Investigation of blackout cause focuses on grid around Lake Erie

AP via Canoe ^ | August 15, 2003 | H. Josef Hebert

[Squawk 8888]

This is far more informative than the finger-pointing that has been going on so far.

[First_Salute]

foam

[Frank_Discussion]

Well, it certainly is... Erie.

:-)

[snopercod]

flag

[First_Salute]

Yes, I predicted this in my book, Electricity Comes from Walls (c) 1995.

[Cold Heat]

Yes it is.

The reversal could have been caused by a number of things. To include line failure, insulators and some human act or accident.

It will be interesting to see if the information is kept secret or not.

It's a big story because of the security issues.

[snopercod]

Sounds like a case of sub-synchronous oscillation to me.

[First_Salute]

Indeed, it's the "Preamble" again.

[Pete]

Dow Jones News Wire - Power outage hits downtown Toronto at 1:37pm. (headline only)

[Diogenesis]

Also on the list: sun.

[Fury]

Hello - It seems that this event is somewhat unusual in the way it may have occurred. Is there a good web-site or FR thread for a technical discussion of the power outage? Thanks!

[Cold Heat]

I checked NOAA last night and found a moderate spike, but nothing close to a problematic one. It was more in the x-ray category with some rise in ECM but not enough IMHO.

[MD_Willington_1976]

OOPS some one didn't synchronise their generators...don't they have any differential or generator relays out there?

[snopercod]

SoftSwitching Technologies

[Plutarch]

At one point, 300 megawatts of power were travelling east on the loop and suddenly reversed direction, resulting in an estimated 500 megawatts suddenly moving west...

Obviously, this is the Bush Administration's fault, and would never have happened during the Clinton Administration.

[Cold Heat]

Yeah, they have frequency switches.

[garyb]

"We're not certain that is where it started," said Michehl Gent

and

Gent said he was fairly confident terrorism wasn't involved. Federal officials earlier said there is no evidence of terrorism.

"We don't have any indication of blown-up equipment," he said on ABC's Good Morning America. "So, we're almost certain it's not terrorism of any kind."

So, we don't know what started it, or where, so, since we don't know, it can't have been terrorism.

[snopercod]

Is there a good web-site or FR thread for a technical discussion of the power outage?

I wish I could find one, too. Robert is very knowledgeable on this stuff, but is too busy right now to educate the rest of us.

We have a few power plant people here on FR.

[snopercod]

Obviously, this is the Bush Administration's fault...

According to CNBC, Hillary has already said as much.

[Pete]

Update from Dow Jones on Toronto Outage (1:46pm)

Downtown Toronto has again been hit by a power outage, this one beginning around 1:37pm EDT.

This is the second power outage to hit the downtown Toronto area since power was restored around midnight EDT Thursday. The first outage Friday morning occurred at about 8:49am EDT but lasted for just a few minutes.

There has been no immediate indication of how long the current outage will last.