August 14, 2003 Power Outages – Announcement (NORTH AMERICAN ELECTRIC RELIABILITY COUNCIL)

NORTH AMERICAN ELECTRIC RELIABILITY COUNCIL ^ | August 14, 2003

[Timesink]

NORTH AMERICAN ELECTRIC RELIABILITY COUNCIL
Princeton Forrestal Village
116-390 Village Boulevard
Princeton, New Jersey 08540-5731

August 14, 2003 Power Outages – Announcement

Starting at about 4:15 PM EDT, major losses of electric load occurred in the northeastern U.S. and Canada in the Eastern Interconnection.

No cause is known at present, but the outages do not appear to be the result of a terrorist attack.

The areas most affected center around the Great Lakes plus New York City, northern New Jersey and parts of New England. We do not know if these blackouts are related for sure, but it is likely.

Con Edison in New York lost its entire system, it is not known when service will be restored.

Immediate outages totaled about 28,000 MW, at this time 5-10,000 MW remain out of service.

The power in Ontario is being brought back on line through connections with Manitoba.

In Ohio, Perry Nuclear plant went off-line. Major transmission lines were out of service at the time of the disruption. It appears that ten nuclear plants went offline, probably as a result of fluctuations in frequency.

Preliminary indications are that the problems may have started in either Ohio or the Niagara Falls area.

Although the event was felt throughout the entire Eastern Interconnection, the south and midwest were unaffected.

NERC is having regular conference calls among the NERC reliability coordinators and will provide additional information as we know more.

We do not know the cause of the disturbances at present but will continue to evaluate the situation throughout the rest of the day and evening.

8/14/2003 6:13 PM

Phone 609-452-8060
Fax 609-452-9550
URL www.nerc.com

[Robert A Cook PE]

I guess those Y2K problems that NERC "prevented" are finally being delivered ... by the US Post Office.

[templar]

... the outages do not appear to be the result of a terrorist attack.

I wouldn't have even thought of that if they hadn't mentioned it. Now I'm suspicious.

[Savage Beast]

Ah, life is heavenly here in The Middle of Nowhere.

[math=power]

This is the damn environmentalists chickens come home to roost!!! Every public "grid" is running near capacity! Sewers, roads electricity! If I was Bush I would declare a national emergency and suspend environmental permits until all "grids" are functioning at 90% or less yearround.

Jeffenator

[B-Chan]

The juice is flowing free and easy here. All hail Texas, the Energy State! Meanwhile, you Freepers up in the affected areas please watch out for yourselves. We're praying for y'all.

[snopercod]

Preliminary indications are that the problems may have started in either Ohio or the Niagara Falls area.

They don't know what happened or where, but they "know" that it wasn't terrorist-related. Am I missing something here?

[wideminded]

The areas most affected center around the Great Lakes plus New York City, northern New Jersey and parts of New England. We do not know if these blackouts are related for sure, but it is likely.

Duh.

[Ronin]

Exactly.

Of course, they announced on another thread that it is "not related to the MSBLASTER worm, and that got me suspicious the same way.

Think it's time for another layer of tinfoil?

[El Gato]

Think it's time for another layer of tinfoil?

Another thread mentioned Nuke plants... tinfoil will not be sufficient, go for leadfoil. :)

[God luvs America]

Well my lights went back on about 15 minutes ago and I live in Mt Kisco, 40 minutes north of midtown. Everything was very calm when I left my office (I work in White Plains) and the police were right on the mark taking care of traffic.

I'm watching CNN now (we have the dish and the local stations are not yet up). This Wolf Blitzer is a complete jackass; just sitting there whippin up the hysteria. He actually asked a girl how this compared to 9/11...dirtbag!

[Alberta's Child]

Environmentalism had nothing to do with this. The state of New York, in fact (to my surprise), has an exceptional recent track record of generating enough power to meet almost any demand (including that 105+ degree heat wave a couple of summers ago).

From what I've heard here in New York, this was apparantly nothing more than a massive shut-down of interconnected power grids in response to a power surge in one grid (perhaps in Ontario). In fact, the safety shut-down features in these power plants appear to have performed exceptionally well.

[Ruy Dias de Bivar]

***The juice is flowing free and easy here. All hail Texas, the Energy State! Meanwhile, you
Freepers up in the affected areas please watch out for yourselves. We're praying for y'all.****

You could send them some of yours! OH WAIT! You are in ERCOT territory and your power does not cross state lines, to keep the FEDs away!

[TheFrog]

Re: "The juice is flowing free and easy here. All hail Texas" is that why the the ISO declared a prep step almost every day the entire summer. Go to the ERCOT page and take a look at the states choke points and spining reserve numbers you may be surprised.

[TheFrog]

"You could send them some of yours! OH WAIT! You are in ERCOT territory and your power does not cross state lines, to keep the FEDs away!" FYI that is A.C. power does not leave the ERCOT Interconnect. AC Power does leave and enter the state. DC power (2 tie lines) does leave the ERCOT Interconnect.

[Captain Peter Blood]

AS of a few minutes ago on MSNBC they said the power problem started in Canada. I came to this conclusion several hours ago.
The entire grid for the North East plus Ohio, etc. is tied into Canada, specifically the Hydro Electric Project in James Bay. Most of the North Eastern power companies, etc. buy a lot of their power from there because it is so cheap. They haven't really built a lot of new power plants since James Bay came online. If James Bay, mainly, and other hydro plants in Canada are knocked out there will not be any way the Power companies in the North East, etc. will be able to replace that source and there will have to be rolling blackouts, etc. for a very long time until James Bay came back online. There is nothing that can be done anytime soon to correct that regardless. The U.S. government would be absolutely powerless.

[Ruy Dias de Bivar]

***AC Power does leave and enter the state. DC power (2 tie
lines) does leave the ERCOT Interconnect.****

Do the FEDs get to regulate it as interstate commerce?