This is what I wondered, is network topology carefully arranged to avoid triangular connections, or 'loops' where a generator could interfere (indirectly) with itself?
Today the physical topology is usually somewhat random mesh, but not all interconnection lines are active at the same time.
In early days of electrification the physical topology usually was spanning tree and in fact this was the motivation for research into minimal spanning tree algorithms at the time.
Nope! They're connected in triangles all the time. I was stuck on this phase synchronization for a while, but really it's just the local phase lead or lag that is required.
Think of the phase as a distributed signal that indicates the current state of the local system taking into account all connected generators. It's weird but true!
This makes it sound more complex than what I learned when I last tried to figure it out =)
They seem to be describing that where two grids meet they go through a synchronizer that disconnects one or the other if they aren't in sync, so implies manually disconnections throughout the network as needed locally.
In early days of electrification the physical topology usually was spanning tree and in fact this was the motivation for research into minimal spanning tree algorithms at the time.