I was in a gas-fired power plant when the call came in to spin up the plant turbine to meet demand. So as the turbine is spinning up, the guy misses the sync (which involves throwing a breaker when a certain light is almost extinguished; think incandescent) only to make it on the second try. At that point, the turbine goes into "follow" mode where the turbine speed is regulated to keep phase with the rest of the grid. Everything is going swimmingly until some surge causes a sudden increase in turbine speed followed by a sharp decrease. That's when the fun begins. The turbine can't spin down fast enough, which causes a phase differential, which causes a breaker to take a turbine big as a house to suddenly and violently be removed from the grid. This would normally cause an over-rev that would rip said turbine up from floor and into the air were it not for a bank of resistors that are outside that can produce a load for all that energy. When all that energy gets dumped into a bank of resistors in a switch yard on a hot summer day, you can smell it.
I was in a gas-fired power plant when the call came in to spin up the plant turbine to meet demand. So as the turbine is spinning up, the guy misses the sync (which involves throwing a breaker when a certain light is almost extinguished; think incandescent) only to make it on the second try. At that point, the turbine goes into "follow" mode where the turbine speed is regulated to keep phase with the rest of the grid. Everything is going swimmingly until some surge causes a sudden increase in turbine speed followed by a sharp decrease. That's when the fun begins. The turbine can't spin down fast enough, which causes a phase differential, which causes a breaker to take a turbine big as a house to suddenly and violently be removed from the grid. This would normally cause an over-rev that would rip said turbine up from floor and into the air were it not for a bank of resistors that are outside that can produce a load for all that energy. When all that energy gets dumped into a bank of resistors in a switch yard on a hot summer day, you can smell it.
Electricity is no joke. Respect it.