What Is A Black Start Of The Power Grid? 

Been waiting for this video. Thanks!

You had at least five ads on this video.

Couldn't they create a 'black-start' grid (with a number of highly-calibrated consumers of electricity) so they could bring the power online quickly, then flick a switch to change the power-plants from energising grid B (the emergency grid) to energising grid A (the commercial grid) to make this smoother? Disclaimer: I'm not an electrical student. My apologies in advance if this is an utterly ridiculous idea.

@@iivin4233 No ads for me apart from the sponsor. Perhaps you should try getting an adblocker?

Thank you so much for that awesome model! i hope to build my own generator soon that was a huge help. thanks again for such awesome content, i cannot understate how much i appreciate it!!!!!

Lol Amen to that!

I operated an small data center. The coffee maker was plugged in the backup generator circuit, because its essential equipment for the operation of the data center.

If you don't have a coffee maker, better pray that there's at least a stove.

The coffee maker takes precedence over emergency lightning in any serious power plant.

@@DinnerForkTongueheresy

I completely agree, system outages are hard on you and their is no appreciation for your efforts. Long Island lighting had a problem like that, (actually more than that part of NYC) they lost all three lines at Indian Point from lightning, that was the 1977 North East blackout.

What capitol City

I am a grid/system operator. We have a saying that the absence of scorn is considered praise.

@@coreybabcock2023 Reykjavik - Iceland

@@roberth7691 as an engineer who used to work in IT operations I feel that.

Ha that's awesome. Ty

thats so funny

It's pretty hilarious, but there's certainly nothing more reliable that good ol' human power 😂😅

As an old guy, I appreciate the fact that sometimes it takes a crank to set everything right.

​​@@studuerson2548 As an airplane mechanic with a thing for inertial start systems (the technical term for crank starts) i too appreciate such simplistic redundancy! On our big jets, (i work at an airline) you dont start the engines with the battery. You use the batteries to start the Auxillary Power Unit (APU for short) Which is essentially a 3rd miniature engine on the plane. You then use the APU to start the main engines! This brilliance harkens back to WW2 bombers, which were the first to utilize that sort of rig. If you ever see one, ask the crew about the APP. (Auxillary Power Plant)

I was an IC man on a surface ship in the 90’s. Minesweeper. Because of the small size we worked hand in hand with the EM’s and one of my many jobs was switching from Ship to shore power and visa versa. We would compete to see who could synch both without blinking the lights on the ship. Fun times.

i used to work on a tug with the same set up too.

Yeah man slow in the fast direction for the win.

I work on a conventional power plant unit and we use the same exact synchroscope too 👍

Not quite the same, but on my old turboprop aircraft in the RAF, each engine drove an alternator for power. No surprise there, but the frequency was directly related to rpm and that was sensed and used to keep the engines in sync with each other.

i definitely havent been the only one thinking that - nice to see

OK you convinced me. I guess I'll spent the next few weeks playing Factorio again

Satisfactory has similar issues when performing a black start. I have had to separate the power grids so I can bring the plants back online without causing a load inrush.

@@ben_burnes Dammit I had real world stuff to do this week.

Yeah. Restarts in Factorio are brutal

I bet that made an awesome sound.

That wasn't very German of that engineer

Shame we couldn’t see it on hd cctv!!

Small correction, it's actually 15 kV :)

@@Flumphinator I bet it made an expensive sound, lol

The lab classes at my uni did most things at and around 400V phase to phase. Grid startup simulations were only talked about, not tried. But we did visit labs that worked at 400kV or similar. But the entire concept was taught and we all knew which 2 plants were the black start sites of the local grid. Since then, at least one has become a museum with the generator output disconnected, but they claim another nearby plant has taken over the duty.

EE331 (motors and generators) and EE307 (electronagnetics) at IIT (Illinois Institute of Technology in the 1980s...

For us it was called Energy Conversion. I called it Everything you never wanted to know about generators, transformers and motors. I was very proud to get an A in that class.

Well done, man. That's awesome. @@davidrush4908

Still the best way, but what he didn't mention was that the lager the generating unit the longer it takes to synchronize it to the rest due to the weight of the rotating elements. Then the units must be loaded to about 40% of full load to stabilize the frequency before the next unit is switched in.

