POWER SUPPLIES
A SINGLE POINT OF FAILURE
Recent power outages highlight the need for decentralised resilience, suggests Christophe Albertus, Head of the Engineering Design Department at Socomec.
Recent blackouts such as in the Iberian Peninsula have brought into sharp focus the problem of grid resilience. While experts debate the causes, it is known that the switch to renewable energy sources creates new challenges around grid frequency and stability. Variations in renewable generation also pose a growing risk of gradual ‘frequency drift’, potentially reducing power quality.
With the energy transition leaving our economy and society heavily reliant on power supply security, we need more distributed power sources and storage to create an added layer of resilience beyond power grids.
The grid stability risk The rapid integration of renewable energy sources into the grid is reducing ‘system inertia’, the combined kinetic energy stored in many synchronously spinning power station turbines which helps slow any sudden frequency shifts, buying time to correct imbalances.
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Weather-related variations in renewable generation can also produce ‘frequency drift’ where frequencies deviate from the required tempo of the grid, potentially damaging electrical equipment and disconnecting power plants. With renewable energy accounting for over 50% of the UK’s electricity mix in 2024, there are concerns around the potential effect on grid stability.
At the same time the rapid electrification of the economy and interconnections between grids means that grid instability can have a ripple effect across multiple sectors and borders. This was exemplified when the recent power cut spread across Spain and Portugal and knocked out facilities from factories to hotels and wiped an estimated €1.6bn off annual GDP in a matter of seconds.
Decentralising resilience Much of the debate has centred on power grids yet what is less widely discussed is the role of distributed energy
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