Clever engineering. Was that mechanical, such as a solenoid preventing the breaker from closing, or electromechanical, a electromagnet would prevent the breaker from closing unless the generator was in phase, collapsing the genetic field and allowing rhe breaker to be closed.

You're not wrong. ;)

When the SHTF You're going to want to get on your boat or airplane and try to get about 10,000 mi away from the nearest nuclear power plant which is going to be kind of difficult because there's 96 of them in the United States storing 186,000 metric tons of nuclear fuel in spent fuel ponds. either that or you're going to want to get down to that plant and make sure the generators and pumps continue to pump cooling water through those ponds because if they stop you have about 24 hours before 30 ft of water boils dry and uncovers those fuel rods. When that happens there's going to be a big hydrogen explosion and a lot of burning nuclear fuel. this burning nuclear fuel is going to release clouds of radioactive smoke which will be heavily contaminated with cesium 137, iodine 131 and Cobalt 60 suffice it to say that contact with particles of that smoke will produce lethal levels of radiation poisoning within seconds. current calculations are that a single spent fuel cooling pond fire will contaminate an area in excess of 10,000 square miles and there are 96 of them in the United States. every single one of them needs active cooling 24/7 and we're not talking little tiny cooling pumps, we're talking pumps the size of locomotives. here's the backstory as to why spent nuclear fuel is so dangerous. nuclear fuel that's in a reactor is constantly bombarded with fission products such as cobalt 60 cesium 137 iodine 131 and so forth. The fuel becomes extremely unstable making it very difficult to safely control the reactor so they need to replace the fuel with fresh fuel that's not contaminated with daughter particles The spent nuclear fuel is so radioactive that it needs to be transported and stored under 30 ft of water for 5 to 10 years before it could be moved to dry cask storage. The fuel in these ponds is generating enormous amounts of heat, We are talking megawatts so they have these giant cooling towers and these huge locomotive size water pumps that circulate water in these Olympic size 30 ft deep ponds through heat exchangers to keep the water from boiling dry. 24 hours, that's how long it takes for 30 ft of water to boil out of a spent fuel cooling pond once the pumps stop running. So you need to figure out how to dump tens of thousands of gallons of water into a spent fuel cooling pond before the water comes within about 10 ft of the top of the rods, at that point the radiation levels will be lethal in the room and you will no longer be able to do anything about it. So yeah if the SHTF You're really not going to need much more than about 30 days worth of food because if they don't get the power grid back up and running and the pumps operating on these spent fuel cooling ponds you'll be dead of radiation sickness long before the zombies ever get you.

​@@dannelson8556I'm gonna need some sources on this.

Maybe that's a small "disposable" generator, but most generators get major rebuilds more frequent than 10 years anyway.

To complicate things, some sync lights are on when in phase.

Understandable . I think the lights should be red

@@tomr6955 Maybe a morph between a green happy face to a red angry frown

I don't get the mentality of firing people like who make such a big mistake (once). Because the probability that this person is gonna make the same mistake again is much lower than any other random person. That person will be TERRIFIED to never screw that up again, who could be better qualified?

Yeah, that’s a bollocking 😊

We're glad you're still here too. :) Thanks for watching all these years!

@@Physicsduck that's good. i am looking for something like the former NSI in western Massachusetts.

Which one?

Ah! My other hobby. Im an electrician by day, guitarist/electronics hobbiest by....well also by day. I build vacuum tube amplifiers mainly but I've also dabbled in pedals some.

2 lamps also will warn if the phasing is backwards, as they will go dark at different times.

@@randacnam7321 I thought I had seen that in an older video. Wasn't sure if it actually happened, or if it was just my own bulbs going dim. Here it is: kzfaq.info/get/bejne/j692i6-BxJvDpJ8.html

i don't think that is correct. I don't have generator protection panel drawings in front of me, but I am pretty sure that the two lamps are wired in series. I think what drives two lamps is practicality. the two PT inputs are nominally 115VAC. When the two inputs are 180 out of phase the voltage difference is 230VAC. 230V incandecant lamps are fairly hard to come by, but it is easy to come by 115V bulbs. So, two 115V bulbs wired in series is cheap off the shelf solution.

@@davidstuebner9021 That is why they make small control transformers. Ours were 120V bulbs but the circuits for the Gensets was 480V 3 phase. So you just put in two small transformers and you are all set.

