Talk:Wide area synchronous grid

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Iceland

I'm not expert, but it seems inaccurate that Iceland is listed as part of the RG Nordic area, considering that there aren't any submarine power cables connecting Iceland to anywhere else. The map on the Synchronous grid of Continental Europe article shows it as a separate grid, and even explicitly states that "The networks of Iceland, Cyprus, and Malta are not yet interconnected with the other grids." Should this be changed? -- Phantom784 (talk) 04:49, 6 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I agree Phantom784. Iceland is not part of the RG Nordic. It's far away across the sea. The map needs revising. 176.72.245.179 (talk) 09:04, 9 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Energy efficiency of regional grids

Can someone help me verify some data presented in the "Major existing networks" section of this article? If my math is correct, then the electricity used by an average person per day varies widely by region. Below are three such regions:

NORDEL: ~43 kWh/person/day (i.e., 43 = 390x10^12 / 25x10^6 / 365 / 1x10^3)
UCTE: ~15 kWh/person/day
IPS/UPS: ~13 kHw/person/day

Is it really possible that the average Scandinavian uses nearly 3 times as much electricity as the average, say, German? That doesn't seem right. Or, is my math wrong and/or I am missing something? --Thorwald (talk) 23:15, 25 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, that sounds about right. There are several reasons why the Nordic countries use much more electricity than central Europe:

The main reason is that due to a high proportion of hydroelectric power the Nordic countries have much cheaper electricity than central Europe. (Sweden gets almost 50% of its electricity from hydroelectric power. Norway has an even larger share.)
The Nordic countries have large mines and lots of forest, thus we have many large ironworks and paper mills. Those industries use huge amounts of electricity. Due to the cheap electricity the later stages of the processing is also often done in the Nordic countries. Also, the Nordic ironworks usually use electric induction to heat the ores and metals, where the German ironworks use coal or natural gas.
Due to the pricing electricity intensive industries such as aluminium production is placed in the Nordic countries instead of in Central Europe.
Due to the pricing many Nordic houses are heated with electricity. While for instance German houses usually are heated with natural gas or coal. (Germany is connected to the gas fields in the North Sea and Russia through pipelines.) Germany uses lots of natural gas, while the Nordic countries don't use much gas at all. Up until recently Sweden wasn't even connected to the European gas pipelines. So if you want to compare Nordic and Central European energy usage, you need to also count in the gas and coal usage.
Since the Nordic countries have a large part hydro power we don't have problems with peak power consumption. While in Germany there are special much higher pricing when an industry uses peak power. Thus many factories in Germany have their own gas or diesel powered electric generators that they use during their peak consumption, like when they start their heavy machinery in the morning. That generation of electric power is probably not counted into the official electricity statistics.
In the 1980's I travelled around Europe by train. I noticed that the German railways still used diesel locomotives on many lines, while Swedish railways were already fully electrified since decades. Again, one reason is the cheaper electricity in the Nordic countries. Another less known reason is that during WWII we had an acute lack of oil (British and German navy and mine fields prevented oil tankers from reaching Sweden), so in the 1940s and 1950s Sweden electrified its railways so we still can run our trains when we don't have access to the international oil markets. So our railways were electrified much earlier and more completely than most other countries. Some were even electrified during and after the First World War, perhaps for the same reason.
Due to the pricing Nordic countries "waste" much more electricity. For instance, when my German relatives come and visit me in Sweden they are usually astounded by how well lit the Swedish cities are.
A small part of our cheap electricity comes from our garbage burning cogeneration plants that make hot water and electricity for the cities. Instead of burning coal, we burn garbage (free fuel and reduces the size of the garbage dumps). Due to increased recycling we now produce less garbage, so we now import garbage from for instance Italy by ship. They can't understand why we want it, and we can't understand why they don't use it themselves to make electricity and hot water. For some odd reason the rest of the world has not figured out that garbage is a cheap fuel.
I could list many more examples of how the Nordic Countries use more electricity than Central Europe. Or that we use electricity instead of gas, coal and diesel. In most cases the reason is that the Nordic countries have cheaper electricity.

