Continental Europe synchronous area was split into two
Europe: Due to outages of several transmission network elements, the Continental Europe synchronous area was split into two grid regions on 8 January.
Image source: Balkan Energy News
Europe: Due to outages of several transmission network elements, the Continental Europe synchronous area was split into two grid regions on 8 January.
The European Network of Transmission System Operators (ENTSO-E) has unveiled the first details of the incident which led to a decrease in frequency in North-East Area and an increase in frequency in South-East Area, and the disconnection of 233 MW of supply to customers.
At approximately 14:05 CET, the frequency in the North-West Area of Continental Europe initially decreased to a value of 49.74 Hz within a period of around 15 seconds. Afterwards, the frequency reached a steady state value of approximately 49.84 Hz. At the same time, the frequency in the South-East Area initially increased to a value of up to 50.6 Hz before settling at a steady state frequency between 50.2 Hz and 50.3 Hz, according to the press release by ENTSO-E.
Due to the under frequency in the North-West Area, contracted interruptible services in France and Italy, in total around 1.7GW, were disconnected in order to reduce the frequency deviation. These services supply large customers who are contracted by the respective Transmission System Operators to be disconnected if the frequency drops below a certain threshold. In addition, 420 MW and 60 MW of back-up capacities were automatically activated from the Nordic and Great Britain synchronous areas respectively.
“In line with the provisions of the System Operation Guideline, a detailed investigation is ongoing on the event. This includes a comprehensive analysis of large numbers of real-time recordings from protection devices and other electric power system elements. ENTSO-E will publish the results of this investigation as soon as the analysis is finalised,” ENTSO-E said.
ENTSO-E has also published questions and answers with regards to this event.
Source: Balkan Energy News