Its not the spin that kills ya, its the sudden stop ;)

Is there a video? I want to see this happen!

​@@TheEmeraldMenOfficialFollowing.

Thank you!

Yes, I was literally determined and read the entire thing. Good stuff.

@@voltare2amstereo in Poland that was popular at around '70-'80. Now all is going back to stereo...

Thank you! :) I'm working on exactly that! I'm glad you're enjoying them!

the interaction between the grid and generator keeps it in sync, there is no need to actually care about e.g. the wicket gates or such once sync is achieved. i even think many plants just go full throttle once they are in sync

If every plant went full throttle then the grid frequency would increase…

The generators are synchronous machines so they will stay in sync with the grid indefinitely unless something really bad happens. Now, regarding going full throttle: there are obvious power limits of course on the generator, transformer and transmission line that shouldn’t be exceeded or stuff will overheat and protections trip. Besides that, if everyone generates too much power the frequency will go up leading to bad things. The grid control (a human dispatcher or an automated system) regulates power production to match demand by ordering units up or down, or adjusting their power output if practical. The expected demand is usually known in advance to quite a good margin, depending on time of day, day of week (work day/weekend), weather conditions (too hot and AC use rises, too cold and heaters go on) etc. Some plants may be placed in spinning reserve, synchronized to the grid but not producing any power, ready to take over if some generation is lost suddenly.

That's an excellent question with a very interesting answer. I'll be digging deep into this in a upcoming video. The short answer is, we actually work as hard as we can to try and push it OUT of sync. It's the combined inertial mass of thousands of other generators in other power plants that holds it all locked in sync.

What's the budget for things to destroy in the process?

Might be interesting to do it with a model.

This is not possible! All these systems have protection circuits in their design, which will not allow synchronization to occur if the phase difference between the grid (reference frequency) and the generator to be synchronized (free running frequency, up to the moment it is locked to the grid) is more than 3 degrees maximum (above or below the reference). This is so, because in the case of high angle difference, the generator to be connected to the grid behaves like a brake against the grid. The greater the angle, the worse the brake effect will be. This can only have catastrophic effects, with the case of 180 degrees out of phase synchronization being beyond imagination regarding the result...The water pressure will reach unbelievably high level, destroying (always theoretically speaking) the entire power plant...So, no way to see this "effect" in real life, nowhere in the world...

@@Kenionatus Definitely a model from safety and cost perspective.

the motors get FORCIBLY corrected by the grid which can lead to things going MAJORLY KABOOM. Think of it as driving a car. you're going a certain speed...lets say 60KM/h and then you go on the clutch, rev up the engine a lot and forcibly drop it back down. Your transmission/gear box is not gonna like that very much. Same would happen if you dropped too many gears at once. your engine would over-rev and explode.

Yeah me too. Following.

He's one of the greatest KZfaqrs (and people) alive. Enjoy that deep dive. :)

The generator is reversible: it will act like a motor if it is connected to the grid going slow. It will draw power from the grid and help pump water along the way. To resolve this undesirable situation the operator opens the gates more, applying more water to the turbine wheel, making the set want to spin faster. But the set is synchronous and tied to the grid, it can’t go faster, so it will resist the water flow, extract power from it, and deliver to the grid as intended.

That's an excellent question (so good in fact, you'll see it in an upcoming video) ;) The short answer is that the Grid is pushing back exactly as hard as we're pushing ahead. The grid itself is what keeps us locked in sync.

Very simplified, the grid is so large that pushing more power WILL speed it up, the amount Is tiny and all the generators will follow you, so you maintain sync

@@Physicsduck When wholesale rates go negative, can you use this "feature" to sell "load" (ie: turn the generator into a pump and have the grid pay you to take up excess capacity)?

An excellent equivalent would be riding an older tandem bicycle. You always have to stay in sync, but you can decide if you just "idle" or if you want to push the pedals with some force.

@@Physicsduck You make awesome videos! I can totally run a hydro plant in the case of an apocalypse now. I'm still wondering tho, who is the conductor (as in an orchestra, hehe) in the Grid? Sure a small hydro like yours isn't going to affect the grid freq by any measureable amount, but how is this managed in a country like Norway where almost all power is from hydro? Surely there are means to send sync signals via GPS or whatnot, but how do you control the speed of each and every generator so accurately with the possible fluctuations in water level in a way that there isn't some catastrophic synchronized desync at any moment? Thanks!