@@henningventer2917 Commercial plants have auto sync but do have the ability to be manually synced. It's rarely used. 8 years navy nuc plus 23 years commercial nuc operation experience here.

Ex-Navy Navy Mechanical Operator here. Some the smartest people I ever met. And some of the weirdest people I ever met. One of the Most memorable times in my life.

You mentioned VARs - now my head hurts! It’s been 30 years since I synced a 5 MW diesel generator to the grid and had to adjust VARs as requested by the System Operator.

Do you lose all SCADA from remote substations in just 8 hours? Would expect an order of magnitude longer than that.

@@highvoltageswitcher6256 there are some visibility only stations that would probably last a bit longer. We train to assume we’ll have control for “at least” 8 hours, though the real number obviously differs by each station.

@@titleloanman Thanks for replying. We were discussing the subject of Black Start conditions today at work. We have two battery systems in our larger ground mounted substations. One is 110V and provides supplies to the Circuit Breakers, motorised isolators and protection relays. The other is 48V and supplies the SCADA equipment on-site. They have to last for at least 3 days without mains to the battery chargers. The likelihood of black start is higher now than it has ever been since our grid was first synchronised together over 80 years ago. Rota disconnections for 3 hours are even more likely this winter.

@@highvoltageswitcher6256 is it mean to give your comment a dislike?! 😑😋

Agree about coffee. Here in NH we occasionally have massive statewide blackouts due to winter ice storms. We have a backup generator now but prior to that I liked to joke that power in town was rarely cut off because there were no trees to fall on power lines so at least we were able to find hot coffee.

coffee maker is part of critical infrastructure that excites the brain of operators in generating station

A black coffee during the black start on a black and cold winter evening.

It is the maniacal desire for hot fresh non-instant coffee that will drive the workers doing the power restoration to efficiency. There is no life without coffee!

On the plus side, heating devices like coffee makers are very nice loads from a stability standpoint. No weird phase issues.

Ah, the flight engineer. Really too bad that position dissolved.

Same thing as he's talking about.

A very simple procedure.

People are morons. Me first, me first!

...and this is why we will never travel the stars.

The rich should have the least priority for power restoration... They use the most energy and can afford to be without for a few extra hours

@@rhamlet5290 It doesn't matter what class a person is. We all need water, food, and shelter at a habitable temperature. Especially the elderly. That is why electricity is so vital to our modern way of life.

@@arthurmoore9488 You seemed to miss my point. The rich can afford to buy new food if it spoils. They also use far more energy. Focusing on poorer neighborhoods reduces the impact of outages while also providing more people energy faster since more people can be supported with the same amount of energy.

Ditto

As a civil engineer who wanted retain as little from my circuits class as I could, I appreciate it as well :)

Question - why don’t plants simply disconnect from the grid rather than shut down. That way the plant can continue powering itself and would simplify grid recovery.

@@stephenblack8804 Not a plant/grid operator (I'm a computer/telecom engineer) but I'll try to take a stab at this. There are lots of really seasoned and actually-qualified veterans/professionals in this comments section so if one of them corrects me, take their word over mine. While I'm sure some plants do just what you're thinking, there are three big problems that I can think up: 1. Many plants are not able to operate for very long with no load: When the prime mover is going at full torque, it depends on the resistance of a generator to keep the RPMs down. To avoid damage to the plant, it's better to shut it down completely when it isn't powering anything. This is the whole "balancing act" of bringing groups of customers back online: we can't just bring all plants up, get everything stable, then say "OK, throw the switch" and connect the customers. We have to keep every plant within its minimum/maximum range, hence the back-and-forth "more plants, more loads, now more plants, now more loads" process... add to that the temporary nature of the "cold start pickup" for each group of loads and I imagine there's a lot more guesswork and intuition involved than pure technique. 2. OK, let's suppose we only have "ideal" plants that are perfectly happy operating anywhere from 0-100% capacity indefinitely. If we disconnect all of those from the grid and keep them idling, we aren't just isolating them from the loads, we're also isolating them from *each other.* This means that the phase/frequency and voltage of each one will fall out of sync over time. It's a lot easier to get one disconnected plant in sync with the rest of the grid than it is to sync many isolated plants with each other, or a whole group of plants with a some other whole group of plants, so in practice the sync-and-connect would end up being one or two at a time anyway. 3. In the event of an overloaded grid, I have to imagine plant operators would rather fight to the bitter end than disconnect. If an overloaded plant disconnects (which it may have to, for safety or to avoid damage), that excess load is just going to suddenly hit the neighboring plants and force them to disconnect too, and you get a cascading failure resulting in blackout anyway. Operators would rather fight the overload and try to ride it out, if at all possible, to avoid the blackout and subsequent "terrifying" black start.

