A major incident on a high-voltage transmission line occurred yesterday in the village of Sfiterbant, located in the central province of Flevoland, Netherlands. Fire started as a result, several electrical substations were out of order, wires melted under voltage, railroad tracks and private buildings were damaged. Train traffic was stopped for several days. Journalists and experts from the Dutch Broadcasting Association tried to figure out the causes and consequences of the incident. (NOS), published the results of the investigation on its website.
The consequences of this major power outage are unique, record for their negative, and something like that hardly seemed possible thanks to security systems- Han Slootweg says, professor of electrical engineering at the Eindhoven University of Technology.
In case of short circuit, the current strength can be multiple of the normal value, and the heating of the power grid components will increase by 1000 time. However, then, what happened in Flevoland shouldn't have happened at all, considers Slootweg. With any power surge, within tenths of a second, an emergency shutdown system should have worked. This is how it goes, eg, in home networks. Especially, automation was supposed to work at a high-voltage substation.
Looks like, this time it didn't happen, and a second backup system, who should have taken immediate action, also failed after the first - states the author of the material.
experts note, that the automatic shutdown system should have worked within 0,04 seconds, but that did not happen. Apparently, the security system did not notice the short circuit at all. Slootweg reported, it's too early to draw any conclusions, a thorough investigation into the cause of the accident.
Network operator Tennet had to turn off the power grid after the accident manually. This has been done before, how all the wires completely melted, which could lead to an even greater scale of the disaster. Due to the accident, the train stopped between Dronten and Lelystad, 350 people were evacuated from. Also, traffic on the highway between these cities was stopped for several hours.. Dozens of people were trapped in the attractions of the local amusement park.
The kingdom's railway infrastructure suffered the most. According to the Dutch railway agency ProRail, It will take at least a few weeks to recover..
Expected, that recovery will take a long time. There is no forecast for repairs yet.. It all depends on, how badly damaged are the cables, but there is a high probability, that they will have to be replaced. All, what was along the road, could be destroyed - according to the agency's website. Author:Alexander Grigoriev Photos used:Tennet website
