Baltic countries disconnect from the Russian power grid | Hacker News Reader

Baltic countries disconnect from the Russian power grid

baltic-grid.sympower.net

130 pointsRvdV65 comments

On Saturday (8th of Feb), Baltic countries will disconnect from the Russian power grid and synchronise with the Continental European electricity system. They will operate in "island mode" for 33 hours, and then synchronize with the European grid frequency.

The frequency is a key parameter of the grid. If there is too much load, it goes down, and if there is too much production it goes up. A lot of critical grid infrastructure relies on the frequency being in the 49.5-50.5 Hz range.

I built a tool together with some colleagues to track the grid frequency in real time during this operation over the past few days to follow this process in real time!

If you're curious for more details, there is also a great post on the Estonian TSO's website about the process: https://elering.ee/en/synchronization-continental-europe

Off-topic;

Why does America use 60Hz? I've never found a satisfactory answer.

These frequencies are often inherited from whoever was the first grid operator, and electricity producer. Same goes for lot of other parameters.

A better question is why does Japan use Both 60 Hz and 50 Hz in different areas? And that’s really just a legacy from early decisions at different companies when the grid was first introduced, and there’s never been a sufficiently compelling reason for either to swap.

60 Hz is slightly better in terms of flickering, but neither has enough advantages to really be a determining factor on their own.

Isn't this a side effect of one area of Japan building their electrical grid with components from British manufactures while the other used American-made components?

yeah, they had to buy what they can get.

IIRC it was German AEG and General Electric

US did the same, Southern California was 50 Hz at first. It didn't convert until after WWII

There was 25 Hz infrastructure in Ontario until the 1950s

https://www.lifebynumbers.ca/history/the-rise-and-fall-of-25...

Yep, the government had to go house-by-house, building-by-building replacing all electrically powered devices that could not be adapted. Thankfully it also happened early in the era of electronic devices.

it's substantially easier to run modern electronics off random frequency power than other stuff like an induction motor. A typical power supply is rated for 47 Hz- 63 Hz. But it'll happily run off almost anything higher than 10 hz and lower than 1000 hz.

universal motors in particular do not care at all about frequency

oh wow, 25 Hz was supplied to homes? I know New Orleans still has some pumps that run on some oddball frequency. It's part of the reason why they never work during the storms (when you need them). The "grid" is just a set of colocated generation sets

From the above link:

    Sir Adam Beck #1 ten 25 Hz generating units were converted 
    to 60 Hz or modified as follows:
    
    Units 9 and 10 to 60 Hz in 1956
    Unit 3 to 60 Hz in 1970
    Unit 4 to 60 Hz in 1984
    Unit 5 to 60 Hz in 1985
    Unit 8 to 60 Hz in 1990
    Unit 6 to 60 Hz in 1996
    Unit 7 to 60 Hz in 2009

2009! Talk about legacy support.

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sir_Adam_Beck_Hydroelectric_Ge...

* https://www.opg.com/stories/opgs-sir-adam-beck-i-hydro-stati...

Things are the way they are because they got that way over time.

Civil infrastructure is legacy systems all the way down. Once a choice is made, it's hard to change. In the city where I am, some of the design decisions date back to the Romans.

Whoever chose it must have been aware of the use of 60 in time measurement and its practicality: 60 min/hr, 60 sec/min, 60 cycles/sec.

Time traveling Babylonians are proud to have 60Hz electricity.

50 and 60Hz were about equal in transmission efficiency but in 1891 Westinghouse engineers decided 60Hz produced less perceptible flickering in light sources.

> They were disposed to adopt 50 cycles, but American arc light carbons then available commercially did not give good results at that frequency and this was an important feature which led them to go higher

"The origins of 60-Hz as a power frequency" https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/628099

Better question is why did Germans pick 50 Hz, I'm not aware of any comparable benefits of having lower frequency

If I read your source correctly, there is no real advantage of 60 Hertz or 50 Hertz, and the decision was usually due to circumstantial reasons, like supporting some existing arc-lights or difficulties with induction motors. Induction motors are also the reason why some railways chose to use 16⅔ Hertz, still in use to this day.