I'd like to know this also, I'm sure there is a reasonable explanation but I am curious.@@stephenblack8804

What? You guys get paid for your black start resources?! All we do is get a bunch of NERC requirements thrown at us for maintaining ours. haha We're getting totally ripped off! 😋

The EPTC is A NERC certified facility for training and has folks from all over the US come in for training.

That sort of reminds me of the flashlight bulb thing of how in some of the museums they would have you know the demonstration for how electricity is generated using hand crank generator and alone possibly a few additional loads like this and switches between the course for demonstrating about how it's harder to generate more power as the load is increased! I've seen some people just say Wow to something like this of course! I've been in many museums in my life also I had gone to the Grand Coulee Dam when I was just a kid! Another place and it was a museum sort of thing Educational Center you know close to the complex of a nuclear power station! They actually did have a small Solar Ray there which is kind of interesting seeing just even with the clouds passing over just how much it affects the output from the solar panels that was pretty cool! Also they had a demonstration there which was a model frame it might have either HO scale or N scale train I cannot remember which of the two. They had solar panels on the back of the display case and reflector problems toward the front angle at the panels to demonstrate the effect of providing solar power all these were connected to a dimmer on the front of the display! That one thing we are at a museum one time me my father they had a demonstration steam engine my father even was fascinated by this thing it was probably one of those intriguing things I'd say in a long time at Museum regarding production of power of any sort! This was a lot more recent than all the others that I mentioned at least in terms of going there. You actually had full operation of all the controls and this is one that was also equipped with condenser and everything else all the bills and whistles which I had not actually seen a demonstration on this scale of detail and Technical nature is this but definitely well designed and very informative and something that really gets things across like just how things work and the complexities involved with doing something like this and even for me was mind-blowing considering that I've actually worked with other equipment that's more complex than this but still something like that is less complex and all but yet more of a wow factor and more. It's not everyday you can feel more around with a piece of equipment like that it's just this is not just meant for older folks this was kids you know I mean they need more exhibits like this some places! Right now everything's just to high tech you could say! Sometimes if things are dumb down a bit instead of all these fancy things that you actually instead of just pushing a button or throwing a switch you have to open up an app on your phone to even turn something on! Don't even get me started about the clouds and if the internet doesn't work you can't turn your lights on sort of thing and I can't actually happen under the right conditions too! I knew someone that had smart switches everywhere F1 store or another well there are nothing out and Chaos ensued! The only way to get lines was the unplug all the smart switches and plug lamps directly to power problem is almost all their hardwired light fixtures were on Smart switches! This is not one of the ones that can run independently of the internet! All they really need to do is have some sort of manual override that basically just turns the switch on or off at the switch either as a convenience which could be used for and also as a backup to if there is a communication issue a hub issue an infrastructure issue what have you that would still work like a normal simple light switch if for other reasons you cannot turn on the light it would just be one or two inputs and a few extra lines of code on the switch itself problem solved. Oh and of course you could actually naming corporate a couple extra buttons for other features or even to maybe do another group of Lights Plus you can monitor the status of those buttons for on and off that could signal to something else that you had turned off manually which could also be a trigger for a different event or say anything else it'd be a bonus extra feature they can make a little cost a little bit more but people might buy it for this reason alone that it had the capability of being actually turned on and off as long as the switch itself was operational and everything else is gone Waco

I worked for WAPA also as a substationelectrician, We had real world training using Fort Peck hydro generator and a local substation to go through black start procedures! The EPTC was one of the many classes/ training I had while there! Best job to date!

