Peace activist pleads guilty to damaging more than 20 power line towers in four states

Associated Press ^ | 11-19-03 | ANNA OBERTHUR

[Oldeconomybuyer]

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) -- A peace activist pleaded guilty Wednesday to tampering with high-voltage power line towers in what he has said was an effort to draw attention to lax security for the nation's energy infrastructure.

Michael Devlyn Poulin, 62, of Spokane, Wash., had admitted damaging or attempting to damage more than 20 towers last month in California, Idaho, Oregon and Washington. Bolts were loosened or removed from the legs of the steel towers.

[_Jim]

You're welcome ... here's a bit about the trees and why trees present(ed) a problem shown as in an inset in the US-Canada Joint Report on the blackout:

- - - - -

Why Did So Many Tree-to-Line Contacts Happen on August 14?

Tree-to-line contacts and resulting transmission
outages are not unusual in the summer across
much of North America. The phenomenon
occurs because of a combination of events occurring
particularly in late summer:

- Most tree growth occurs during the spring and
summer months, so the later in the summer
the taller the tree and the greater its potential
to contact a nearby transmission line.

- As temperatures increase, customers use more
air conditioning and load levels increase.
Higher load levels increase flows on the transmission
system, causing greater demands for
both active power (MW) and reactive power
(MVAr). Higher flow on a transmission line
causes the line to heat up, and the hot line sags
lower because the hot conductor metal
expands. Most emergency line ratings are set
to limit conductors? internal temperatures to
no more than 100 degrees Celsius (212 degrees

- As temperatures increase, ambient air temperatures
provide less cooling for loaded transmission
lines.

- Wind flows cool transmission lines by increasing
the airflow of moving air across the line.
On August 14 wind speeds at the Ohio
Akron-Fulton airport averaged 5 knots at
around 14:00 EDT, but by 15:00 EDT wind
speeds had fallen to 2 knots (the wind speed
commonly assumed in conductor design) or
lower. With lower winds, the lines sagged further
and closer to any tree limbs near the lines.

This combination of events on August 14 across
much of Ohio and Indiana caused transmission
lines to heat and sag. If a tree had grown into a
power line?s designed clearance area, then a
tree/line contact was more likely, though not
inevitable. An outage on one line would increase
power flows on related lines, causing them to be
loaded higher, heat further, and sag lower.

[null and void]

Today's large, interconnected, redundant, supervised systems ususally fail when a number of factors come together in/at the MOST unfortunate time

This is precisely my point.

There are/were a LOT of ME engineering students. Most of them went home to run their own country's power systems. Some stayed here to run ours. In the past 30 years do you suppose maybe a dozen or so studied our systems with the intent of identifying weaknesses to exploit? (Hint: OBL studied civil engineering)

Do you recognize that with an army of a few score agents trained to induce each of "a number of factors" and syncronized by e-mail, a phone tree, key words in a personal ad, or even snail-mail to a "MOST unfortunate time" could cause an outage?

If it can happen by accident, why do you persist in asserting that it can't be done deliberately?

It reminds me of the US generals who insisted that the Japanese couldn't learn to fly because "Orientals have no sense of balance" This despite Japan having some of the worlds finest acrobats!

Will it take another Pearl Harbor for you to see the dark?

[Constitutional Patriot]

How did we get to the point that we are calling domestic terrorists (anti-capitalists) "peace activists"?!?!?

How much "peace" would this POS's tampering have achieved?

[_Jim]

OF interest to a number of people that day, including me, was why did the blackout/blackout boundry stop where it did - they give some answers in this part of the report - there is more detail in the report but this is a good start:




Why the Blackout Stopped Where It Did

Extreme system conditions can damage equipment
in several ways, from melting aluminum
conductors (excessive currents) to breaking turbine
blades on a generator (frequency excursions).

The power system is designed to ensure that
if conditions on the grid (excessive or inadequate
voltage, apparent impedance or frequency)
threaten the safe operation of the transmission
lines, transformers, or power plants, the threatened
equipment automatically separates from the
network to protect itself from physical damage.
Relays are the devices that effect this protection.

