Black Start and Natioanl Risk Register

[GeraldTheBonzai]

So fallen down a rabbit hole today. Came across this site, which discusses Black Start - what it would take to get the National Grid back online in the event of a total failure. Basically, at the time of writing it estimates that it would take up to 7 days to get everything back. However, that depends on power stations being able to self start, which tends to be the older power stations. It points out that renewables tend to be unable to self start - they need power to generate power, so we are basically digging a hole for ourself. Link to the site is

https://www.theblackoutreport.co.uk/202 ... ack-start/

That in turn has a link to the UK National Risk register. This is the Gov's take on all the bad things that could happen, the impact and how long it would take to recover (if at all). Don't read it before going to bed, if you want a good nights sleep...

https://www.gov.uk/government/publicati ... ister-2023

[Yorkshire Andy]

Marvelous

Know Drax is one of the black start systems is has a gas turbine system for just this event

Problem with many of the solar and wind farms need to see 50hz to start their inverter/s so they need the grid to function..

The. Each black start unit needs to be isolated from the other so the boffins can align the 50hz with the neighbours generation units so when they re join they are perfectly in synchronisation .....

Saw the guy Martin documentary about it and he blacked the country out in a simulation in minutes

[korolev]

That happened in Spain in 2025. Good explanation here : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2025_Iber ... a_blackout.

Solar needs a "reference signal" that they it sync to in order to put the right frequency out.
A spinning magnet will produce this because you know exactly what frequency it is running at for a given RPM but a PV panel is inconsistent. Hence the need to slowly sync the grid to the reference signal.

[Nurseandy]

Thanks for that guys, just had a skim through it and I'm off to plant more seeds and render tallow as a result.

[Peter]

This is why we all need our own “backup”, solar and battery storage, whatever you can build up now.

[Yorkshire Andy]

It's coming I've been talking to a guy tonight apparently no one really knows how close we came at the end of that last heat wave apparently he went out and stocked up on torches and hes shall we say we'll in the know I might have mentioned where he works earlier shall we say

[bobble]

Might be time to re - watch that tv production "Cobra."
In one of the series the uk gets hit with a solar flare which takes out the National Grid, fries the transformers and leaves us with no elecricity! The series deals with the aftermath, including how it takes months to build a transformer and have it shipped to uk from where they are made abroad!