Brittle Power- PARTS 1-3 (+Notes) - Natural Capitalism Solutions

Chapter Ten: Power Stations and Grids 139the disturbance. It is now recognized, however, that this condition is no longer sufficient.Instances have occurred wherein systems survived for several swings followinga disturbance before becoming unstable due to a lower frequency phenomenon.Accordingly, the industry has been devoting considerable effort to...studying whathas become known as the dynamic stability problem...[and] it is acknowledged thatthe larger, more tightly interconnected system is behaving in a fashion qualitatively different fromthat of earlier smaller systems.A systems problem which was not predicted...but which has rapidly become thefocus of much...attention is...subsynchronous resonance. [It was]...standard practice[to install] series capacitors to compensate for the inherent inductance of very longlines [i.e., the reverse of Con Ed’s requirements]. When this was done in the caseof some lines out west, the resonant frequency of the series capacitor-inductancecombination was close enough to the natural frequency of the [turbogenerator]shafts of the units involved to set up mechanical vibrations which resulted in shaftfailure. The phenomenon is amenable to analysis by available theory, but the necessarytools were not readily available and the problems were not anticipated.As an example of a future, potentially important problem outside the scope of classicalelectrical engineering, we point to the fundamental problem of informationtransfer and decision making in the case of multiple independent control centers,whose decisions affect primarily their own portions of a common interconnectedsystem. In actuality the action taken by any one such center affects thewhole....[A]nalyzing...effective control strategies...is in its infancy. 84Today’s electric energy system in the United States is one of the most complex technicalsystems in existence. Unlike most other industries, the individual componentsdo not operate independently but are tied together in an interacting system coveringmost of the continental United States, wherein deliberate or inadvertent controlactions taken at one location can within seconds affect the operation of plants andusers hundreds of miles distant....[T]he introduction of complex new technologiesinto the existing, already-complex system [and the need to consider tighter fiscal andenvironmental constraints compound]...the complexity of the system.The point of all this is that there does not yet exist any comprehensive applicable body of theorywhich can provide guidance to engineers responsible for the design of systemsas complex as those which will be required beyond the next generation....[T]herewill be...problems of great importance which will be quite different from today’sproblems, and the conceptual tools and underlying theory required for their effective solutionhave not yet been developed. 85There is thus a good deal about the operation of modern large-scale powergrids that able engineers are hard pressed to anticipate even in normal operation.In abnormal operation, as Con Ed found, grids can be complex enoughto defy prior analysis. This is in itself a source of vulnerability to mistakes,failures, and malice. We may well find, if power systems continue to evolve intheir present direction, that they are passing unexpectedly far beyond our abilityto foresee and forestall their failures. The ease with which key power-gridcomponents and their control systems can be disrupted is ominous enough