Ștefan Gadola,
Co-founder of Energobit
In 1979, I graduated from the Power Engineering Department of the Faculty of Power Engineering at the Polytechnic Institute of Bucharest. I was subsequently assigned to the Electric Power Networks Enterprise of Cluj (IREC), where I began my internship within the PRAM Department (Relay Protection, Automation and Measurement).
After six years, I was appointed engineer responsible for protection and automation settings within the Energy Dispatch Center of IREC, where I worked for two years before being appointed Head of the PRAM Department. From that position, I joined Energobit in 1992.
During my university studies, Professor Eugen Potolea taught us in the Power Systems course that an electrical power system cannot operate below a frequency of 49 Hz.
Beginning in 1986, the Romanian power system faced major difficulties in generating the energy required to meet demand. As a result, situations arose in which system frequency dropped below the permissible operating limits, triggering the DAS-f automation systems (Automatic Load Shedding on Frequency Decline).efan
There were many occasions when the system operated below 47.5 Hz, and hundreds of consumers had to be disconnected in order to maintain frequency within acceptable limits. The situation deteriorated to the point where each county was assigned a maximum allowable power consumption. Whenever this limit was exceeded, consumers had to be disconnected through the DAS-f system. However, this often proved insufficient, requiring additional disconnections.
For this reason, an Energy Command Center was established, consisting of professional engineers from various departments of the enterprise. They were “assigned”, on a rotating basis, approximately two or three times per month to the local dispatch center between 4:00 PM and 10:00 PM, with the responsibility of ensuring compliance with the power limits allocated to each county—in other words, deciding which consumers should be disconnected. I was a member of this command center for a long period, as were many of my colleagues from IREC.
Because of the low system frequency, the Romanian power grid could not be interconnected with the power systems of neighboring countries. In order to import electricity from the Soviet Union through the 400 kV Roșiori–Mukachevo transmission line, it was necessary to isolate a portion of Transylvania from the national grid.
As a result, every morning and evening these isolated areas experienced a complete loss of power—”passing through zero”—for approximately three to four minutes.
I remember two amusing incidents from that period. The manager of the neighborhood grocery store, who knew me and was aware that I worked for IREC, told me that after about two or three weeks of these scheduled outages he discovered, after the evening blackout, bottles of liquor on the shelves from which some of the contents had mysteriously disappeared.
During those few minutes of darkness, customers waiting in the store would take advantage of the situation and help themselves to a little vodka, cognac, or whatever happened to be within reach at that moment! My suggestion was that he place a few kerosene lamps in the store after dark, before the expected outage occurred.
The second story concerns my doctoral research. At the time, I was working at home on my PhD thesis using a TIM-S computer, developing a program to calculate electrical cable loading. Data were stored on magnetic tape. On three or four occasions, the evening power outages occurred unexpectedly, and I lost everything I had worked on that afternoon. Fortunately, I was colleagues with the dispatch operators (to whom I remain grateful), and I asked them to call me whenever they knew the system would be “passing through zero.” This allowed me to save my work before each scheduled interruption.
Power outages were extremely frequent and highly frustrating for consumers. Many consumers enjoyed ‘protection’ through the well-known PCR system (Pile, Cunoștințe și Relații—roughly translated as “Connections, Acquaintances, and Influence”). As a result, the automatic load-shedding systems often failed to achieve their intended purpose, namely disconnecting sufficient load to maintain system frequency within prescribed limits. For this reason, dispatch center personnel and employees of the Electric Networks Industrial Corporation (CIRE) were placed under a militarized regime. Consequently, a significant portion of the national energy sector— including both transmission and distribution networks— operated under military supervision in order to ensure the functioning of the power system and prevent its total collapse, what today would be called a blackout.
Colonel M., who was responsible for CIRE, urgently ordered the creation of a nationwide teleconference system connecting all 41 counties. Every morning, and whenever necessary, he organized teleconferences during which the status of the power system was reported. I remember one such teleconference:
“Comrades, electricity consumption is higher than production! You must immediately disconnect consumers and stay within the approved power limits! Let us review the situation county by county. Alba?”
“Good morning from Alba. We have a small excess of a few megawatts due to irrigation systems.”
(These installations were protected from disconnection by Party decisions.)
The teleconference continued, and when the colonel reached Mureș County, he announced that he had instructed his staff to call the county Party councils to find out the weather conditions in each county. Suddenly, a voice was heard over the conference line:
“Alba! Alba speaking! It’s started drizzling here!” On another teleconference, the colonel declared:
“Tonight I don’t want to see a single light bulb on at any corner of any house! We must reduce consumption as much as possible!”
At that time, electricity consumption was around 12,000– 14,000 MW.
Today, on Sunday, May 24, as I write these memories around 2:00–3:00 PM, national consumption is below 3,000 MW. Very sad !