Ukraine's electrical engineers are probably the most experienced in black starts in the world, unfortunately. Hope last night's demonstration that their air bases aren't safe even 500km away! Слава Україні! Stay safe, and stay strong! ✊️

@Ellotherem8 Mmmm, gravy.

Our thoughts are with you in Ukraine. It's only down to 7 degrees here in the UK, but that still feels bloody cold - and I have a warm home to go back to. Last time I was in your part of the world at this time of year it was down to -15 some nights. That you cope with conditions like that with no power is nothing short of miraculous. Слава Україна!

Stay safe and stay strong. The arc of history is long, but it bends towards justice.

@@IstasPumaNevada Steven Pinker's writings and presentations are some consolation in that regard.

Wait till you go thru a Cat 5. Try 5 weeks without commercial power. Local nuke plants cannot run without the grid being up. Even when there were oil fired units right next door. Power went out from the plants to a substation and then back to the plant. Substation going down or the grid going down resulted in the reactors scramming. So a minor storm that took out a minor part of the grid could result in power being out for days until the HV lines were back up.

@@gravelydon7072 I can believe that. Just looking at what happened to those poor souls in the Southwest of my state... Brrr, those drone footages are scary as hell. I'm pretty sure it will take them weeks just to get power up throughout that area.

@@Vulpine407 They will in most areas have an easier time than down here. Here if you dig down 6" you are in rock. When Andrew came thru, it snapped off most poles at ground level. That included brand new concrete poles that were 4' in diameter and so new that the power had never been turned on to them yet. On our street is one lone survivor of Andrew. The pole in front of our house was put in in 1978 when our house was built. They had to top it to install a new insulator but our transformer was put back in use for almost another 5 years after that. It has a lean to the West but it has survived a Cat 5, several Cat 1,, Cat 2, and Cat 3 Hurricanes. After Andrew, my employers flew over the areas hit with the District chopper. I have the unedited videos from that with the time stamp on it. Now days drones do the same work. And yes, I can feel for those on our West coast having been thru one of the worst in US history.

As a Mississippian I am surprised you’ve lived in Florida for decades and still haven’t been through a 4 or 5. I still have nightmares about Katrina when I see hurricanes on the tracker heading our way.

@@huntercarter5426 2005 was a bad year for us down here too. While we didn't have a Cat 5, we did have 3 of them one right after another. Katrina, Rita, and Wilma all touched us with Katrina a Cat 1 at the time , Rita was a Cat 2, and I forget what Wilma was when near here. With Rita we lost power for a week as the crews had to repair some of the three phase lines before they could get us powered back up. Once the crew arrived, it took them most of the day to find where the fault was. It was a cracked insulator that they only found after blowing a number of fuses trying to locate it. It was a 3 mile long power line. We now are on a segment that is only 1/2 mile long. Much easier to find the fault but bumps us down as far as priority.

And this instability is only getting worse with the addition of small, static generation sources like solar, or wind power.

'major' should been in bold, for Texas.

I always wonder how big the collective face palm among Texas Engineers was when the 2021 blackout was blamed on renwable sources by officials.

@@ValleysOfRain while everybody knew it was due to powerline failures and fossil fuel plants and pipeline not designed for the cold and not prepared for it. Had they built 4 wind turbines less the entire grid had collapsed completely

@@ValleysOfRain It wasn't just the engineers, it was anyone with enough intelligence to vet and understand the readily-available information they found on the web. But I bet it was big.

@@ValleysOfRain Nuclear is the way.

Is the report accessible to the public by any chance? Any security cam footage?

I'd love to see that report - got a name for the incident or something?

Wouldn't it 'just' trip a breaker?

Was that the one where the generator coupler went through the washroom?

Side story, I previously ran an old 1949 GE genset, with an older 1930’s air operated breaker. Well the air breaker hung up, and when it finally decided to close we were approx 120 degrees out. Well luckily the building just shook and the dust was coming from the ceiling. Unfortunately that generator never sounded the same again, sounded like the wedging all loosened up, it made a fairly loud new growl. Granted this is after the sync relay sent the close, and they unfortunate fact that once a close was sent, an open signal wouldn’t do anything. This was a small 16.5 mw rated unit, we got 20 mw out of at 12 psi on the casing pressure with H2. Miss that old plant. Now I run 34 screens and mice, and gas turbines.

