What Is A Black Start Of The Power Grid?

Published 2022-12-06
A summary of the challenges with starting a grid back up from total collapse.

The grid is a little bit of a house of cards. It’s not necessarily flimsy, but if the whole thing gets knocked down, you have to rebuild it one card at a time and from the ground up. Restoring power after a major blackout is one of the most high stakes operations you can imagine. The consequences of messing it up are enormous, but there’s no way to practice a real-life scenario. It seems as simple as flipping a switch, but restoring power is more complicated than you might think.

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All Comments (21)
  • @thoi412
    As a previous power plant engineer, I deeply appreciate you including coffee makers when you listed essential equipment for the power plant to run.
  • @44cheetah1
    This reminds me so much of running out of power in Factorio. Your miners require energy to dig up the coal that's required to generate energy, and when you restore power there's often a spike in demand as all of the belts and other buffers have emptied out so all the machines are working at 100% capacity. It's amazing how the game can approximate real-world problems like this.
  • A little black start anecdote: In the '90's I was working as a contractor plant electrician at the North Anna, Virginia nuclear power station during a refueling outage. I forget now if it was Unit 1 or 2. For some reason we were in the building housing the emergency diesel generators. Huge engines. Next to one of these engines hanging on the wall was was a hand crank similar to one you would start a Model T Ford car with. I asked the foreman what it was used for. He pointed to a single cylinder diesel engine mounted on the floor connected to a small air compressor. He explained that in the event of a total blackout and loss of service air, the crank was used to start that diesel powered compressor to charge a tank to power the air motors that start the main engine.
    I guess you could say that a nuclear power plant is crank start.
  • @eXJonSnow
    I'm a submarine nuclear electrician's mate in the US Navy and watching you explain voltage regulation and generator synchronization has put a huge smile on my face. My ship had basically an identical synchroscope to the one you showed and matching voltages/frequencies is an important part of operating our electric plants.
  • My father was Grid operator - on duty he faced system melt down - and he manually turned off the power to half of the Capital city. That kept the system running and saved the Black out. His supervisor gave him hard time for his decision. But they had simulator and for 6 months they tried everything to save the system, in the end - the only way out was my fathers approach. But nobody ever gave him medal or appreciation. May him rest in peace. Another non known hero that you will never know about.
  • my dad used to work for German railway, back in the eighties... they (still) use 24kV 16 2/3 Hz to run the trains, which is converted from main grid with motor/generator pairs, each weighting hundreds of tons. An Engineer in a hurry managed to engage both, before they where entirely synced... the buildings foundation had to be redone, since both machines did tilt just like yours did... being bolted to the foundation did nothing to keep them from doing that...
  • When I was in school for my EE degree (many decades ago), we had a lab where we were allowed/required to play with 5000V. It was also powered by electric motors and we actually set up generation stations which were synchronized with (using a light bulb) and then connected to, the grid. It was all very scary. Even though I was specializing in computer engineering, all EE students were required to take the junior level "power" classes which included this lab. It made me very nervous. I much preferred making circuits with breadboards and fine wires using 5V to using those thick cables to hook up 5000V circuits. 😀 Thanks for sharing this video, it brought back some very good memories.
  • @nickhahn3276
    Ex-Navy Nuke here. The nuclear plants I trained at still used synchroscopes when bringing turbine-generators onto the plant grid; cool to see them mentioned here. Great stuff!
  • @titleloanman
    One minor discrepancy is that we don’t actually disconnect the transformers from the line when we do a black start. The iron cores of those transformers actually serve as a great way to smooth VAR transients, and we also want to keep station batteries energized because after about 8 hours we lose all remote visibility and operability. So where possible we leave the transformers energized and open the feeders.
  • @445588997
    Coffee maker is totally the most important thing during black start. You don't want sleeping zombies doing the startup. Probably will break more stuff. 😂
  • Boeing 727s had 3 separate three phase generators (one on each engine) The flight engineer had to synchronize each generator before connecting that generator to the bus. The engineer would adjust the frequency with a knob and watch two blinking lights. When the lights went out together the engineer knew it was OK to connect the generators. Called closing the bus tie. 😁
  • Back in the 80s I worked overseas at a compound that had it's own diesel generation plant. Being a tech, I got elected to run the plant for the 3 weeks a year that the normal plant manager was on vacation. The plant consisted of 2 big honking caterpillar powered generators of which one would run at a time. Every day I would fire up the standby unit and sync and switch them without dropping the load. As a tech, I understood the forces involved in syncing the generators every day, and it kind of creeped me out. The generator enclosure was very small requiring the operator to stand within a foot of the 2 roaring generators when he synched them up and threw the switch. By the end of my 3 week tour of duty each year I would finally be comfortable throwing that switch, but the next year it would start all over again.
  • @demacherius1
    As an electrical engeneer I was amazed how detailed yet simple you have kept this video.
  • @scottbc31h22
    During the Great Blackout of 2003, The power companies asked customers to turn off heir air conditioners and leave them off for a few days after the power was restored. An upscale suburb near me had their power restored at about 10:00 am. By 11:00 am the power was back out again.
  • @tommyg2966
    Pump Storage schemes can act like a shock absorber to the system. The ability to consume as well as generate large quantities of power is seriously under rated
  • Grady, as an old EE guy, I want to say that your series on the power grid has been excellent. And you could continue on the complexities for a lot longer than most folks are willing to accept.

    Yes, it is a house of cards. It tends towards instability which can only be prevented by constant monitoring and adjusting.
  • As a fellow Texas Engineer, I really appreciate your videos! Municipal water supplies would be another good topic with lots of examples to pull from locally. I know we recently had an emergency repair on our deep water intake that was a fascinating example of how repairs are done on an active utility with minimal (or major) disruptions.
  • @GordonChil
    I'm just a lowly software developer, but for a short time, I worked for Western Area Power Administration. While there I had the opportunity to go through their multi-day EPTC training program in Lakewood, CO about operating the grid. One of the things we had to do was start up a small grid in their training facility. The whole training was eye-opening. It was one of those "I didn't know what I didn't know" experiences akin to first learning assembly. If you (the reader of this comment) and I were in the same room I could describe the surprise I experienced when turning a small generator and FEELING the increase in difficulty when a small incandescent flashlight bulb was added to the circuit. Then the mind blowing 🤯 moment when everything clicked and I understood the reason why breakers exist throughout the grid. It's complex and beautiful.
  • @Vulpine407
    Interesting. I live in Florida and have experienced storms ranging from "merely" tropical to full blown CAT-2 hurricanes. I've lived in the same house all these decades and have wondered why it sometimes takes just as much time (sometimes even more) to get back power from a lesser storm. This video gave me a greater appreciation of what goes into restoring a grid beyond simple physical damage to lines, transformers and substations.