It is much easier to eyeball the moment the light is off, than to spot the maximum brightness. Yes, the light bulbs were likely the first synch aid used, followed by a spinning needle synchroscope decades later.

NOT A HV TECH! I believe so. If I understand magnetic voodoo, the generator/dynamo stage spins at a constant RPM and, for say a stand alone gas generator, through some kind of electromechanical voodoo (in the olden days that is, these days its all computers with nanosecond sampling and such) the drift off 60hz it opens the throttle so that the load of the electrical load is matched to the mechanical load of the engine (minus losses of course) while the RPM stays constant. IIRC, and I could be backwards on some of this, voltage is how many electrons are effected by the magnet swinging past a coil (more copper in the field means more volts as they bunch up on one spot and are 'thinned' in another. difference in free electron density between two points is voltage), amps is determined by how effectively the electrons couple to the magnetic field as it flies by (closer and uniform is better than far away and lazily arranged. Basically if volts is how many are moved, amps is how hard they are pushed), and frequency of a given coil is the flux from N to S as the rotors spins by (as it sees NSNSNSNSNSNSNS.... Move a magnet near a coil, you will only see voltage when either is moving. Once they are stationary relative to each other there is no flux (change) of magnetic field density moving through the copper, so there is nothing to push the electrons anymore, so there is no power. DC electro magnets are a thing thanks to the moving electrons, but notice, once established, the field does not move. It just sits there around the coil, doing nothing but storing some energy. Energy which can be released when the power is removed and the field collapses, the change in field density (flux) around the wires induces a voltage as the energy in the field is dissipated shoving electrons around (amps). Thus inductors!). When a load comes on, the voltage sags, some jerk spilled some soda on the floor of the entryway and closed one of the double doors out of (and back into) the place (the electrons are encountering an impendence to their nice smooth slippery path through the wire (that impedance is akin to resistance though they take slightly different forms depending on the field of study. They both imply resisting a flow or flux though...essentially)) and have to expend more energy to keep the number of electrons able to pass through the doorway (a given point) every second (coulomb, or unit charge) the same, but the efficiency of moving them doesn't change (within the generator) so the generator has to work harder to spin the magnetic field thought these electrons that dont want to move as fast thanks to the load resisting them (the sticky floor and narrower passage. Motion of electrons(current, or the required shove of an amount of electrons to reach a power target), of course, is how they convey electromagnetic flux thus transmit energy to do work (watts, or the transferable (inefficiencies of inherent resistances in the electro, magnetic, or physical realms. Thus why unity is hard and over unity is impossible. Even the perpetual current of an MRI magnet needs to be topped off once in a while. Plus every time its used some of that energy is transferred to the thing it affects via the....) shove of so many electrons, volts times amps, power), whether it be light a light or spin a fan. There is only so many of them here that want to go there (voltage), they can only do so at a certain rate (unit charge), a rate which carries some momentum (amps), which of course acts upon an impendence (resistance) since energy is not created or destroyed just changes form (Like marbles clacking together, the one moving isnt going to keep moving at its beginning rate if some of that motion has to go into another marble. Gas bonds with oxygen and flies around harder (gets hot), smacks a piston head pushing it, which turns a crank, which spins a rotor, which sweeps a magnetic field over coils, which shoves some electrons, which shimmy down a wire thought a door and back again as best the can rubbing up against everything along the way (heat generated by electrical loads resisting their shimmy)). To maintain frequency the generator drive system must keep the rotor spinning at the right RPM, to maintain voltage it must produce enough output power to overcome the application of electron path gooeifying resistive load, it does that through increasing the amount of work it is doing thus increasing how hard it is shoving electrons through the coils, with out changing how many are moving at a given point, or how often it shoves by way of letting a bit more gas in the intake. Slightly bigger boom, slightly harder push. Matching the mechanical load against the electrical load, the voltage may dip (which most electronics sensitive to that kind of thing have internal power supplies that function just fine on a window of input voltages), but the engine will catch up in a few cycles, and (hopefully this whole time) the frequency never drifts too far from 60hz. I might have gotten lost in digressions there a bit, but that is pretty much out I see it. Enjoy decoding my crazy 😁

Yes lol. I had the read the entire thing.

if there is proper protection between the two of them (breaker or fuse) of the right size it will blow before it damages the equipment. if not it gets very ugly for the equipment.

