2014-08-07 15:51:47
Many of the things we do now, without giving it importance, would have raised exclamations of astonishment just a century and a half ago. Every night, when darkness threatens our lives, we almost unconsciously press the light switch and the room lights up. We know that when we open the refrigerator door, the food stored there will be cold, no matter how hot it is outside, and the same magic makes the television, computer, iron, etc. work. However, what does arouse our astonishment is when, for some reason, the power supply is cut off. Then, all those devices that make our existence so easy stop working. That is the moment when we are aware of how fragile the complex life on which we rely is and… we ask ourselves: What has happened?
It is surprising how much we need electricity and how little we know about it. Where is it produced? How is it transported? How does electricity reach our homes? Who and how is the supply controlled so that it reaches us in just the right way so that everything around us comes to life? In today’s program we talk about some of the answers to these questions.
Each plug, each switch, each of the electrical gadgets that make our lives more bearable, are nothing more than the final stage of a complex process. The origin can be very diverse: sunlight, fossil fuels, wind, water that falls dragged by gravity, atomic nuclei that break, etc. All these sources, and others that I do not mention, are different ways that Nature has to show us its “energy”. Energy It is a magic word with which the human being names something ethereal that can flow from one place to another, that can convert from one form to another to generate light, heat, movement and life.
Human beings learned the secrets of electricity thanks to our brainy ancestors. At first his presence was a game with magical overtones. Thales of Miletus, 2,600 years ago, wondered why a piece of amber attracts small objects when rubbed. From those distant times until, in 1865, Maxwell proposed the definitive explanation with four wonderful equations, there were hundreds of researchers and curious people such as Galvani, Volta, Coulomb, Franklin, Ampere or Faraday to name a few.
Step by step, these characters discovered the bases of how electricity works with experiments of all kinds, some of which were striking, such as those carried out by Luigi Galvani with frog legs, which seemed to come back to life and contract when subjected to a discharge. electric, and other dangerous ones, such as the kite that Franklin raised to the storm clouds, an experiment whose result, although he respected it, cost others their lives by serving as a guiding thread for a fatal lightning bolt. After Maxwell, new generations of inventors, engineers and people came who saw electricity as a source of unsuspected wealth. Thanks to them, their research, their brilliant ideas, their failures and their follies, today we enjoy a fascinating technological world that has totally transformed our lives.
Generate the appropriate amount of electrical energy at all times, coordinate the different sources from which it originates, design the networks that transport it optimally, study the transformer stations that prepare it adequately for consumption in factories or homes, everything That requires an enormous amount of research and investment. An investigation carried out quietly by people like our guest today: Javier Contreras Sanz Professor at the Higher Technical School of Industrial Engineers of the University of Castilla La Mancha, in Ciudad Real, and member of the Electrical Energy Systems Research Group .
Currently, the processes that electrical energy follows from its origin to our homes and factories are exquisitely coordinated. First, the energy stored in the wind, in water located in elevated reservoirs, in fossil fuels or in the nucleus of the atom, among others, must be converted into electricity. Each of these energy sources has its own limitations when it comes to being generated and converted into electricity: The wind blows when it wants, the Sun illuminates only during the day, reservoirs have a limited amount of water, fossil fuels pollute and Nuclear energy requires extremely safe facilities and its radioactive waste lasts for many years. Coordinating all these energy sources so that, together, they provide the electrical energy that society demands at all times is an impressive challenge.
Once the transformation is done, the electrical energy begins its path to the places of consumption. Starting from the generating plants, it flows through a network of very long lines supported by large metal towers that cover extensive territories, overcoming the geographical barriers that are in their path. These lines transport electricity at very high voltages, between 110,000 and 380,000 volts, and end up at transformer substations that reduce the high voltage to more manageable values. From them new networks are born that form a complicated tangle of lines and transformer stations to finally put electrical energy in factories, homes or anywhere that needs it. This is, broadly speaking, an electrical energy distribution network in extensive continental areas such as peninsular Spain.
The objectives of Electrical Energy Systems Research Group of the UCLM consist of analyzing and proposing solutions to some of the problems posed by the electricity market: development of regulation strategies, study of network vulnerability, design of strategies for the incorporation of renewable energy sources, market prediction, etc. .
However, large continental distribution networks do not reach isolated and distant places, especially inhabited islands located in the middle of seas and oceans. This is the objective of the European Project SINGULAR in which a group from the University of Castilla-La Mancha led by Javier Contreras participates, along with several research groups from different European universities and companies. The project aims to develop mathematical models that allow the implementation of electrical energy generation and distribution systems on islands in which renewable energies play an essential role. Islands scattered throughout the Mediterranean Sea and the Atlantic Ocean, such as the Canary Islands (Spain), Crete (Greece), the Azores (Portugal), Pantelleria (Italy) and Braila (Romania) are the points specially chosen for these investigations.
I invite you to listen to Mr. Javier Contreras Sanz.
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