Sean McGuinness
@seanmacguinness.bsky.social
Electrical engineer/researcher at EPRI specializing in blackout investigations, blackout prevention, and power grid protection. Also grid simulations, relay configuration, coding, AI, and things. My views are my own and don't reflect my employer.
October 14th 00:32, 10GW #Blackout in #Brazil
* Event started with a 500kV 150 Mvar shunt reactor fire. The shunt is on the line to Ibiuna
* Protection cleared the fault by tripping the busbar
* Frequency hit 58.06Hz.
* UFLS stages 1 and 2 activated
Link g1.globo.com/pr/parana/no...
* Event started with a 500kV 150 Mvar shunt reactor fire. The shunt is on the line to Ibiuna
* Protection cleared the fault by tripping the busbar
* Frequency hit 58.06Hz.
* UFLS stages 1 and 2 activated
Link g1.globo.com/pr/parana/no...
Apagão causado por incêndio no PR durou pelo menos duas horas, diz ministério
Problema começou às 0h32 em Bateias, em Campo Largo, na Grande Curitiba, e afetou todas as regiões do país; energia foi restabelecida entre 1h30 e 2h30.
g1.globo.com
October 15, 2025 at 8:23 AM
October 14th 00:32, 10GW #Blackout in #Brazil
* Event started with a 500kV 150 Mvar shunt reactor fire. The shunt is on the line to Ibiuna
* Protection cleared the fault by tripping the busbar
* Frequency hit 58.06Hz.
* UFLS stages 1 and 2 activated
Link g1.globo.com/pr/parana/no...
* Event started with a 500kV 150 Mvar shunt reactor fire. The shunt is on the line to Ibiuna
* Protection cleared the fault by tripping the busbar
* Frequency hit 58.06Hz.
* UFLS stages 1 and 2 activated
Link g1.globo.com/pr/parana/no...
Entsoe just published their factual report about the #blackout of the Iberian Peninsula on April 28th eepublicdownloads.blob.core.windows.net/public-cdn-c...
eepublicdownloads.blob.core.windows.net
October 3, 2025 at 9:39 AM
Entsoe just published their factual report about the #blackout of the Iberian Peninsula on April 28th eepublicdownloads.blob.core.windows.net/public-cdn-c...
Over a million people lost power in Sabah, Malaysia on Saturday after two 275kV towers collapsed due to landslides duringheavy rain. They seem to be on top of things - most people have power back, they are putting up emergency restoration structures (ERS), and expect to have new towers in 3 months.
September 15, 2025 at 9:33 AM
Over a million people lost power in Sabah, Malaysia on Saturday after two 275kV towers collapsed due to landslides duringheavy rain. They seem to be on top of things - most people have power back, they are putting up emergency restoration structures (ERS), and expect to have new towers in 3 months.
1/11 A few years ago we worked with the HVDC Center in Scotland to study if grid protection would still work if you tried to blackstart Scotland from a 1.4GW VSC HVDC link. Here's what we found:
From ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/944...
From ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/944...
Coordination of AC protection settings during energisation of AC grid from a VSC HVDC interconnector
The Relatively low short circuit current limit of VSC converters in comparison to conventional synchronous generation can affect grid short circuit and dynamic characteristics during a black start. Th...
ieeexplore.ieee.org
September 13, 2025 at 11:38 AM
1/11 A few years ago we worked with the HVDC Center in Scotland to study if grid protection would still work if you tried to blackstart Scotland from a 1.4GW VSC HVDC link. Here's what we found:
From ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/944...
From ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/944...
Unfortunate news from Cuba where the power grid collapsed for the fourth time this year. 10 million people without power. On-going shortages and old power plants are the main causes it seems.
Source www.reuters.com/sustainabili...
Source www.reuters.com/sustainabili...
Cuba's electrical grid collapses in nationwide blackout
Communist Cuba's national power grid collapsed for the fourth time in less than a year on Wednesday morning causing a nationwide blackout, authorities said.
www.reuters.com
September 10, 2025 at 6:30 PM
Unfortunate news from Cuba where the power grid collapsed for the fourth time this year. 10 million people without power. On-going shortages and old power plants are the main causes it seems.
Source www.reuters.com/sustainabili...
Source www.reuters.com/sustainabili...