Yes, it's why they have been around for a long time.

Likewise!

Sorry, replied to the wrong message!

We still use synchscopes.

Today, I had the opportunity to thank a veteran for his military service. I'm going to take this moment to thank you, and everyone in the power industry, for YOUR service. Everyone in the modern world relies on engineers and technical workers in a variety of fields we never even think of, but the work is critical, and the people who do it are to be appreciated. Thank you.

There's another RU-vidr, Chris Boden, who has a series called 'Authorized Personnel Only' about the inner workings of a hydroelectric plant. He has one where he shows starting up and syncing the 400,000 watt power plant to the grid. The control panel has the same synchroscope. Fascinating set of videos.

We still have analog synchroscopes on the main grid just in case we need to rebuild by phone.

Here's my local one 😊 en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dinorwig_Power_Station

Can you imagine how hard these guys/ gals are working to both fix the physical damage (caused by the madman Putler) and continuously doing one black start after another day in and day out. What a horrible situation to be put thru.

@@SuperRede4u Spew that propaganda! Don't blame the evil in control of our countries. They wouldn't lie to you.

@@TheMrTape more Kool-Aid your down a quart and a quick toke to clear the head - isn't that your motto komrad?

@@SuperRede4u I'm Danish, as opposed to what your TV-induced bias made you think. They're lying to you...

@@TheMrTape wrong!

Assuming the data centre and cell network stay up. During a COVID lockdown, a transformer at the zone substation failed and blacked out the entire region. The cell network crashed under load, not even calls went through.

I agree, I've never seen anything even remotely this good on traditional television, even back when it was pretty good.

Thats a dramatic way to see it, but as accurate as another quote I've heard. "When you put your finger to the pulse of society, it beats once every 36 hours"

His videos have made me appreciate civil engineering much more then i used too

Oh wow, I sure hope everyone is being kept safe. Prayers for a fast restoration🙏

Yep. What happened near you and in WA and OR is called a trial run.

I heard about that. It actually happened twice in North Carolina. It was done by saboteurs.

How fast could you get everything back online?

I used to work at the San Francisco Naval Shipyard and tested ship service generators. We weren't supposed to parallel with shore power but sometimes we had to do it when they were testing radars and other electronics. Fun!

@@KJ6EAD IIRC it was about an hour or so to get back up on line fully. But we were limited to 1/2 speed or less for the first hour or so of operation due to our HP turbine tending to develop a bowed rotor if not brought offline properly.

Did you have to synchronize the generators when connecting to shore power, or was it an instantaneous cut over?

@@krallja I didn't get involved in that (Electrician's Mates did that, I was a Machinist's Mate, I ran turbines, pumps, etc.) But I do know that synchonization was part of the process for bringing up a generator, bring down a generator, and switching to shore power.

Are they actually calling it terrorism, or is that a term you decided to use just now? I'm not trying to downplay the impact of a serious power outage but it seems like the bar for terrorism has lowered quite a bit over the past 20 years.

I believe the news said someone shot holes in some transformers.

All over a drag show, yeesh!

@@Oberon4278 yes, its domestic terrorism. It was a coordinated effort against our infrastructure.

The infrastructure damaged in Moore County are "just" substations. Substations don't generate any electricity; they just help distribute it, and the amount of consumers isolated from the grid due to this damage isn't terribly significant to the nearby power plants. The inrush loads when the substations are repaired and reactivated is probably the only thing somewhat close to black start concerns.

Yeah, I only heard about it before, trying to imagine the twisting and jumping of a 300MW turbine shaft.

A lot of the experience engineers gained is gained from disasters and hindsight, believe me.

I think of engineering as “quantified paranoia.” You’re not done if your design only works under ideal conditions. You’re getting close to done if you can confidently answer questions like: - how would this break? - how much can it handle until it breaks? - how likely is it to break? - how bad is it when it breaks? - how can we avoid the worst consequences if it breaks? And yeah, a lot of best practices are informed by past people breaking stuff and learning the hard way.

They will go on to greater things ;)

No alternator were harmed to make this video, they ascended.

