The first edition of the book *Notes on Electrical Power Systems*, by Professor Walter Brokering, was published in 1978. In 2008, an updated edition was published, titled “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: Dr. Luis Vargas and Dr. Rodrigo Palma Behnke, director of SERC Chile.
The third edition has just been released—adapted and updated—with a title that reflects the new reality: “Catching the Sun in Electric 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 the hundreds of others who have used this textbook—known as “the Brokering”—for years. The platform’s website is sepsolar.centroenergia.cl
The book contains about 535 figures and illustrations, about 65 tables with practical background information, as well as worked numerical examples.
The authors emphasize, among the reasons for the third edition, that there are few texts in Spanish—tailored to our realities—that facilitate university teaching, enhance the training of new professionals, and enable them to bridge the gap between the theoretical criteria by which Electric Power Systems (EPS) should be planned and operated and the practical reality in which Competitive Electricity Markets (CME).
“The purpose of this text,” says the preface, “is to remind all those interested in power systems of their basic characteristics, as well as the physical and economic rules that govern their behavior, so that these rules may be properly respected and 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 be applied 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; and so on and so forth), a theory that is, to a certain extent, still evolving, and for which there is clearly a need for a text that adequately presents it.”
The website brings together multimedia applications that help deepen the knowledge 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.
The team that worked on the book: Rodrigo Palma, Walter Brokering, Bárbara Blanco, Danny Espín, Frank Leañez