Grid protection experts know their own grid's history and use this knowledge to design reliable protection systems. Extreme weather results in faults and failures which local engineers may not expect. Here are some examples from recent events🧵: from our paper
ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/105...
ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/105...
Protection system design and configuration for extreme weather and emergency grid operating states
Protection system design and configuration philosophies are usually focused on delivering reliable, sensitive, and selective protection of grid assets. Following a number of major system disturbances ...
ieeexplore.ieee.org
September 10, 2025 at 4:44 PM
Grid protection experts know their own grid's history and use this knowledge to design reliable protection systems. Extreme weather results in faults and failures which local engineers may not expect. Here are some examples from recent events🧵: from our paper
ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/105...
ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/105...
In recent years at EPRI we've been benchmarking AI products to see how they perform at common power grid protection tasks. We gave detailed findings to our utility partners last year and published high-level findings this year. See paper ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/109...
Some things we found:
Some things we found:
Using large language models to configure protection relays
This paper presents experience gained from testing the ability of commercially-available, general-purpose large-language models to perform each step in a typical protection settings workflow. The obje...
ieeexplore.ieee.org
September 9, 2025 at 12:33 PM
In recent years at EPRI we've been benchmarking AI products to see how they perform at common power grid protection tasks. We gave detailed findings to our utility partners last year and published high-level findings this year. See paper ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/109...
Some things we found:
Some things we found:
Latest ENTSO-e update on the Iberian #blackout. The latest updates seem to focus on regional inertia calculations (H estimated between 2.19 and 2.69 s) and short-duration load rises at 11:07 (1000MW), 12:07 (600MW), and 12:25 (500MW) before the blackout at 12:33. www.entsoe.eu/publications...
28 April Blackout
www.entsoe.eu
September 8, 2025 at 7:18 PM
Latest ENTSO-e update on the Iberian #blackout. The latest updates seem to focus on regional inertia calculations (H estimated between 2.19 and 2.69 s) and short-duration load rises at 11:07 (1000MW), 12:07 (600MW), and 12:25 (500MW) before the blackout at 12:33. www.entsoe.eu/publications...
Upcoming livestream by Coordinador Eléctrico Nacional (CEN) in Chile. It summarises the investigations into the unfortunate blackout of 20 million people there in February (includes the report we prepared at EPRI) #Blackout #Chile Https://www.youtube.com/live/qhnfYHGECHg
September 8, 2025 at 7:09 PM
Reposted by Sean McGuinness
JAPAN RECORD HEAT
New day, new records in Japan:
September highest temperatures in history were broken in the Southeast:
35.2 Aki
33.5 Musashi
35.4 Mikado
35.8 Akae
More records on the way...
New day, new records in Japan:
September highest temperatures in history were broken in the Southeast:
35.2 Aki
33.5 Musashi
35.4 Mikado
35.8 Akae
More records on the way...
September 5, 2025 at 10:48 AM
JAPAN RECORD HEAT
New day, new records in Japan:
September highest temperatures in history were broken in the Southeast:
35.2 Aki
33.5 Musashi
35.4 Mikado
35.8 Akae
More records on the way...
New day, new records in Japan:
September highest temperatures in history were broken in the Southeast:
35.2 Aki
33.5 Musashi
35.4 Mikado
35.8 Akae
More records on the way...
Reposted by Sean McGuinness
Necelých 830 km je délka aktuálně nejdelšího zaznamenaného blesku!
Zaznamenán byl satelitem a než se z vývhodního Texasu dostal do Kansas City, trvalo mu to sedm sekund!
eos.org/research-and...
Zaznamenán byl satelitem a než se z vývhodního Texasu dostal do Kansas City, trvalo mu to sedm sekund!
eos.org/research-and...
There's a New Record for the Longest Lightning Flash - Eos
515 miles—roughly the distance from Washington, D.C. to Detroit, one-third the length of the Colorado River, and now, the longest lightning bolt ever recorded. That’s right: A new analysis of satellit...
eos.org
September 4, 2025 at 6:25 AM
Necelých 830 km je délka aktuálně nejdelšího zaznamenaného blesku!
Zaznamenán byl satelitem a než se z vývhodního Texasu dostal do Kansas City, trvalo mu to sedm sekund!
eos.org/research-and...
Zaznamenán byl satelitem a než se z vývhodního Texasu dostal do Kansas City, trvalo mu to sedm sekund!
eos.org/research-and...