It isn't really though. A cascading failure can knock out an entire grid. The Northeast blackout is an example.
A line goes out.
while (there some lines are still live):
The current redistributes itself among neighboring lines.
Neighboring lines trip
end
BlackStart()
BlackStart() is fun. Having your plants and grid down is like having a dead battery (plants use ~30% of the electricity they gen on themselves) and no one to give you a jump.
Usually the hydroelectric plants are started first. Arg. is lucky, they have a lot of those. Otherwise you need to fire up diesel generators (which hopefully have been maintained).
You give power to the grid first so you can start another plant.
Then you feed hospitals and continue firing the thermal plants.
Throughout all of this you have to keep phase stability (no grid, no phase reference). I'd assume this would limit renewable's use-fullness for re-start (a thousand 5Mw turbines out of phase are best left idling)
As a last step you turn on your nuclear plants (Arg. has a few). These are last because of nuclear poisons that accumulate from decaying wastes that weren't burned while the reactor was off.
It's a bloody hard problem.
Usually the hydroelectric plants are started first. Arg. is lucky, they have a lot of those. Otherwise you need to fire up diesel generators (which hopefully have been maintained).
You give power to the grid first so you can start another plant.
Then you feed hospitals and continue firing the thermal plants.
Throughout all of this you have to keep phase stability (no grid, no phase reference). I'd assume this would limit renewable's use-fullness for re-start (a thousand 5Mw turbines out of phase are best left idling)
As a last step you turn on your nuclear plants (Arg. has a few). These are last because of nuclear poisons that accumulate from decaying wastes that weren't burned while the reactor was off.
It's a bloody hard problem.