Posted on 08/15/2003 7:55:40 AM PDT by pttttt
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How Russia Maintains a Reliable Power Grid By Dr. Vladimir Semenov, Central Dispatching Office of the United Power System, Russia Transmission & Distribution World, Apr 1, 1997
The reliability of the Russian interconnected transmission system benefits from central control and standardized protection.
Currently, the United Power System (UPS) comprises 73 regional power systems (RPS), 66 of which are incorporated into the UPS of Russia. The Amurskaja, Khabarovskaja and Dalne-vostochnaja RPS systems operate in parallel, forming the interconnected system of East Russia. Further east, four regional power systems still continue to operate in isolation. Approximately, 94% of the country's generating plant capacity (204.6 GW) comprising 68% fossil-fuel, 21% hydro and 11% nuclear plant is connected to the UPS. Therefore, the design reliability of this system must be higher than the regional power systems, as failure to localize a fault on one power system would rapidly encompass the entire Russian system.
The main grid of the UPS includes a backbone Supergrid system of transmission lines which required a large capital investment for the extensive route lengths of these circuits and their operating voltage. The six lower voltage interconnected systems which form the largest section of the UPS are each connected to the Supergrid.
Emergency Control The emergency control standards specify that the major tie-lines and trunk-lines are operated with a minimal pre-fault steady-state stability margin. This results in these circuits often being loaded well above the maximum power-angle curve for post-fault conditions. This state is referred to as "conditional stability." System disturbances that can create emergency conditions may differ considerably in each specific case. The following are frequent fault causes that give rise to a system disturbance:
Short or open circuit fault in a section of network (rapid isolation of section required).
Disconnection due to switching error (personnel fault).
Mal-operation or incorrect setting of protection equipment.
Disturbance of the active power balance in the various regions of the system.
Islanding of a region due to excess or deficit of active or reactive power. . . . [some snipped out for brevity; go to website for full article]
The UPS is one of the world's largest interconnected transmission systems. The last major recorded blackout in Moscow occurred on Dec. 12, 1948. The centralized control disciplines and standard protection schemes, coupled with advances in technology, have continually improved the security and reliability of this transmission system. TDW
Dr. Vladimir Semenov is the adviser of the general director at the Central Dispatching Office of the United Power System, an appointment he has held since 1969. He joined the power utility in 1950 and has since held a number of appointments in the field of system protection. He has been associated with the Moscow Power Institute where he obtained the M.Sc. and D.Sc. degrees. He is currently professor at the Moscow Power Institute (Relay Protection and Automation Chair).
© 2003, PRIMEDIA Business Magazines & Media Inc. All rights reserved. This article is protected by United States copyright and other intellectual property laws and may not be reproduced, rewritten, distributed, redisseminated, transmitted, displayed, published or broadcast, directly or indirectly, in any medium without the prior written permission of PRIMEDIA Business Corp.
Here's one oversimplified non-expert scenario and analogy, the way I think I understand it, and I urge those who actually know what they're talking about to chime in: Turbine-driven generators (I could be wrong, but I think most utility electricity is generated by steam or hydro turbines turning generators) have to be matched to load. If you cut the load off from the generator, and thus the turbine, the turbine will want to spin faster, possibly destroying itself with mechanical stress. So you have to protect the turbine/generator from this by "tripping" it (cutting it off from the steam source and the load and braking it to a stop). And then you have to do something with all that steam or hydro head (maybe vent it, shut down the boiler, run the dam water through a bypass). Imagine a situation where you had a locomotive pulling a heavy train at some speed and then you suddenly decoupled the train cars from the engine - the engine would want to run away.
Load also varies all the time in the course of normal operations (also, since you want 60 Hz AC, I would think you wouldn't want the generator to turn at any speed different from 2*pi*60 radians/sec). That has to be managed without tripping the turbines. This is helped by having lots of power plants and transmission lines and good remote monitoring and control for mutual awareness so power plants can be brought on or off-line as needed. So this has to be networked to work the way we've come to expect in the industrialized world.
Have I got it so far?
Here are some other interesting websites:
I didn't. See comments and the quote marks on the title.
See comments.
Price the commodity or impoverish the citizen to the point they can't afford the service and you'll almost assure you'll never have demand exceed capacity.
Actually it will help them get the necessary cash to send to the Dems'.
A significant difference between Russian socialists and American liberals: American liberals lump tadpoles in with the people and will brook no solution to a problem without putting tadpoles and humans on an equal footing. On the other hand. Russian socialists, who still don't get it, say, "screw the tadpoles, they are standing in the way of the People's Revolution-- AND getting power to my dacha!"
How about an article describing how the infamous 1965 NorthEast Blackout came about - from the IEEE Spectrum circa 1965:
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