Posted on 08/15/2003 7:59:24 PM PDT by Mo1
A day after the still-mysterious record blackout that descended upon New York, Canada and the Midwest, about the only thing electricity experts could say for sure today was this:
It could happen again.
But what, exactly, happened?
It will take days or even weeks before engineers determine the cause - or more likely, series of causes, said Michehl R. Gent, president of the North American Electric Reliability Council.
An early sign of trouble Thursday was a wild swing in power in the loop surrounding Lake Erie, Gent said in a conference call from the Princeton headquarters of the nonprofit industry group that oversees the power system.
Shortly after 4 p.m. Thursday, instruments recorded 300 megawatts of power moving eastward toward New York. Then in a sudden change of direction, 500 megawatts surged westward, Gent said. Wild fluctuations continued for 9 seconds at various points in the Northeast.
Gent could not say where the initial trigger occurred - beyond a vague reference to "the Midwest" - or what it was. He ruled out lightning as a possible trigger, contrary to what some utility officials had said earlier, and reiterated that there was no evidence of a deliberate attack on the grid - physical or electronic.
He did, however, blame himself.
"My job is to see that this doesn't happen, and you can say that I failed in my job," Gent said. "That's why I'm upset."
Acceptance of blame aside, actually reconstructing the sequence of events will be more difficult. Over the coming weeks, the council's engineers will sift through hundreds of computer-generated reports from across the power grid, each one containing second-by-second data on voltage and electric current.
Separately, members of Congress vowed to investigate, and the United States and Canada also planned a joint task force to look into the matter. Others, including Gent, called for Congress to give the council authority to regulate its members. This could improve coordination among the nation's power companies, he said.
Whatever the triggering event, industry experts said, that alone would be insufficient to set off a massive blackout. The trigger likely coincided with some other factors, such as transmission lines operating at peak capacity, said engineer Kevin Stamber, who has studied past blackouts for the U.S. Department of Energy at Sandia National Laboratories.
Rapid swings like Thursday's wreak havoc, said David Whiteley, the past chairman of the council's planning committee.
"The power grid does not respond well to very rapid, sudden perturbations," said Whiteley, a senior vice president with Ameren Corp., a St. Louis-based energy company. "It's kind of like a really big animal. It likes to move rather slowly."
Gent said the Northeast had plenty of power when the blackout occurred, using just 75 percent of the available total. Industry experts speculated, however, that transmission lines might have been operating at capacity.
The council requires that power generators maintain adequate reserves. For the lines that carry the electricity to homes and businesses, however, there is no such provision.
"We don't really have the same kind of margin for error," said Elliot Roseman, a consultant in the wholesale power group of ICF Consulting, in Alexandria, Va.
When power lines operate at capacity, one side effect is that any additional power must take a roundabout, more expensive route elsewhere in the grid. In the portion of the grid serving Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Maryland, for example, such congestion cost consumers $271 million in 2002, Roseman said.
In the deregulated energy market, in which different companies own and operate each piece of the electric system, there is less financial reward for building transmission lines than for new power plants.
As a result, there is less capacity to carry the electricity, said Bob Mitchell, executive vice president of Trans-Elect, a Virginia-based energy company. Some lines used to have 30 to 35 percent capacity in reserve, he said.
"Today it's not uncommon to have 10, 15, 20 percent reserves," said Mitchell, who heads a company subsidiary that builds new transmission lines. "In a season of prolonged heat, it stretches the limits of the system."
While President Bush and others advocated a drastic modernization of the power grid, one electrical engineering professor said money would be better spent on electronic monitors to help pinpoint problems more quickly.
Monitoring is so poor right now that it takes weeks to figure out what went wrong, said Mladen Kezunovic of Texas A&M University.
Rebuilding the power grid would cost billions; improved monitoring would cost millions, and would prevent blackouts of more than a few hours, he said.
"No one in his right mind is going to go in and kill something that is still reasonably well working," said Kezunovic, member of a national industry-university cooperative that researches the power system.
"We cannot design . . . so that these things don't happen," he said. "The discussion is more, can we somehow mitigate the impacts? Can I restore power in 10 minutes instead of two days?"
I am not expert on them, but it has something to do with a radiation build up of some sort of gas in the reactor. Stability is even more important to them.
I don't think it was either, but someone or something screwed up majorly
Don't forget that electricity travels at nearly the speed of light.
The entire grid felt it at almost exactly the same time. The various plants would all react differently depending on a bunch of factors.
Every story I've read has been different. It's a competition between the reporters to get the REAL story out first by using the lotto method of hit or miss. If they throw enough stories out there, they seem to think that one of them is bound to be right.
TORONTO (AP) -- Canada and the United States formed a joint task force Friday to investigate what caused the huge North American power blackout and how to prevent it from happening again. Prime Minister Jean Chretien's office announced the task force after Chretien spoke by phone with U.S. President George W. Bush on the outage that left 50 million people on both sides of the border without power. "Canada and the United States agreed to form a joint task force to identify the causes of the recent power outage that affected North America and to seek solutions to help prevent future outages," said a statement read by Thoren Hudyma, a spokeswoman for Chretien.
