a real and present source of unmanageable load excursions. What needs to be decided is exactly how much penetration of wind energy can be permitted on to the existing system before it becomes unstable and frequency response is unable to cope with almost immediate load swings experienced with wind.
Wind turbine output is not backed off by the grid. It is either there to a degree dependent on wind speed, or it is not due to a lack of wind. Other sources of power not being able to "fill in", as you describe, is due to the rapid changes in load demand resulting from too much penetration from non dispatchable generation such as wind and solar.
@Keith Macdonald
The *best* engineers are often the best PR people with customers ... :-)
And just in case it is not obvious there's a double whammy - the more wind we have - the less conventional power stations are economic and so the less conventional power we have to fill in the holes from wind.
So, not only does the grid fluctuate more and more, but the capacity to deal with even the present fluctuations decrease.
Modern society needs its electricity and it is inevitable that people will die as a result of these power cuts which are going to get more and more frequent the longer this insane wind policy continues.
Martin A So what actually happened? Are they still trying to figure it out?
No! Mr Neil Rafferty (cousin to Jerry) who was a key civil servant there at the beginning of this farce and still appears to be in place today will be hoping against hope that the press and politicians don't twig what a disaster its all been. He never gave me a straight answer when I was dealing with him around 2000, so I doubt he ever gives a straight answer.
Who knows how John Swinney came to mislead parliament. Was it Scottish and Southern, was it someone like this civil servant, John Swinney, Scottish Renewables or all of them.
All we know is they've never had serious questioning by press or politicians and I've no doubt that when people start looking they will find a treasure trove of scandal.
Swinney: 22nd April - 'a faulty electronic relay at Knocknagael substation was responsible'
SSE: 9 May as reported in the Inverness Courier: 'investigations are still ongoing into the cause'
Somebody is misinforming the public.
May 12, 2014 at 2:02 PM | Galvanize
"Other sources of power not being able to "fill in", as you describe, is due to the rapid changes in load demand resulting from too much penetration from non dispatchable generation such as wind and solar"
Did you mean load demand (variable from Grid) and either no/low windmill supply, followed by a large unexpected supply and likely feather/shut down. Under/Over shoot if you like and thus tripping a safety/switch breaker at odd times?
Is there a good documentation anywhere describing the "supply balancing act". Also the turbine in-service failure types and occurrences, or would this be FOI action?
It bothers me considerably that people tend to say that the turbines are working because they are turning. I have a suspicion that isn't quite true in some cases?
Vernon et al.
Drax has flue gas desulphurisation equipment (scrubbers) on all 6 units. It was installed at cost of about £800 million in the 90ties.
I think it's worth pointing out that the letter by Andrew Mackay is published in my local broadsheet The Press and Journal. To be published there, you need to provide name, address and telephone number. They always phone to check that you are who you say you are - falling short of sending someone round to verify this. The letter is presented as an alternative view to the official line - to be verified or challenged. The full system was restored within hours, suggesting that nothing was broken. It was a simple case of disconnecting all wind farms, resetting the relays and continuing with BAU - hydro and CCGT power from Peterhead.
"The grid cannot handle more than 10% of flicker contaminated electricity at any given nanosecond"
Not that I like wind farms or the scam that allows them to flourish, but this sounds like BS to me (an electronics but not power engineer). Flicker will be spectral components of the total wave and "any given nanosecond" implies frequency components of >1GHz. Therefore we would be talking of 10% of the total power being above a Gigahertz - I don't think so!
The bit about repairing relays didn't ring true either. He's obviously talking about a little reed/hemetric sealed relay, whereas I suspect that the electricity company are talking about a honking great contactor switching the turbine output.
Maybe any power engineers could comment?
"The grid cannot handle more than 10% of flicker contaminated electricity at any given nanosecond"
Not that I like wind farms or the scam that allows them to flourish, but this sounds like BS to me (an electronics but not power engineer). Flicker will be spectral components of the total wave and "any given nanosecond" implies frequency components of >1GHz. Therefore we would be talking of 10% of the total power being above a Gigahertz - I don't think so!
The bit about repairing relays didn't ring true either. He's obviously talking about a little reed/hemetric sealed relay, whereas I suspect that the electricity company are talking about a honking great contactor switching the turbine output.
Maybe any power engineers could comment?
