Power grid collapse - could it happen here ?

A giant battery like Tesla's on in Australia would help tide it over for a few minutes


https://hornsdalepowerreserve.com.au/

The capacity to generate power and the capacity to shut down part of the grid would be key factors.
The last leci strike had power allocated by area and was metered by time blocks.
The smaller generating stations and the different type of plants would have made it harder. The smaller number of bigger stations would leave it easier to succeed it an attack. But i dont believe that any are at full capacity so there is the ability to up output. Plus Eir grid connectors to the UK would provide a backup.
So it would be the grid it's self which would have to fail and and cascade from one substation to the next.

Carawaystick wrote: »

Ther had a grid cascade crash on the east coast of the usa a while ago too

The North East of America had one in 1965.

The Irish media is floating the nuclear kite again today, something has to be done with Moneypoint I suppose. The industry in general has promised the commercialisation of small reactors, but so far nada.

Considering the lifetime cost of nuclear, we'd probably be better off just outright paying for a network of Turloch Hill type facilities, and putting in a support mechanism for off shore wind.

cruizer101 wrote: »

To be fair the government is pushing for more electric vehicles and a move away from fossil fuels to heat pumps.
It would be silly to ignore the potential effects on the grid as both use a lot of electricity.
The effects of cars should be mitigated some way by charging at night.

The gross simplification to 'milk carts' and 'air conditioners' is what I'm rolling my eyes at.

The media latched onto the electric cars thing. But in reality transport in the coming years will be less about cars(electric or not) and will be more about public transport, walking, cycling and better planned living spaces where humans are almost never out of walking distance from a large amount of services.

Electric cars are great, much cleaner than fossil fuel cars. Moving a single person in a one tonne steel box full of rare elements around the place is not an energy efficient means of transport, it's extremely wasteful. If this government want to reduce emissions from transport, we should follow Germany's example and make it illegal to build a house more than 1km form a village, with a handful of exceptions for farmers and foresters.

Naturally economics is moving more and more people into bigger and bigger cities, so our unsustainable settlement pattern is likely to self-terminate. However our government has it's head up it's arse talking about electric cars. Densely populated cities, with lots of affordable apartments and lots of pedestrianised spaces and a well funded public transport network is where the funds should be allocated. Electric cars can be a small part of the solution, awkward one off trips and all that, but that's putting the cart before the horse.

cgcsb wrote: »

The gross simplification to 'milk carts' and 'air conditioners' is what I'm rolling my eyes at.

The media latched onto the electric cars thing. But in reality transport in the coming years will be less about cars(electric or not) and will be more about public transport, walking, cycling and better planned living spaces where humans are almost never out of walking distance from a large amount of services.

Electric cars are great, much cleaner than fossil fuel cars. Moving a single person in a one tonne steel box full of rare elements around the place is not an energy efficient means of transport, it's extremely wasteful. If this government want to reduce emissions from transport, we should follow Germany's example and make it illegal to build a house more than 1km form a village, with a handful of exceptions for farmers and foresters.

Naturally economics is moving more and more people into bigger and bigger cities, so our unsustainable settlement pattern is likely to self-terminate. However our government has it's head up it's arse talking about electric cars. Densely populated cities, with lots of affordable apartments and lots of pedestrianised spaces and a well funded public transport network is where the funds should be allocated. Electric cars can be a small part of the solution, awkward one off trips and all that, but that's putting the cart before the horse.

Surely you know that the government couldn't give a rats ass about carbon/green energy. It's all about optics. A balancing act to pretend you're being "green".

Actually we had once here once. sometimes in the 80's, memory is foggy on it, I think something tripped out in Tarbert, and (since another station was off line for maintiance) much of the north side of dublin went dark. not sure of the impacts in the rest of the country, socail media, the internet and 24/7 did not exist then.

iI remember when it happened, I was walking along the James Larkin Road, seeing the lights in Sutton, and then all of howth go out, and walking down the Howth Road to Raheny, andf not a light any where. I think it was off 90 minutes or something like that.

ESBn are reasonably diligent in not letting trees grow tall enough to *fall* on their transmission lines