KoCoS Blog

The European power grid dealt with major problems on 08 January 2021. An entire region in Eastern Europe was disconnected, and in some cases experienced power outages. The European power grid is part of the critical infrastructure (CRITIS). The Austrian Federal Army had already warned in January 2020: "A Europe-wide blackout is to be expected within the next 5 years!“
On 8 January 2021 at around 14:05, a frequency deviation of around 250 mHz occurred in the synchronized European high-voltage electricity grid. As a result, the region of south-eastern Europe was disconnected from the European interconnected grid.

A cascade of failures of equipment, such as power lines and switchgear in south-eastern Europe, led to massive problems within the European power grid. According to the report, the near-blackout in large parts of Europe was triggered by a transformer station in Ernestinovo, Croatia. Initial investigations stated at 14:04 an overcurrent protection device on a 400-kilovolt bus bar coupler in the substation tripped, causing it to switch off automatically. This also interrupted two extra-high voltage connections that carry electricity from the Balkans to other parts of Europe; affecting the lines to Žerjavinec (Croatia) and Pecs (Hungary) in the north-western direction. The result was that within less than 50 seconds the European power grid split into two areas: the northwest, which lacked 6.3 GW of generation capacity, and the southeast, which had a corresponding surplus.

In some regions there were visible problems. For example, lamps in households and on the streets have lit up or went out, and electrical appliances turned on and off. The radio station RFI România reported power cuts in parts of Romania. The frequency drop led to consequential disturbances at various infrastructure operators, such as the Vienna airport and hospitals, which triggered the emergency power supply. There was also a serious incident at Vienna Airport, where hundreds of hardware parts were destroyed and damage amounting to several hundred thousand euros was caused. Approximately one hour after the disconnection, the two power grids were resynchronized.

Exact sequence of the disturbance
At 14:05 (CET) the frequency in the north-western power unit dropped to 49.74 Hz. After about 15 seconds, it stabilized at 49.84 Hz, which is still within the permissible band for deviations of plusminus 0.2 Hz. At the same time, the frequency in the south-eastern area jumped to 50.6 Hertz before stabilizing at a value between 50.2 and 50.3 Hz.

The disconnection of the sub-grid had a clear impact on the grid frequency. Thus, at (14:04:55 local time CET), the grid frequency dropped from about 50.027 Hz to a minimum of 49.742 Hz within 14 seconds. This left the normal control range of 50.000 Hz ±200 mHz. The first stage of the schedule (activation of power reserves) was achieved. Reconnection to the interconnected grid at 15:08 CET, on the other hand, had no effect on the grid frequency.

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Create ACI codecs yourself....

Enabling users to create their own codecs for their own needs was a requirement we placed on our latest ARTES innovation. The necessary basic knowledge of program development, especially in processing files, is already available to many users. Not much more is needed!

...or have it created by the specialist

Should the required skill be absent or short on time, KoCoS and its partners are ready to help. In cooperative collaboration, the required information and a sample file can be worked out by the user, and the KoCoS specialists will then take care of implementation. The codec created is then included in the standard so that it is available to all users.

Insight into the "secrets" of codec creation

As already described in the previous article, the ACI codec can be used to transfer any settings from an external file into the ARTES 5 software. ACI Codec is a collective term that summarizes different programs, the codecs. A codec is always adapted to a certain format of the source file. Since the source file can have any format, the complexity of the codec generally depends on its structure.

Preparations

Since a codec maps the parameters of an output file to the parameters of ARTES 5, it is recommended to first define the links in the form of a table. Any necessary adjustments or conversions of the parameters to be read in can also be entered. These are then implemented in the codec itself.
 

Creation of an Empty Codec

A C#-project can be created automatically from within ARTES 5. This provides methods and properties on the basis of which the ARTES software can be parameterized. The structure of the created project automatically provides the possibility to read any file. 

Assignment of parameters

Since the concept of ACI-Codec is based on the principle of object-oriented programming, the basic structures of ARTES 5 could be mapped as far as possible by the methods and properties. This enables a similar procedure to be followed when creating a codec as when creating a test object in ARTES 5.
To show the basics of creating a codec, static values are assigned to a test object in the following example. For a mature codec, these must be replaced by variables and linked to values in the source file.  
As in ARTES 5, a new test object must first be created. Afterwards the parameters of the test object can be provided with the corresponding values. Depending on the integrated development environment (IDE) used, the Intellisense function simplifies this process considerably.

The created parameter is now assigned values for the "General Information" and "Rated and Limit Values". 

Elements such as functions and the characteristics they contain must be added to the test object in the software interface before values can be assigned, the same procedure is followed in a codec.