Euan you've got to read what Swinney said in Parliament on the 22nd April in replay to Alex Johnstone:
Alex Johnstone (North East Scotland) (Con): The cabinet secretary will be aware that some individuals with engineering experience have suggested that overreliance on wind turbines may have contributed to grid instability. I ask that he not deny that straight away but take the opportunity to inquire whether it could have been a contributing factor.
John Swinney: I am absolutely certain that it was not a contributing factor. Mr Johnstone is free to ask whatever questions he wishes, but I would think that what I said to the Parliament in my original answer—that Scottish and Southern Energy Power Distribution discovered a faulty electronic relay at its Knocknagael substation, which is near Inverness—would have been enough reassurance for him.
Note he does not say "may not", was "unlikely" nor even "one amongst several", instead he explicitly says: [wind] "was not a contributing factor". He then repeats the lie about the faulty relay and to underline it all implies what he says should completely reassure [him].
In light of the letter in the P&J it is difficult to imagine a statement that is farther from the truth. Energy is a matter of life and death - a power cut during a hospital operation could kill. Traffic lights failing - important machinery stuck open or shut - people in lifts.
In fact it now looks as if wind is by far the most likely cause, that there was no faulty relay and that far from being reassured the public should be very concerned because it is very likely there will be more and more of these incidences as a direct result of Scottish Government wind policy.
A minister has staked his reputation on the line - he doesn't present the statement as "what Scottish and Southern say", but instead says "I am absolutely certain". He was absolutely certain, not Scottish and Souther but he - the minister responsible took it upon himself to say he was certain
and he was wrong.
May 12, 2014 at 5:49 PM | Gareth
The relays being discussed are part the protective relaying system in place to protect the overall system from a failure somewhere. They will constantly measure various parameters with the intention of tripping a circuit breaker somewhere within milliseconds of a fault occurring. Look at Wikipedia for 'protective relay'.
We have the evidence that wind farms can cause problems all by themselves and now The Register highlights the possibility of hackers do the same with the PV side of things.
Happy days brought to you by the green lobby.
MikeHaseler, points noted.
1) the relay was faulty, should have tripped but didn't
2) the relay was faulty, shouldn't have tripped but did
3) the relay was not faulty, should have tripped and did?
I'll send email to Alex Johnston - he is a list MSP in my local area.
Talking with relatives in the UK during last weekend - one of the items discussed was power bills.
Our total bill for power in our all-electric three bedroom semi detached bungalow last month was 146 NZD, with a discount of 35NZD for prompt (online) automatic payment, about equivalent including the disscount, to roughly 73GBP.
How well does this compare with UK prices?
Whatever happened with this Grid System fault, the TRUTH needs to be stated to the public AND:
1) a determination now on what level of wind-turbines will be allowed for:
(a) stable electricity supplies
(b) an economic level of wind-turbines deployment
(c) the level of wind turbines as a density to the total operating generating levels, when no overall carbon dioxide
emissions are realised
(d) an honest determination as to whether "constrained-off" generation payments will be made if the YES vote is
delivered to give grid separation
(e) if grid instability is resulting from more deployment of wind-turbines (as experienced in Germany) then surely the
wind-turbine companies should be footing the bill for the higher compensation/protection devices
2) In the new electricity market arrangements where capacity payments will be made for the capability to generate, what happens to the Renewable Obligation subsidies paid to wind-turbines when through their imposed technical stability limitations renders them unavailable ???
Are we, the Joe public, going to be notified of all the increased costs resulting from the ever increasing levels of wind-turbines ???
It would appear that 'enough-is-enough' and all sanctions for further wind turbines deployment be ceased !!!
Don't worry, with windmills back to generating f*ck all it is back to business as usual.
Euan Mearns, please do.
The key here is that Swinney's completely ruled out wind as a contributing factor when he said: "I am absolutely certain that [wind] was not a contributing factor."
Because this misinformation I wouldn't personally speculate as to the exact series of events - but that the high winds was a significant factor in at least part of this event given the way wind farms had to be successively disconnected is really beyond reasonable doubt.
As such it is beyond reasonable doubt that Swinney misled parliament in a serious way on a key plank of the SNP government policy.
If he doesn't go - it demonstrates why Scotland is not fit to govern itself. If he does go, it shows that the SNP energy policy is a sham. Either way this is a major political catastrophe for the SNP.
