With the Feast of All Hallows rapidly approaching I thought it would be apt to explain how the grid is haunted by a concept that doesn’t really exist. A pre-occupation with a made-up concept risks the security of our power grids. In this blog I will explain how “vars” aren’t real, and treating them as if they are is creating existential risks on our power grids.
Not being able to properly explain reactive power is common in the energy industry – ask a dozen people to explain it and you’ll get twelve different answers. Most will reach for the beer-glass analogy where real power as the liquid and reactive power is the froth, or mutter something about “energy sloshing back and forth” on the grid. More sophisticated responses will mention capacitors “injecting vars” and inductors absorbing them. These phrases are repeated so often that they’ve become folklore. Unfortunately none of them describes what actually happens in power grids.
“Vars” in particular is an accounting fictions that obscure the underlying physics. And because we’ve replaced understanding of the physics with shorthand, we now incorrectly believe that anything producing current including batteries, solar inverters, or a clever algorithm, can perform the same stabilising role as the electromagnetic machines that built our power system.This misunderstanding could one day cost us the grid.
vars.
is that related to the old days of chemistry the concept of ‘the ether’ to attempt to explain if l recollect my high school chemistry the energy exchanges in chemical reactions?
vars. l think lm gonna use that to impress the unwashed.
and when the grid fails and brings down 1,000,000 gas fired water heaters, ya, there’s gonna be lotsa unwashed to talk to.
l remember the niagara falls collapse in 65, and the 2003 one. they were dress rehearsals. cuba can perhaps give us tips how to cope? topped up w advice from s africa? oh joy oh bliss whutebber else youse do vote Liberal!!!
I thought Davy Crockett “killed him vars when he was only three”?
An interesting read if you are at all involved in the electrical field. In Canada, we call that problem ‘harmonics’ and use ‘power factor correction’ to deal with it….but it’s the same issue. BC Hydro slaps on monthly surcharges if you don’t.
It is magic.
Well near 50 years ago when I was first schooled in Electrical theory,some of this made sense.
Volt Amps Reactive.
Apparent power,Average Power ,RMS Power..
It is magic,we do not fully understand the electromagnetic Universe,but we can perform the correct rituals and chant those incantations and behold…Light at night!
Power by the flick of a switch.
So a full understanding has not been necessary.
We have enjoyed the gifts electricity brought us.
And we still do.
However,the current age of idiocy has begun to reveal those dark areas where understanding fails.
The Power System Engineers of the 60s to the 90s did their jobs too well.
By designing robust systems ,incorporating huge masses of rotating iron,they almost eliminated blackouts and systemic failures.
Then came the Cult of Calamitous Climate .
The grifters realized what a glorious path to wealth extraction Public Utilities could be.
Stealing from the many to enrich the well connected few.
And steal they do.
There was a grid failure in Australia a few years ago,where the gas and diesel generators were idling when the full load was dumped onto them.
So they tripped out and a full blackout developed.
The government report was most amusing,bragging up the grid battery/inverter system and completely failing to catch the vital failure point.
The generators failed to detect the falling frequency until it was zero.
Because the Inverter battery system held the whole grid active,for 8 minutes.
Maintaining 50 Hz perfectly,until there was no more battery power,then shutting off.
The Automatic Voltage regulator requires a means of sensing the frequency and is designed to increase motive power as frequency drops..All operate pretty much the same regardless of size of generating equipment.
The Grid battery/Inverter systems deny the system this information,until it is too late.
A feature not a bug,as long a systemic failure is the plan.
And the default system is assumed to be that with a lagging power factor,inductive loads.
So much so that a building with too much capacitive load can be rejected by its back up generator.
We are constantly lectured as to the “greater efficiency” of the electronic systems.
Yet seem unable to understand that reliability is the greater good.
A 100% efficient system is utterly useless if it does not work when needed.
I really enjoyed the posted article,thank you.
Been decades since I was first introduced to a very small handful of these concepts by my vocational school instructor. Never had to go ‘deep’ due to being electronics training versus electrical, but gained a very basic appreciation of what was happening.
I appreciate the initial post and your astute replies. Thanks!
The use of bullshit pseudo-science is often used by scammers to impress the uneducated in political power to “save” and/or push the grift. Save the planet, save money, get “freee energy” from the wind and solar.
This is a great article, and should serve as a stark warning to provincial power authorities about the risk inherent in trying to transform the grid to higher reliance on so-called “renewable” energy.
Sadly, it won’t. The people in charge aren’t engineers, and will simply demand compliance with what they want reality to be, rather than what it is. And engineers will deliver something that works – until it doesn’t.
Few people realize how complex and difficult to manage power grids are: you can’t simply turn them off and on again. And the longer there is a failure, the more difficult it is to restore power.
Part of the reason for this is that during a power failure, people, being what they are, tend to rush from room to room, turning things on: as if they might discover a bit of electricity lurking somewhere in a light switch or TV set. Their thermostats and water heaters cool down, and start demanding power. The result being that within a half-hour or so, the grid becomes loaded down with a demand that it can’t readily meet as you try to restore and resynchronize it.
The widespread adoption of power inverters only makes that worse.
One thing few people outside of the trade realize,any large transformer represents a dead short to the system when it is not energized.
So once the system crashes,it must be brought back on line piecemeal.
As too many of these “Short circuits” exceed the inrush current capability of our switchgear.
Substation by substation.
Area by area.
It is complicated and requires some very skilled operators..
But they keep telling us those intermittent sources,wind and solar are “free” as the cost of our power $/Kw/hr keeps right on rising..Free now being another of those Libtard words with no meaning.
Coal,when the plant is built right at the coal seam,is the cheapest reliable electricity we can generate.
Gas is close but the gas engines have short lifespans.
Hydro can be close,but you face huge infrastructure cost and need geographical luck,as in a workable site, on a river.
When your grifters are stealing,based on the cost/Kw/hr, driving the cost to us consumers sky high,is a feature..Not a bug.
No mistake at all.
Future “joke”
“Mommy,what did people use for night lights,before candles?”
“Electricity”.
What’s interesting are some of the comments following the article. Technically schooled folk bring up one kludge after another to fix the deficiencies of wind and solar, ignoring the fundamental issue that those “technical advances” will cost a lot of money and would not be required at all if the grid were supplied by subsidy-free and policy-forced generation sources.