The first edition of the book “Apuntes de Sistemas Eléctricos de Potencia” (“Notes on Electric Power Systems”), by Professor Walter Brokering, was published in 1978. In 2008, an updated edition was published, titled “Ñom Lüfke, o el Rayo Domado” (“Ñom Lüfke, or the Tamed Lightning”), which Brokering co-authored with two other professors from the Department of Electrical Engineering at the University of Chile, Drs. Luis Vargas and Rodrigo Palma Behnke, director of SERC Chile.
The third version has recently been launched, adapted, and updated, with a title that reflects our new reality: “Atrapando el Sol en los sistemas eléctricos de potencia” (“Catching the Sun in Power Systems”), by Walter Brokering and Rodrigo Palma Behnke. It is a free, interactive web platform designed to support the education of hundreds of electrical engineering students in Latin America, just as it has for hundreds of others who have used this textbook—known as “The Brokering”—for years. The platform’s address is sepsolar.centroenergia.cl
The book contains approximately 535 figures and illustrations, 65 tables with practical applications, as well as worked numerical examples.
Among other reasons for this third edition, the authors point out that there are few texts in Spanish that are relevant to our realities, that facilitate university teaching and support the training of new professionals, and that enable them to bridge the existing gap between the theoretical criteria used to plan and operate Electric Power Systems (SEP) and the practical reality in which Competitive Electric Markets (MEC) operate.
“The purpose of this text,” as the preface states, “is to remind all those interested in power systems of their basic characteristics, the physical and economic rules that govern their behavior, so that they may be respected and properly taken into account in the planning of new facilities and the operation of existing ones; and, on the other hand, to present the foundations of the economic theory intended to apply to a sector that constitutes a natural monopoly and that trades many products with differing market characteristics (active and reactive power, during peak and off-peak hours; energy, management of reservoirs of varying capacities, frequency regulation, availability, reserve, and mutual support, etc.)—a theory that is, to a certain extent, still evolving, and for which there is clearly a lack of a text that adequately presents it.”
The website brings together multimedia applications that help users gain a deeper understanding of the material presented in the various chapters and includes an unrestricted version of the DeepEdit program for SEP simulations, which features the power grids of several countries, including Chile, Colombia, Bolivia, and Argentina.
