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Home > The Amp Hour Electronics Podcast > #583 – The Smart Grid with Paul Zawada


	Podcast:		The Amp Hour Electronics Podcast
	Episode:		#583 – The Smart Grid with Paul Zawada
	Category:		Science & Medicine
	Duration:		01:45:55
	Publish Date:		2022-03-28 14:35:48
	Description:		This episode is brought to you by Mouser Electronics. This week we hear about Digital Therapeutics. Go to TheAmpHour.com/digitalhealth to learn more. Welcome, Paul Zawada of Syntonous LLC! Paul was nice enough to respond when we said we were hoping to talk to someone about the grid/smart grid. He is an “operations technology engineer”, which means he straddles the line between the power side and the technology side of things. What are grid operators’ appetite for new tech? SCADA How do blackouts happen? Generation, transmission, distribution i2r losses are why they operate long distance transmission at 765 kV. China’s grid has newer tooling, which allows it to go at higher voltages. You can tell the voltage of transmission lines by “counting the bells”. It’s roughly 15kV per bell and they do odd things to the shapes of insulators to prevent arcing. Video about the Ohio blackous in 2003 we talked about last week Where does control happen for “the grid”? PJM Frequency determines the health of the grid Bike analogy Tesla battery – Hornsdale Power Reserve Moving to a renewable grid has some potential issues Grid has “inertia” due to the spun up generators. They’re working on modeling “Synthetic inertia” for a more renewable grid. “A disturbance in the electromotive force” (I’m sorry Dave, that title was too long) Dave asks why does the voltage go up on his setup? RMS voltage vs Vpp The Power Triangle ELI the ICE man, CIVIL 99% of the time, loads are inductive The role of reactive power in the grid VARs VAR tends to control the voltage Real power determines the frequency Hawaii example of a local grid with a lot of solar (and that’s kind of a problem) Capacitors help to balance the grid when it there are too many inductive loads. “Grid Following inverter” (vs “Grid Forming”) Dynamic inverter 4 quadrant inverter “Don’t call it imaginary power” IEEE1547 Inverters have to be able to deal with frequency changes and take setpoints from the grid The 50.2 Hz problem Smart Grid California Rule 21 Smart meter and Power Line Carrier Standard (PRIME) Communication with meters WISUN COSIM PLC Private LTE Brokers Pool analogy Stability of the grid wasn’t built for two way flow Managing a wide range of inverters is difficult Standard for comms by SunSpec (Smart Inverter Standards) Control systems with SCADA While analyzing hte grid, they use a state estimator (which is a mathematical model of the various sources in a grid system) and then do real time contingency analysis Spinning reserve Rolling blackout is when the grid systematically takes different parts of the grid offline to preserve the overall ability to deliver power. Texas example Dave asked about available power on the grid Steel recycling takes a TON of power. Different wires from generation (in Texas) Community Energy Storage (“Backyard Batteries” w/ Four-Quadrant Inverters) Wind turbine go to DC first (because of variable wind speeds), but are then feed to an inverter Proposed Soo Green HVDC Link [Underground] Grain Belt Express: Proposed Kansas-Missouri-Illinois HVDC Transmission Line Pacific DC Intertie Silicon transformer Paul’s pet peeve is people asking him about “exploding transformers”. It’s almost always a fuse or a cable shorting to ground. Expulsion Fuse Blowing (NSFW Language) Another Expulsion Fuse Blowing DC vs AC arc 250VDC control of relax elements in power plants Air Blast Circuit Breaker “(The grid is) the most complex machine we ‘ve ever built” Consulting and day job AND he is working on a Doctorate of Technology at Purdue. We’re grateful he found time to talk to us as well! Follow Paul on Twitter! @engineerz
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