Cydrome Leader wrote:



What is the poing of the frequency variation in the first place? it's
never explained in the links.
A control systems group at our university tried to understand the stability
of the electrical grid. This was a big, multi-year DOE grant. They wrote
a software simulation, with generating plants, loads and transmission lines.
As I understand it, they eventually found that the problem is essentially
mathematically intractable, but that they were able to establish certain
bounds to the solution. What that all means is that the grid is not really
very stable at all, somewhat like a whole bunch of masses tied together by
a network of springs, and energy being added and subtracted here and there.
Resistance of the transmission lines and the huge resistance of resistive
loads (incandescent lights and toasters) may be the only thing keeping it
from going wildly unstable. They do experience periods of smaller
instability now and then, and sometimes have to pull a generating station
offline to break the cycle of reactive power bouncing back and forth from
one region to another.

So, with that background, **I THINK** what is going on is they think there
may be a way to reduce some of these stability problems if they don't
try to maintain exact frequency all the time, TOO. Stability is a LOT
more important than minor frequency variations.

Jon