In the end, there is no real difference between 50 or 60 Hz, there is no clear advantage to either, especially with modern components. But you do have to choose as the whole network is synchronous.

How is better working lighting not a real advantage?

It would be, but that advantage was with very specific lamps that are now obsolete for more than 100 years.

50 Hz is a lot easier to math (50 Hz = 0.02/s, 60 Hz = 0.0166666). Don't know if that's why, but it very easily could be.

60 is the easier one, in that you can divide it by 3/4/6/12 and have an integer frequency. Probably the reason why a lot of Babylonian math used base 60, which is where our time and angle measurements come from.

60 is easier to factor, but that's kind of irrelevant when most AC formulas use frequency as a multiplicator. 0.02 is easier to multiply than 0.016667 (though at the end of the day, it doesnt really matter, because pi is used in most of the equations, so it ends up irrational anyway)

> 60 is easier to factor, but that's kind of irrelevant when most AC formulas use frequency as a multiplicator.

Is the fact there are 360˚ (2π radians) in a circle, and 60 goes into that cleanly, of any use?

No really, because functions like sin(), cos() and tan() are defined numerically for "expecting Pi as input" rather than 360 degrees of angle.

Pi (and e) are not only irrational numbers (not fractions) but also transcendental numbers (non-algebraic numbers meaning not roots of polynomials with rational coefficients).

So, even messier for dealing with than, say, square root of two (irrational and algebraic) or square root of minus one (algebraic).

I am endlessly fascinated that the grid frequency across an area the size of entire countries/continents gets driven, at the end of the day, mechanically by countless titanic sized spinning machines that slow down when more load is offered, and vice versa.

The shafts are so enormous and heavy that they must be driven by an auxiliary motor when not in use in order to prevent them from permanently sagging.

I assume this sag is something that would only become relevant over a fairly long period of time? Otherwise how were the devices constructed originally, I doubt they were spinning instantly.

They can presumably be fully braced when not in use, but not in the application?

The "European" grid also expands to northern Africa[0]. The Wikipedia map is a little weird, because I remember doing consulting for an energy company at the time the two Danish grids were combined. I suppose it has to do with transmission capacity, but technically Denmark can route power from west to east (the other way is typically less useful as the majority of the power generation is in the west). Western Denmark also has cable running to at least Sweden and so does Germany, so why it's not viewed as one network seem strange.

0) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synchronous_grid_of_Continenta...

For other folks who find grid identity as a shared frequency fascinating, this week's Complex Systems podcast won't disappoint.

https://www.complexsystemspodcast.com/episodes/electricity-g...

Surprised this isn’t already available. Does Estonia only publish 5 minute frequency data?

The interesting bit is that this includes Kaliningrad. See: https://www.kyivpost.com/post/46628

Very cool! I couldn't tell from the article if Kaliningrad will remain on a grid with the Baltics or become its own island.

Kaliningrad will become its own island.

I like the site.

Unfortunately for this American, having a different set of standards for mathematical notation tripped a "don't these people know the difference between Hz and kHz?" impulse in my brain.

To illustrate: When an American sees "50,000 Hz" we process it as you would process "50 000 Hz". This misunderstanding could be corrected by using two or four significant figures after the decimal. That's too much to ask though, probably requiring a large number of hours to accommodate someone not even from there.

Your site is fine, it's our brains that are more appropriately adjusted. A little disclaimer link or something would help a number of us understand. A large number of otherwise intelligent and educated Americans don't realize this difference in notation and this would be a great opportunity to educate them.

I am European and I dislike the use of comma, too, and I use dot everywhere. I see it as "50 000" as well, as a non-American. :P

Especially when the number format on the dial doesn't match the number format on the chart.

The site is confusing, even as a European: both periods and commas are used as decimal separators.

SI allows either but the document should be consistent. Thousands separators are a half width space.

"The decimal marker shall be either the point on the line or the comma on the line. The decimal marker chosen should be that which is customary in the context concerned."

https://www.npl.co.uk/si-units

Yes good point! We only had the idea of making this site a few days ago so the UI could use some tweaks. Thanks for the feedback.