@@PracticalEngineeringChannel connect the alternators to a 3 phase step up transformers and make a working useful generator from it to power your house in case of blackouts :)

@@putraadriansyah8082 He still would need electricity to excite the alternators, and to drive the electric motors that turn the alternators!

@@putraadriansyah8082 What? You can't get something from nothing!😁

Even though we were at or at least very much near maximum breaker capacity at the local television station in my city, we had this problem with the technical room that held the servers. After a blackout (which are rare in The Netherlands, but can be very much based on where you live, the older neighbourhoods in a city tend to be a bit more prone to them) we had to start each server independently because switching them all on with all of their control circuits doing their boot-checks and all the fans at maximum speed and disks spinning up would immediately sink so much current through the breaker we'd trip it :P . (We had a couple of UPS'es that had reached their end of life and as a result kept on charging basically forever, and were not regularly tested, so upon a small disruption that would have any other electrical installation survive without disruption, this would usually trip one of our breakers because a UPS would kick in, suffer a failure quickly due to empty batteries, and upon the power dipping situation being gone trying to switch back pushing the breaker in our building over the top).

@@Dutch3DMaster Yep! Been there too. The Inrush current can be substantial. Had PDUs that had relays in the for cycling outlets remotely. We deployed some large servers for data storage. The inrush current was enough to literally weld the relays closed. We had to replace dozens of PDUs with upgraded units.

please stop the dehumanizing. Its a very steep slippery slope

@@Legendendear Not only do the attackers deserve to be dehumanized, but their comment isn't dehumanizing at all. Ukrainians are allowed to call Russians funny names, it's probably one of the only ways to stay sane during a time like this.

@@TexanMiror2 Dehumanizing is ALWAYS a problem. Guess how NS Germany began with the propaganda against Jews. And no, I'm not saying that Ukraine is heading the same way, I just want to point out where it *CAN* end

@@Legendendear feel free to comment down here again if we fail and little orc friends stop by your house.

​@@user-th3jl8mz7y That wont happen, even if it did happen. Cause my small city is not important enough. They would rush past, towards NATOd centres and take control of em. But fine. If you promise me, that you treat the Russians with respect who have no control over the situation. The last we need right now are actions which Russia could use as justification for their atrocities. If you can promise me that, we have a deal.

I have no idea what you are talking about.... but thank you for knowing!

Don't all nuclear power plants have to be able to blackstart? They need emergency power anyways, because the cooling pumps have to be kept spinning at all times.

@@alanwesterfield4254 Put simply, the thing spins to make power, but you need power to start it spinning. For some power stations (nuclear in this case) they also need something for the spinning thing to actually send power to, or it'll spin too fast. (or too fast/too slow/too fast-too /slow which is also real bad) So you have to get it enough power from somewhere else to start, and also connect it to enough stuff that it spins at the right speed, but not too much or it'll stop spinning and you have to start over (assuming that stopping it spinning didn't break something)

@@jannikheidemann3805 Nuclear plants have to be able to reach cold shutdown without offsite power. There is no requirement to blackstart.

@@fredlotte2601 Thank you for clarifying.

I get generator synchronization but grid synchronization begs many questions: What is used for the grid frequency reference? How is the generator frequency in each island adjusted? Would only 1 transmission tie line be used for the initial sync?.

@@JohnDoe-od1yj From my EE education, one line would provide initial sync, then each additional line might need phase adjustment before establishing a redundant connection that turns the lines into an actual grid. Fortunately, most black starts happen on a grid where all the lines were correctly adjusted just a few hours earlier, so they tend to be in sync already and just need power to run. Situation is much worse when recovering from major grid damage as the adjustments will have to be redone during the process, as the grid is essentially being rebuilt. Someone will have to watch synchronization meters at each interconnect before closing the big switches. Oh, and good luck phoning the control room from the field as telecoms have been skimping out on their back up systems for about 2 decades now. I hope the grid operators have backup power for the old control fiber optic networks to function during black starts.

All Ukraine are heroes and so many people support your fight. It is criminal what has been inflicted on your country.

Glory to Ukraine! 🇺🇦

Worked in power plants all my working life and experienced alot of hair raising situations and failures, but never rockets and drones! Can't wait for Putin to get a rocket up the a**....