Generators are usually the most expensive units
on an electrical system, so system protection
schemes are designed to drop a power plant off the
system as a self-protective measure if grid conditions
become unacceptable. When unstable power
swings develop between a group of generators that
are losing synchronization (matching frequency)
with the rest of the system, the only way to stop
the oscillations is to stop the flows entirely by separating
all interconnections or ties between the
unstable generators and the remainder of the system.
The most common way to protect generators
from power oscillations is for the transmission
system to detect the power swings and trip at the
locations detecting the swings-ideally before the
swing reaches and harms the generator.

On August 14, the cascade became a race between
the power surges and the relays. The lines that
tripped first were generally the longer lines,
because the relay settings required to protect these
lines use a longer apparent impedance tripping
zone, which a power swing enters sooner, in comparison
to the shorter apparent impedance zone
targets set on shorter, networked lines. On August
14, relays on long lines such as the Homer
City-Watercure and the Homer City-Stolle Road
345-kV lines in Pennsylvania, that are not highly
integrated into the electrical network, tripped
quickly and split the grid between the sections
that blacked out and those that recovered without
further propagating the cascade. This same phenomenon
was seen in the Pacific Northwest blackouts
of 1996, when long lines tripped before more
networked, electrically supported lines.

Transmission line voltage divided by its current
flow is called "apparent impedance." Standard
transmission line protective relays continuously
measure apparent impedance. When apparent
impedance drops within the line's protective relay
set-points for a given period of time, the relays trip
the line. The vast majority of trip operations on
lines along the blackout boundaries between PJM
and New York (for instance) show high-speed
relay targets, which indicate that massive power
surges caused each line to trip. To the relays, this
massive power surge altered the voltages and currents
enough that they appeared to be faults. This
power surge was caused by power flowing to those
areas that were generation-deficient. These flows
occurred purely because of the physics of power
flows, with no regard to whether the power flow
had been scheduled, because power flows from
areas with excess generation into areas that are
generation-deficient.

Relative voltage levels across the northeast
affected which areas blacked out and which areas
stayed on-line. Within the Midwest, there were
relatively low reserves of reactive power, so as
voltage levels declined many generators in the
affected area were operating at maximum reactive
power output before the blackout. This left the
system little slack to deal with the low voltage conditions
by ramping up more generators to higher
reactive power output levels, so there was little
room to absorb any system "bumps" in voltage or
frequency. In contrast, in the northeast-particularly
PJM, New York, and ISO-New England-operators
were anticipating high power demands
on the afternoon of August 14, and had already set
up the system to maintain higher voltage levels
and therefore had more reactive reserves on-line
in anticipation of later afternoon needs. Thus,
when the voltage and frequency swings began,
these systems had reactive power already or
readily available to help buffer their areas against
a voltage collapse without widespread generation
trips.

[null and void]

An outage on one line would increase power flows on related lines, causing them to be loaded higher, heat further, and sag lower.

Yet deliberately downing lines wouldn't cause a problem?

I'm baffled.

[_Jim]

No, I don't think so ... somehow you're becoming infused with a paranoid thinking that dreams up these possibilities without any basis *save* the fact that a number of different non-european nationities work in these, and MANY, many other technical fields across the US ...

MOST of those that seem to 'stay here' and run 'ours' have gotten advanced degrees and are into the simulation and modelling 'hi-tech' and planning end of the game - NOT necessarily in the cold, day-to-day operations end of the biz ...

[_Jim]

Yet deliberately downing lines wouldn't cause a problem?

Attempting to convey ANY sort of larger picture to you is looking hopeless. Did you perhaps flunk out of an EE program?

[Calpernia]

I've seen this. I've followed you on all the power threads. That is why I started pinging you on these threads when I didn't see you.

[Calpernia]

>>>In the past 30 years do you suppose maybe a dozen or so studied our systems with the intent of identifying weaknesses to exploit?

I do know this is true of Nuke Plants. I'll see if I can find that site that I'm remembering.

[null and void]

Did you perhaps flunk out of an EE program?

Nope. 3.4 GPA in my major.

I studied the electronics end, rather than the electrical end. What little I managed to learn about big power is rather rusty.

