Posted on 03/03/2008 7:59:08 AM PST by BenLurkin
HOUSTON, Feb 29 (Reuters) - FPL Group's (FPL.N: Quote, Profile, Research) Florida utility Florida Power & Light said preliminary results of the investigation into Tuesday's four-hour blackout indicated that human error was the primary cause.
The blackout affected about 584,000 FPL customers in South Florida, the Juno Beach-based company said in a release on Friday.
A total of about 1 million customers of four utilities across the state lost power as emergency safety systems were activated to prevent long-term damage to power plants and transmission equipment.
FPL said preliminary findings indicated that a field engineer diagnosing a problem switch at a west Miami substation disabled two levels of relay protection systems without authorization. Those safety mechanisms are designed to isolate problems to one piece of equipment or one location.
Disabling both systems was contrary to FPL's standard practice, said FPL President Armando Olivera.
He said a voltage drop at the substation could not be contained. The situation triggered other FPL safety systems, forcing the shutdown of 26 transmission lines, 38 substations and 3,400 megawatts of generation, a more extensive outage than described by the North American Electric Reliability Corp (NERC) earlier in the week.
The generation loss automatically launched a "load-shedding" program to cut power consumption by 4,000 megawatts across the state. Most service was restored in less than five hours.
The field engineer was suspended and FPL has taken steps to review standard procedures with its employees to prevent a recurrence, Olivera said. Continued...
In related news, FP&L posted a position for a new Field Engineer this weekend.
Was the guy holding a Pepsi while working? Bet he was.
Or, was it a "Hold muh beer and watch this" moment?
As long as the field engineer’s first name isn’t “Mohammed”, I’ll buy the “human error” excuse.
The fragility of our power grid id frightening. Three dozen terrorists with explosives could black-out the entire country. Scratch that. Will black-out the entire country.
No Name Given........surprise.
How many tens (at least) of millions did that booboo cost including lost production time at the nukes?
Thank goodness explosives are not easy to acquire. I wonder, however if much of the same could be accomplished with a handful of well placed rifle shots.
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