That’s why we need to do away with this grid. Power supply units need to work with all voltages. Switch mode does this. Powerplants like solar or wind need to just amplify everything in the grid using their switch mode transformer. At least up to 24V until they are sure that no one works on the cable.

Stay safe and fight the good fight

As someone in their late twenties that now finds educational videos and documentaries fascinating, I agree!

@@OAFNation314 when i was a young teen, i had very little desire to learn and therefore be educated on things like science, history, mathematics, mechanics, economics and so on. but after growing into my early 30s, i oddly find myself much more interested in the things going on in and around the planet. I think that educational leaders may have lost sight of what’s most important, but that’s not surprising considering how corrupt of a time we live in. peace to you friend

@@jackNimoy what could they have done differently when you were younger? was the material just not relevant or challenging? or was it you who changed and matured and started to appreciate learning these things, but younger you just wasn't ready for it?

It's almost like teaching kids how to live in society, then when they are fully devolved they can be filled with knowledge.

Humans are curious by nature. We live to learn about our surroundings, ever since we are babies. The reason you don’t like to learn in SCHOOL is because you are expected to be assessed on all types of subjects, even the ones that you won’t pursue in the future. They feed you with all sorts of information which is near impossible to retain, unless you want to spend every day of your teenage years studying all of it. Besides that, it is also rare for a teacher to actually make a subject interesting. I’m in uni right now and nothing has changed. There will be lecturers that give us labs, projects, rewards, etc… and then there will be lecturers who will read off a powerpoint and call it a day.

Not unheard of, some PTO generators are that way.

Just imagine what it'd be like for teens now, unless they're lucky enough to have a generator at home, they couldn't even get online to fill the time.

@@cmmartti sometimes even I forget just how "all in one" phones are these days.

No synchroscopes?

@@williamhuang8309 nope, the genset was a standby model, meant to run when the utility failed. Except we would switch over whenever there were thunderstorms in the area. The transfer switch kicked over when it was warmed up and ready, no method to sync it up

FP&L had one in 2008 that resulted in power loss for about 3 million people. A short circuit with the protective breakers cut out caused 38 Substations, 26 HV grid lines , and power plants in 4 counties to go down. Major loss was the local nuke plants which take care of most of the load. No grid, no nukes as they automatically will drop the rods to shutdown.

I did a double take when Grady mentioned BTC. I never would’ve thought local endeavors would cross paths with this channel. It shouldn’t be surprising though, you folk at BTC are class A 💫 What did you study at BTC? Electrical engineering I’d wager.

@@Listeningtomuzak no, I thought about electrical but ended up doing medical stuff. I just enjoy science. :)

There's a similar array of four pairs of Rolls Royce Avon engines at Didcot to provide 100MW of fast response time generation and strategic backup, I think it's a similar setup with it being capable of starting up the much larger gas turbine array that now inhabit the site

I mean it seems pretty clear to me, South Africa is simply going the way Rhodesia did.

Both our civilization and our engineers need a black energetic liquid to keep going.

@@General12th With luck and a little effort, only only of those two will still be true in my lifetime. And I'm sure as hell not giving up coffee.

Oh, you are so young. I was working a different engineering sector in 2003.

I saw some good videos online showing synchronous motors and how they lag as the load builds until they pull out of synchronization. That would certainly cause some wobbles with a big motor. Also lots of stuff on using one for power factor correction. Im a truck driver not a student but I can understand the principles if not the details from this.I live in South Australia where we have some days using 100% renewable only and exporting to other states thanks to wind/solar farms and high penetration of rooftop PV along with grid scale batteries. The problem is grid stability due to such low "inertia/momentum" because there is not really any spinning generators during high output days and it is easy for harmonics to upset the system. They have installed 4 rotary Condensers which are solely to add a flywheel effect to pull up the grid or keep it down if it surges. You will probably be interested so this is an article on it www.energymagazine.com.au/sa-synchronous-condensers-installed/

When engineering generator systems, this is why we use protective relays that have an ANSI 25 synchronization check function. It prevents a breaker from closing allowing a generator and a live bus to be connected out of sync. If this happens out of sync, the mechanical synchronization is very bad. 180 degrees out of sync, and it's a kaboom situation.