I will hold my judgement, but there is something that I call poison power that could enter the grid and destabalize it without tripping any safeties. It is possible, but I will withhold furthur comment until we get a better handle on this.
If it happened we would know and it would be a international incident for sure.
Geez, I just read a thread about a GM plant in Ohio .. I've lost count on how many stories are out there
The Canadian power plant story was one of the first to come out and I have not heard it since.
That is why I am suspicious of it. It may be blacked out due to State Dept. concerns and might be true.
1. As some experts quoted here note, this is likely the result of a few coincidental events. Faults happen routinely; generators are knocked off-line routinely; most people are entirely unaware because in and of themselves such events should not have such an impact. Least likely reason - and I understand and recognize fully the age of the system - is the age of the system. The smartest people realize that we are some time away from determining exactly what happened. Only the clowns (like Hillary) shoot their mouths off prematurely.
2. It could have been worse. When things do go wrong, parts of the system - including many large generators and loads - take care of themselves by disconnecting. As much as we'd like it all to stick together, if it hangs too tight, it can result in permanently damaged equipment. It may take days to get isolated parts of this system up and running again; but if a lot of equipment is damaged, THAT is a real disaster, because you cannot put the broken pieces back together in days.
3. This kind of event shouldn't happen, but as much as we like to believe we can prevent such things from ever happening, that is fantasy. How many contingencies must you plan for to ensure that it will "never" happen? The cost of meeting those contingencies grows exponentially. As the Romans noted long ago, "effluvia happens".
4. You may go back to sleep, but nobody in this industry - including the professor - is going to be complacent about such an event. Prof. Kezunovic is precisely correct regarding the most immediate and practical remedy.
5. The system is always more secure with sources close to the loads. FERC, in its infinite lack-of-wisdom has seen fit to turn the system on its ear - change entirely the way it is used from the way it was designed to be used - encouraging deliveries from longer distances while totally ignoring the inevitable impact.
6. One might imagine that the "solution" is beefing up the grid. FERC, in its infinite lack-of-wisdom has seen fit to IGNORE any incentive to reinforce transmission, and has instead effectively appropriated transmission assets.
7. Just beefing up the grid is not a solution. It is a bandaid. It would further encourage deliveries over longer distances. FERC, in its infinite lack-of-wisdom has seen fit to ensure that, by railing against any connection between the cost of delivery and the distance of delivery.
8. Beefing up the transmission system ultimately asks you, in fly-over country, to pay for and make room in your backyards for that grid, so that those in New York City (e.g.) can shut down construction of power plants (e.g. Shoreham) in their backyard - where they BELONG. (See item 5 & other posting regarding Florida's boast.)
9. One might imagine that the solution is adding more generating capacity. In a competitive market with regulated rates [Does that makes sense to you? Me neither.], where the opportunity for returns on marginal capacity is limited, that's often hard to justify, too. It is boom and bust in a business that is capital intensive and requires long-range planning.
10. Margins have dwindled. This is the inevitable consequence of turning electricity into a competitive commodity, when it is like no other. You may offer incentives, but there is still tremendous uncertainty regarding return on investment in a market wherein "freedom" is what FERC says it is...today. You may establish requirements, but before you know it, it swiftly becomes a RE-regulated, federally-regulated business and consumer rates rise to support those old margins - the same ones that consumer groups complained about - and before you know it your asking yourself, "Now, how is this saving me money?"
I figure this is not run mamnually and does require pc's and software and I still say they were sabotaged somehow through this.
What affects them is load and the condition of the grid that they are pumping electrons into.
The recent revelation of the cause being pin-pointed to the loss of three lines in Ohio have me scratching my head.
Tornadoes, straight line winds and lightning take these lines our all the time.
Line repairs, etc. require de-energizing of large transmission lines in portions of a grid all the time. Switches at substations fail, transformers catch fire and numerous faults occur on the grid without dropping vast portions of a grid.
As to power reversals, A/C power flows in both directions. A reversal only indicates that the Ohio area or somewhere up line lost generating capacity and the NY generators began to fill the gap causing them to disconnect due to the load.
If it were the case that the downed lines caused this, then why did numerous switches not dis-engage that portion of the grid before New York got popped with the entire load?
Bad engineering on their loop is one possibility. Another is that the reason stated is not the cause, but an effect.(as I said, I am quite sure they have had failures on these lines before without serious consequences)
All and all, NY and others only suffered a short outage. Most folks have had many of these before, but some how NY is special or something. It boggles my mind.(I have often had to read my electric meter with a flashlight. We even have a special place on the wall in the living room to make shadow figures when we go to candlelight)
We foolishly loose more power to long distance and our stupid 120volt mentality than we consume. It is a undeniable fact.
Oh well! I even heard the D/C morons come out of their closet as a result of this debacle.
When you get right down to it, the power plants are ok, power is largely restored and the whiners cannot see the forrest because the trees are in the way as usual.
Something really destabilized the grid and it was not just the result of some failed lines. There must be a engineer boo boo or some dirty power was pushed into the grid by a large generator someplace and no body is fessing up.
I would simply look for a generator that is still down in a week and you have the culprit in hand.(he would have some damage)
--Boris
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