May 12, 2014 at 6:21 PM | MD
Yes, looked at your Wikipedia suggestion, looks mostly right. Not sure if you understood the other bit though:
"The grid cannot handle more than 10% of flicker contaminated electricity at any given nanosecond" is 100% b****cks. It's the sort of thing that sounds truthey and like you know what you're talking about but is just rubbish. The nanosecond time frame implies that the system is monitoring at a gigahertz rate - WiFi type frequencies - on a 50Hz power system. The "10% flicker" measured on a ns timescale implies that 10% of the total power is above 1 GHz - this is clearly nonsense.
Any power engineers out there?
However, the fact that he's talking rubbish doesn't necessarily make him all wrong, nor the Hydro or Govt people right. If anyone is into FOI requests it might be worthwhile asking for the engineering/incident report containing the root cause analysis. If they are an ISO9000 company they should have something along these lines.
May 12, 2014 at 11:44 PM | gareth
This isn't my area of expertise, but I have had some dealings with substations and transmission lines. The type of relays that might be typically used would be like this one and I see that it's capable of "event reports with real-time accuracy of better than 10 µs". So the nanosecond sampling sounds like an exaggeration, but the sampling is still very fast.
Vernon E at May 12, 2014 at 11:30 AM ;
Drax have admitted that burning wood chips increases their CO2 emissions by 3% (apart from those from the supply of wood chips).
870g per megawatt hour (MW/hr) is belched out by wood, so coal must have produced 844g. The usual figure for the UK is 760g but I suppose the Drax plant is old and less efficient than it could be.
Engineers are supposed to use words carefully and it must be conceded that "nanosecond" has a very precise, impossible to misinterpret, meaning. However, it is possible that Mr Mackay was indulging in a small rhetorical flourish. He should probably have substituted "time" for "given nanosecond". His lapse was an unfortunate blemish on an otherwise reasonable series of observations. I don't know enough about the incident to criticise the substance of Mr Mackay's letter, but I feel that we could cut him some slack on one instance of a careless use of language.
May 13, 2014 at 1:10 AM | Sceptical lefty
+1 'nanosecond' is techy slang for a very short time.
I see that it's capable of "event reports with real-time accuracy of better than 10 µs". So the nanosecond sampling sounds like an exaggeration, but the sampling is still very fast.
May 13, 2014 at 1:04 AM | Unregistered CommenterMD
S.L.B.T.M.
I think the '10 µs' is probably a typo for '10 ms' since their clock seems to have a imprecision up to 5ms. From the brochure you quoted:
(my bold)
It's hardly meaningful to define events in a 50Hz system to microsecond precision.
Dear Mr Johnstone,
You may recall we met a few years ago when I arranged a political debate on energy at the University of Aberdeen. I have since set up my own blog dealing with energy and climate issues and yesterday I ran a simple post based on a letter published in the P&J providing an alternative explanation for the Scottish blackout. This was cross posted to Bishop Hill, the UKs biggest climate and renewable energy sceptic blog. It has had large national exposure.
While there are reasons to doubt the reliability of all the claims made by Mr Mackay in his letter, much of it rings true. The blackout occurred on a windy and gusty night and the grid engineering works designed to enable the grid to cope with such conditions are not yet complete. It does not seem credible that a faulty switch at Knocknagael substation would alone blackout the whole of northern Scotland. And it does seem more credible that the switch did its job, isolating a part of the system, setting off a chain reaction that resulted in an extensive rolling blackout, as claimed by Mr Mackay.
John Swinney: I am absolutely certain that it was not a contributing factor. Mr Johnstone is free to ask whatever questions he wishes, but I would think that what I said to the Parliament in my original answer—that Scottish and Southern Energy Power Distribution discovered a faulty electronic relay at its Knocknagael substation, which is near Inverness—would have been enough reassurance for him.
My emphasis added, where "it" refers to wind power.
I am advised that one way of getting at the truth in this matter is to see the "engineering incident report" from SSE, although I gather this may not yet be complete. I encourage you to pursue this matter since it is critical that the SNP energy policy is scrutinised and those who advocate it, are held to account.
Yours sincerely,
Dr Euan Mearns
Did wind power cause Scottish blackout?
http://euanmearns.com/?p=3043