You do understand that a 25¢ bullet can overcome a $50,000 education, don't you? What do you suppose a few handgrenades could do to an ISO control station, and it's staff?

We're dealing with people who think they are doing God's Work by hijacking passenger airplanes and flying them into buildings full of people. Having us freeze to death in the dark would suit them just fine!

[meyer]

MOST of those that seem to 'stay here' and run 'ours' have gotten advanced degrees and are into the simulation and modelling 'hi-tech' and planning end of the game - NOT necessarily in the cold, day-to-day operations end of the biz ...

The cold, day-to-day operations are left to us non-engineers if we can grasp an understanding of trigonometry as it applies to 3-phase electric power. I fall into that category, though there a few engineers among our ranks.

There's lots of ways to wreak havoc on the grid, but most people that are involved in it have no intention in doing so. In fact, most of us grid people will take efforts to discourage such activities. I don't hold a CCW only for self-preservation.

[Calpernia]

>>>>I do know this is true of Nuke Plants. I'll see if I can find that site that I'm remembering.

That site I was looking for seems to be shut down.

[meyer]

Re: #44 - PJM followed and enforced the rules. MISO did not. I'm not convinced that MISO even understood the rules.

BTW, the Midwest ISO is looking for a few good people right now, according to the trade magazine.

[null and void]

There's lots of ways to wreak havoc on the grid, but most people that are involved in it have no intention in doing so.

The key word being "most"...

[Revolting cat!]

Wait a minute! He didn't do it! How could he, he was in prison?! After all, he was sentenced to a "life sentence" in the 70s! Now you see how the US fascist justice system is unjust, sentencing an innocent man!

[FreedomCalls]

Why is this not considered "war-time sabotage" which can be punished with death?

[meyer]

The key word being "most"...

Of course it is. The majority is vast, but I'm sure that there are at least a handful of people bent on disrupting things. The idiot that is the subject of this article apparently acted alone (or maybe not). Get a group of a few together (and especially a few with knowledge) and things can happen - simultaneously. And that's the key as the system is pretty absorbent to normal events, even if they are sometimes harsh.

I'm not sure on your take on the August 14th situation, but as an ex-FirstEnergy employee that worked in the transmission dispatch control room, I can assure you that the entire blackout is believable without any thought of deliberate influence. In fact, to many of us that left, it was just a matter of time until Cleveland went down. The cascading event was just the result of the rather unpredictable reaction of the grid when the stimulus becomes large enough.

However, it also represents a good study in how to screw things up quite well.

I don't recommend that we all take a stance of paranoia, but I do recommend that we de-centralize things just a bit so that a problem in one area doesn't affect other areas. This doesn't just apply to electricity BTW.

[_Jim]

What do you suppose a few handgrenades could do to

Overblown scenario ... why not something simpler and use somthing a little more untraceable preceeding the event - Molotov cocktails using gas from a 7-11?

Why not just sever every 'line' that crosses every Interstate highway 'loop' that surrounds every city?

Why not just ... just .. just ...

Propose what you wish - I say your appraisal of people who come to this country is wrong! because they DON'T WANT TO raise the kind of havoc you propose; Atta et al were a special case in my book and had single-minded sponsors with deep pockets who paid one particular single-minded person to pull off the WTC event - ONE of our BIG BIG assets in this war on terror is that - PEOPLE want to come here to GET AWAY from all that crap and simply live their lives and have an opportunity to do what they couldn't in their homne countries - live free!

In short, I think you've got a myopic view of this scenario (power system redundancy; the seeing of a control room as being *absolutely* essential; individual ops at generating stations could almost work together to overcome this) not to mention it's built upon a false premise; IMO the probability of terror with our increased world-wide efforts (as well as here in the US) is zero ...

[Mo1]

Poulin has been a member of Peace and Justice Action League of Spokane and participated in several anti-war rallies this year.

He served eight years of a life sentence for attempted murder in the 1970s, the FBI said.

Ain't these peace nitwits just special

[_Jim]

but most people that are involved in it have no intention in doing so.

Ha ha - "pudgy white guys" comes to mind!

And nowadays the smoking Nazi's have restricted smoking in the control to areas outside and beyond the building entrance!