--David Göthberg (talk) 16:08, 11 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

European Frequency

It was my understanding that Western Europe was 60Hz, while Eastern Europe was 50Hz. LorenzoB (talk) 16:39, 26 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Nope, all of Europe uses 50 Hz, and has done so for a long time. --David Göthberg (talk) 16:15, 11 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Really?

Is "When [china's planned grid is] complete, its generation capacity will dwarf that of the UCTE Interconnection." really unnecessary? It seems like bragging to me. --Test35965 (talk) 09:00, 25 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

South America

Apparently the Argentinian system is synchronously connected to the northen Chilean ones (note 1 and 2). However, I am not sure about the other neighbouring countries. So the grid should be called something else. Flipwared Per W (talk) 12:45, 11 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Per W, thank you. The system is connected to Uruguay as well, with two 500 kV links through the Uruguay River. [1] It has 500 kV links to Brazil as well, but 50 Hz conversion to 60 Hz is requiered, unlike the Uruguay, Paraguay and Chile links whose networks operate on the same frequency as Argentina. [2] [3] (this map (3) shows pretty much all links) [4] There are also four 500 kV links to Paraguay (same frequency as Argentina) in the Yacyretá Dam, a 132 kV link (El Dorado - Carlos Antonio López, Paraguay) [2] [5], and another 132 kV link between Clorinda (Argentina) and Guarambaré (Paraguay). [6] Paraguay does have the same frequency as Argentina. [7].

I'm sorry I couldn't find any sources in English, there is not that much information available. Anyway, I'm removing the Argentinian system from the article table until we can find if this is the right name for it. Flipwared (talk) 18:38, 11 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]

So the synchronous area comprises Argentina (except Tierra del Fuego), Uruguay, Paraguay and the northern part of Chile? There should be a name for it.

I read Spanish, so there is no trouble with the language. Let's see what can be found. Per W (talk) 19:34, 11 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Australia

The map contained in the image titled "Major WASGs in Eurasia, Africa and Oceania, North and Central America", shows Tasmania as part of the same AC network as the mainland east coast. It is in fact a separate AC network connected via the Basslink HVDC line. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 118.211.25.42 (talk) 02:28, 3 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, good point, I have fixed this. GliderMaven (talk) 04:38, 29 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Light speed

It seems to me that the limit of light speed should be an issue when keeping these grids synchronised. Some of these synchronous grids span thousands of kilometres. Electrical waves in free hanging metal wires propagate at close to light speed (see Velocity factor). Thus for a wave to travel about 3000 kilometres takes about 100th of a second.

So if a power plant in France and one in Turkey are fully synchronised in time, it seems they would actually work against each other, since when the waves reach the other end they would be 180 degrees out of phase.

So is this taken into consideration when synchronising these large grids? And what happens when the direction of power changes? For instance, lets say part of the day eastern Europe produces more power (or uses less power) so power flows to the west, then the balance changes and power starts flowing east instead. Wouldn't that totally mess with the ~~frequency~~ phase angle synchronisation?

--David Göthberg (talk) 04:15, 7 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

After years of searching for an answer to this (both the web and asking electrical engineers) I finally found an answer. I asked the AIs:

GPT-4o just gave the standard erroneous answers that most websites and engineers give: The power plants are perfectly synced in time. (Which obviously can't be true.) They use atomic clocks and GPS-time to sync perfectly. They use DC interconnections so the areas don't become to large. (But the European grid is 3000 km wide, so it is to large. And the old Soviet grid was even larger.)

But Claude 3 Haiku knew the answer: They do change phase angle in the power plants to compensate for the propagation delays and they do take flow directions into account when adjusting the phase angles, even when flow directions change during the day. Claude 3 even could explain how they used to do it manually. But yeah, today they of course use computers, atomic clocks, and GPS-time to help. But they also measure actual phase differences of power coming in from different directions and then tell the plants to adjust their phase angles so they don't work against each other.

I wish we could find a more trusted source so we could write an article about this. Or perhaps just a section about this in one of these grid articles.

--David Göthberg (talk) 22:25, 15 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Africa

Seems this article is missing info and map depiction for four of the five African power pools. North, East, West and Central. They all have their own article. I don't feel advanced enough or good with words to edit this article to include them, both in text and the table. Gazer75 (talk) 17:18, 3 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]