India blackout

At the end of last July India suffered the greatest manmade disaster in its history. An electric grid failure left 700 million people – more than half the country’s population – without power. This brought the subway, water supply and sewerage systems to a halt in Delhi. Unpurified effluents got into the rivers, which may cause grave damage to the environment. A total of 265 miners remained stranded underground in West Bengal and Jharkhand because mine hoists could not work without electricity. Luckily, there was no panic among the miners, and they were soon brought safely onto the surface.

The ground transport system has in fact stopped functioning. Trains came to a standstill, and subway passengers had to be taken to stations by means of diesel locomotives. Miles-long traffic gridlocks emerged in Delhi, Calcutta, and other cities due to failed traffic lights. This prevented diesel generators from being taken to hospitals, which endangered the life of many patients. It should be noted that the concerted efforts of the medical and auxiliary personnel forestalled the worst outcome, and none of the patients died. Aircraft were the only variety of transport which remained unaffected by the power cut. Delhi Airport continued to function as usual, using such stand-by power supply sources as diesel generators. Passengers were none the better for this, though. It was very difficult to get to the city.

Although the Indian authorities announce no details, the analysis of a similar disaster that hit India and some other countries in 2001 allows us to single out the three main causes.

Firstly, it is shortage of active power in the energy systems. The load grows faster than the power output. This results in rolling blackouts, which Ukraine saw in the 1990s.

Secondly, it is an outdated and conservative transportation and electric power-distribution system. If generation lags behind, this creates quite a problem for power grids. It is only half the work to produce electricity at a power plant – it should then be delivered to the consumer. But grids perform another very important function of ensuring joint stable work of power-supply systems and a link between them.

Thirdly, in modern-day conditions, power-supply systems are linked to form a ring. In plain words, all power generators are linked by means of electricity supply lines and a system of distribution substations.

We will not speak here in detail about all the advantages of an in fact united power system. They are especially good for territorially large countries, such as India and, to some extant, Ukraine. In spite of certain drawbacks, in practically all countries power plants are linked in a single ring.

But all this is only true if the power infrastructure allows a single power-supply system to function in such a way that its advantages could be made use of. This is where the problems begin.

All the three factors of a trouble-free operation of power systems are mutually bound. The active power produced by generators brings into motion engines at factories and elevators in our houses, gives light to electric bulbs, and allows us to use televisions, computers, and cell phones. If the total power of consumers exceeds the active power in the grid, it is possible to raise the generator’s power by increasing the delivery of water or steam to turbines – but within certain limits only. Besides, the more powerful the generator and the turbine that sets it into motion is, the longer its time lag is. Therefore, it takes some time for power to increase, while load changes by leaps and bounds. One can engage stand-by generators, but it will take them and turbines a long time to rev up for the same reasons. In this case, the load will vary in compliance with probability laws, and its magnitude can be assessed rather approximately. All this produces a shortage of active power.

This is a very dangerous mode of the power system operation because it causes the electrical current’s frequency to drop. In this case, the loaded generators will be further loaded, while the less loaded ones will get unloaded. Once the load reaches its upper limit, the generator will be automatically switched off. The shortage of active power still more increases, and the next generator is off. This causes what is known as collapse of frequency. In a very short time, we will see that most of the generators are off and the system has collapsed.

Judging by fragmentary press reports, this very thing occurred in India. The central government accuses the states of exceeding power consumption limits, while the state authorities are in turn excusing themselves.

We approach a fundamental problem here: how to generate the ever-increasing amount of electricity? The most widespread way is to burn organic fuels, such as coal, oil, and gas. The pluses and minuses are very well known. The second way is nuclear power generation. There seems to be nothing much to discuss after Chornobyl and Fukushima. The dangers are quite clear. There also are some advantages, but they more and more often come into question. The third way is to use renewable sources, such as hydro power generation, solar, wind, and perhaps tidal energy.

Environmentalists and many other people, who have been scared by the “peaceful atom,” are pinning special hopes on the third option. But here, too, there are very many problems, including those of environmental nature. Green power generation enthusiasts do not speak much about this either deliberately or due to lack of knowledge, but humankind has already come across these problems. Moreover, it is too early to speak about an industrial-scale use of the alternative sources of energy.

Nuclear power generation is the most high-tech energy sector. It is no mere chance that even after the Fukushima disaster the Japanese government wants to use nuclear power plants again. Japan is short of electricity, but thermal power stations need the fossil fuel which the Land of the Rising Sun has to import. But this poses a threat to national security, with due account of rather tense relations in Eastern Asia. Power generation is closely intertwined with politics here. Besides, what caused the Fukushima disaster was not the power plant itself but its misplacement at the seashore. The plant itself did not suffer from the earthquake and even continued to work well,

In India, too, there is a heated debate going on about the ways to develop power engineering. The government insists on the development of nuclear power generation, while the opposition is categorically against this. Yet it is clear to everybody that new thermal power plants will need a very large quality of imported fuels. Suffice it for the Persian Gulf crisis to enter an acute phase, and India will find itself in dire straits, as far as electricity production is concerned.

The shortage of active power is an important, but not the only, factor. What further aggravates the power system operation in critical conditions is an underdeveloped network of grids. A power ring is, of course, a good thing – but only under the condition that the grids are able to pass the necessary amount of electricity and the entire infrastructure meets the requirements.

In May 2005 Moscow and the neighboring regions of Russia experienced a wide-scale blackout. An accident at substation No. 510 in Chagino broke up the Moscow power ring. The remaining grid proved to be incapable of passing the boosted flow of energy, transformers overheated, and their oil caught fire, which resulted in what specialists call burst. Then things went with a snowball effect: the sudden shortage of active power caused step-by-step disconnection of generators. More than two million people were left without electricity.

Tellingly, insufficient capacity of the power infrastructure was also the cause of accidents and blackouts in European countries. In November 2006 two overloaded high-voltage lines failed in Germany, which caused fragments of the European grid to collapse like a house of cards. To avoid a complete outage, automatic circuit breakers began to disconnect consumers not only in Germany and France, but also in Belgium, Italy, and Spain.

Many journalists are saying that the blackout showed that India is so far a far cry from a true Asian tiger. It is right to some extent, but other, including highly-developed, countries should also do very much to ensure uninterrupted power supply.

The abovementioned problems are inherent in the Ukrainian power sector as well. And while the generation situation is more or less satisfactory (we even export electricity), there are major problems with grids. They are very old and suffer considerable losses in transmission and distribution. There are frequent power cuts due to accidents and unstable voltage often exceeds the admissible limits, which causes household electronic appliances to burn out. The entire Ukrainian power sector needs a serious reconstruction, and its fixed assets must be updated on a considerable scale. Incidentally, we have a well-developed electrotechnical and turbine-making industry. All this could keep our power machine building factories running at full capacity for years, give an impulse to the related sectors, create thousands of jobs, and boost research.

I wish the India blackout would prompt us to begin the reconstruction of Ukrainian power plants and grids. But there’s no time – everybody is doing politics, you know.