The Amp Hour Electronics Podcast

This episode is brought to you by Mouser Electronics. This week we hear about Digital Therapeutics. Go to TheAmpHour.com/digitalhealth to learn more.

Welcome, Paul Zawada of Syntonous LLC!

• Paul was nice enough to respond when we said we were hoping to talk to someone about the grid/smart grid. He is an “operations technology engineer”, which means he straddles the line between the power side and the technology side of things.
• What are grid operators’ appetite for new tech?
• SCADA
• How do blackouts happen?
• Generation, transmission, distribution
• i2r losses are why they operate long distance transmission at 765 kV.
• China’s grid has newer tooling, which allows it to go at higher voltages.
• You can tell the voltage of transmission lines by “counting the bells”. It’s roughly 15kV per bell and they do odd things to the shapes of insulators to prevent arcing.
• Video about the Ohio blackous in 2003 we talked about last week
• Where does control happen for “the grid”?
• PJM
• Frequency determines the health of the grid
• Bike analogy
• Tesla battery – Hornsdale Power Reserve
• Moving to a renewable grid has some potential issues
• Grid has “inertia” due to the spun up generators. They’re working on modeling “Synthetic inertia” for a more renewable grid.
• “A disturbance in the electromotive force” (I’m sorry Dave, that title was too long)
• Dave asks why does the voltage go up on his setup?
• RMS voltage vs Vpp
• The Power Triangle
• ELI the ICE man, CIVIL
• 99% of the time, loads are inductive
• The role of reactive power in the grid
• VARs
• VAR tends to control the voltage
• Real power determines the frequency
• Hawaii example of a local grid with a lot of solar (and that’s kind of a problem)
• Capacitors help to balance the grid when it there are too many inductive loads.
• “Grid Following inverter” (vs “Grid Forming”)
• Dynamic inverter
• 4 quadrant inverter 
• “Don’t call it imaginary power”
• IEEE1547
• have to be able to deal with frequency changes
• The 50.2 Hz problem
• Smart Grid
• California Rule 21
• Smart meter and Power Line Carrier Standard (PRIME)
• Communication with meters
• WISUN
• COSIM
• PLC
• Private LTE
• Brokers
• Pool analogy
• Stability of the grid wasn’t built for two way flow
• Managing a wide range of inverters is difficult
• Standard for comms by SunSpec (Smart Inverter Standards)
• Control systems with SCADA
• While analyzing hte grid, they use a state estimator (which is a mathematical model of the various sources in a grid system) and then do real time contingency analysis
• Spinning reserve
• Rolling blackout is when the grid systematically takes different parts of the grid offline to preserve the overall ability to deliver power.
• Texas example
• Dave asked about available power on the grid
• Steel recycling takes a TON of power.
• Different wires from generation (in Texas)
• Community Energy Storage (“Backyard Batteries” w/ Four-Quadrant Inverters)
• Wind turbine go to DC first (because of variable wind speeds), but are then feed to an inverter
• Proposed Soo Green HVDC Link [Underground]
• Grain Belt Express: Proposed Kansas-Missouri-Illinois HVDC Transmission Line
• Pacific DC Intertie
• Silicon transformer
• Paul’s pet peeve is people asking him about “exploding transformers”. It’s almost always a fuse or a cable shorting to ground.
• Expulsion Fuse Blowing (NSFW Language)
• Another Expulsion Fuse Blowing
• DC vs AC arc
• 250VDC control of relax elements in power plants
• Air Blast Circuit Breaker
• “(The grid is) the most complex machine we ‘ve ever built”
• Consulting and day job AND he is working on a Doctorate of Technology at Purdue. We’re grateful he found time to talk to us as well!
• Follow Paul on Twitter! @engineerz