Certainly. I'll put that on the list for Season 4. I'm already putting the next set of videos into production. :)

Thank You! Love your videos!.@@Physicsduck

I remember the old Genlock on the Commodore Amiga!

Well, that's a great question. The short answer is no, we just make more power. The long answer...well....I need to make a video on that. You'll see it in Season 4. :) This one is going to take some work to teach.

@@Physicsduck I believe someone explained a portion in the comments below.

If you have heard stories about the damage caused if a generator is brought online out of sync - about the sheer amount of energy released, throwing ten ton rotor shafts through walls - well, once synced, that same energy is available for _keeping_ the generator in sync. A generator and a motor are basically the same thing, after all. If you synced your turbine to the grid and then cut off the water (ignoring safeties which won't actually let you do this), then the turbine would continue to spin at the same speed, but now drawing power _from_ the grid to keep itself spinning. The more you try to change the speed of the turbine, the more energy it takes. If you try to slow the turbine down, power is drawn in from the grid to resist it. And if you try to speed it up, as water does, it works in reverse: the water has to push against the resistance of the grid, and the more force it pushes with, the more power feeds into the grid, but the speed of the turbine barely changes. (Edited for formatting)

If you've heard of regenerative braking (on trains for example), it's the same principle. If the train motors are disconnected, there's no resistance put on the axles. But if you complete a circuit and start trying to draw power from the motors, the magnetic interactions in the motor create resistance on the motor shafts and it's the train pushing against that resistance which both generates power and brakes the train.

Another way to look at it is that, when water pushes on the turbine, the force doesn't change the speed of the turbine at all. What it does is create a small phase shift between the grid and the turbine, and it's the difference in phase which generates the power - just like the difference in phase powers the sync lights. It actually isn't quite that simple, because the voltage and the current actually get out of phase with each other - that's what power factor is, but this is going beyond my own understanding now. Hopefully power factor is covered in a future video!

Sure, what's your goal though? Do you just want to make a display, or are you trying to accomplish something?

I'm trying to bring a offline system i have so that i don't have to have separe circuits or switching methods

If you're trying to build something that connects to the power grid, and don't know how to spell Phase properly, my first advice is to begin studying....a lot. You're not there yet.

Yes, and once they all match up, THEN you tie to the grid.

That's an upcoming longform :) I've been working on this FOR MONTHS.

Not only redundancy. The lights bridge two like phases, and if they blink alternately it means the generator is wired wrong (two phases swapped) and you definitely should not attempt to synchronize until the wiring is fixed.

In Y wiring the neutral is connected, in delta wiring one phase can be closed in advance. I’ve also seen setups with three bulbs

Just a small clarification: while using two standard bulbs is probably the easiest way to match the voltage involved, that requirement has to do with the specs of the bulb, not with the sync process generally. You also could just order a case of bulbs over here in Europe - those 230V-bulbs should stand 2x120V nicely ;)

kidwell should do an edc.

BOOM!

The Turbine and the Generator themselves which are very large pieces of metal would instantly want to get in phase since they are now Electromagnetically Bound to the Grid after the SYNC Breaker is shut. This rapid mechanical shock would damage the equipment because of the size of the equipment is so large. Imagine the amount of stress on a mechanical system if instantly is was torqued 180 degrees rotation. Possibly you'd break the rotor, or the shaft, or shear the bolts off between turbine shafts.

@@NealHunting I've heard of generators being yeeted thru the roofs and walls of the buildings they were in. Yes, hundreds of thousands of pounds of thing going hundreds of feet in the air.

Imagine if the clutch in your car was a simple on/off switch.

It all depends on the size of the unit, as in how much inertia the rotor as and how much impedance there is in the lines. I used to drive by a rotor that was 18" diameter, that had been twisted off. I have heard of other units that were completly destroyed. Generator frame lifted off foundation, turbine blades ripped off. Complete scrap. But early on one of my classmates made the error on a little air driven turbine, and there was just a big bang. Got everyones attention.