Wide area synchron
Wide area synchronous grid
A wide area synchronous grid, also called an "interconnection" in North America, is an electrical grid at a regional scale or greater that operates at a synchronized frequency and is electrically tied together during normal system conditions. These are also known as synchronous zones, the largest of which is the synchronous grid of Continental Europe (ENTSO-E) with 667 gigawatts (GW) of generation, and the widest region served being that of the IPS/UPS system serving countries of the former Soviet Union. Synchronous grids with ample capacity facilitate electricity market trading across wide areas. In the ENTSO-E in 2008, over 350,000 megawatt hours were sold per day on the European Energy Exchange (EEX).[1] As discovered in the California electricity crisis, there are strong incentives among some market traders to deliberately create congestion and poor management of generation capacity on an interconnection network to artificially inflate prices. Increasing transmission capacity and expanding the market by uniting with neighboring synchronous networks will make such manipulations more difficult.