UPDATE: made a small PR and fixed it. For now it's most consistent to just use dot separators everywhere.

AFAIK it's entirely possible to adjust it based on the browser's locale

Earlier:

Estonia to disconnect from the Russian-run electricity network on Saturday

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42971959

Gosh I love these electricity grid posts. As someone with almost zero knowledge about the subject, I am fascinated by what I learn. The last one I saw was when Ukraine switched away from Russia days before Russia invaded them.

I don't know that this will happen, but it does open the door more for Ukraine to target Russia's grid, without worrying about taking down the grid for Baltic NATO members who they would not wish to anger.

This info is also used for time-stamping audio recordings in forensics: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrical_network_frequency_a...

The "Map of European Transmission System Operators" at the top of this page shows relevant geographical context:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synchronous_grid_of_Continenta...

Note how Denmark is split between two separate synchronous grids.

There are lots of high-voltage DC connections between the grids in this map.

On the other thread someone wrote that the Baltic countries pay over 20 cents per kW, while Russian electricity is just 5 cents.

What is the point you're trying to make with this? Majority of the cost of electricity in the Baltics come from taxes and distribution fees – these well exceed 5 cents by themselves – just like elsewhere in the EU. None of the Baltic countries actually trade electricity with Belarus or Russia for quite some time either, so if there is an effect on prices due to synchronizing with the EU infrastructure, it is going to be minimal. In fact the spot market price already follows the capacity in Sweden & Finland quite closely.

As another data point, the electricity price was already ~16 cents/kWh 10 years ago and ~12c/kWh in 2009. High despite trading with Russia being a thing back then.

Those 5 cents are enough to murder thousands of people in Ukraine and put target on yourself.

Baltics are next if putin isn’t destroyed.

And? So? Do you think we should want to be part of russia now?

We will happily pay a bit more to get as far away from russia as possible.

Also, our prices include taxes, subsidies for renewables, the co2 scheme payments and so on.

Did they consider connecting to both grids at the same time making a bigger 'supergrid'?

If there is insufficient connectivity between the grids and the connections all disconnect due to overload, you just end up back in the two-grids situation that they have planned anyway.

This would require both grids to be exactly synchronized.

It's possible to transfer power between two grids at different frequencies (even between 50 and 60 Hz), it just requires more expensive equipment.

There's by now a lot of DC links in Europe for example going from the European continental grid to the Nordic grid. Denmark is split between the two so it has a country internal DC link too.

There are several DC links in Canada too, i.e. the underwater link between the Lower Mainland of British Columbia and Vancouver Island, which uses only one conductor and the water itself as the other. The North American grid is also DC linked betwen Alberta and Saskatchewan at one point.

DC links solve a myriad of synchronization problems.

At one site in a jungle, my employer had an electrically driven flywheel built that ran on that country's mains grid, paired with an AC alternator on the flywheel that fed the building. This solved a variety of frequency and voltage problems, including mains outages. If the mains went dark, a diesel generator would kick in to boost the flywheel RPMs on an as-needed basis rather than constantly run.

The political situation is not favourable to that.

The goal of this is to economically and politically isolate Russia and prevent anything in Russia from affecting the Baltic states

BRELL ring is a tool to manipulate the baltics energy system and pressure them politically. Namely, it is used as a “last resort” balancing system where fast response river Volga cascades are able to eat the surplus (stop producing) or provide enough in case of shortages. Balancing energy is the most expensive and there is really no good way to bound/hedge the costs. Hence a tool to manipulate the baltics. In addition to that, this will allow the baltic countries to finally move onto more liquid and cheaper 15min day-ahead, intraday markets.

This is very interesting, and the web-site is very nicely done.

What does it actually mean to disconnect? Is there some physical connection being broken? How is that done?

Yes, they are already keeping the link at 0MW transferred for a while and will now disconnect it. You can read more on Elering's website: https://elering.ee/en/synchronization-continental-europe

Yes it's some physical connection being broken. It's not unusual to adjust the ways in which the electrical grid is connected. See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Q-aVBv7PWM from Practical Engineering which talks about some of the nuances of building switches which can break connections between different parts of the grid safely.

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