Search is on for a cause, and a remedy

Philadelphia Inquirer ^ | Fri, Aug. 15, 2003 | Tom Avril, Inquirer Staff Writer

[Cold Heat]

Nuclear plant have a different set of risks that require total shutdown in most plants.

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.

[Mo1]

I don't think this was terrorist related, though it'll no doubt give terrorists ideas

I don't think it was either, but someone or something screwed up majorly

[Cold Heat]

Yes, as I said, the different plants would react at different times depending on their equipment and load.

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.

[cake_crumb]

Yes, this shouldn't have happened. That's why we have to find out the cause. There's so much rampant speculation and misinformation - starting with Chretien's weird press conferences - out there then if a tidbit of the truth does come out, well miss it.

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.

[Mo1]

U.S., Canada Form Blackout Task Force

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.

[Cold Heat]

Yes, we cannot forget our candian friends(hardly) to the north. Some believe that a power plant malfunction in Canada was indeed responsible.

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.

[Mo1]

Yes, we cannot forget our candian friends(hardly) to the north. Some believe that a power plant malfunction in Canada was indeed responsible.

Geez, I just read a thread about a GM plant in Ohio .. I've lost count on how many stories are out there

[Cold Heat]

I doubt the GM plant caused it. they usually have their own substations that have separate protections.(but it is possible for sure.

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.

[Fledermaus]

The cause is the same as usual. Inefficient bureaucracies, bloated government ran by cronies, simple mismanagement, shifted budgets (lies), unions, over regulation, environmental pressures that create a fear of the word "nuclear", morons, left wing politicians, tax and spenders, etc.

But it couldn't happen to better bunch of blue county residents. Now they'll look stupid complaining about the difficulty of bringing power and water back to Baghdad. Well, to us they'll look stupid, to themselves they will be thinking they are gods.

[Nevermore]

I am a utility power engineer who has worked twenty-four years in this industry, in design, operations, planning and merchant departments. It is important to recognize a few things:

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?"

[FairOpinion]

You made a lot of good points. I agree that if sources were coser to loads, anything happening would affect smaller areas. I think the long distance delivery is driven by the environmental rules and difficulties of building new power plants and so on.

I also agree that just "strengthening the grid", whatever that actually means in implementation is a band aid.

I personally think they need to look at immediate, short term and longer term solution, where the long term solution should be a fresh look.

For immediate solution, better monitoring certainlly would be a good start, but then they should look at all the "fail-safe" contingencies which were built into the system, supposedly, which themselves failed and correct those as a near term solution.

You may not be able to prevent everything, but what happened should have been able to be contained better. I can see that generator turn themselves off automatically to protect themselves, but frying one generator in a small area would still be preferable to having a hundred of them being turned off, impacting so many people.

I've had blackouts, when something happened to a transformer or generator, then a little later they were able to bring in power from somewhere else, a small area was affected for a few hours and that was it. I think this is more the way the system should work.

[JustPiper]

Rapid swings like Thursday's wreak havoc

I figure this is not run mamnually and does require pc's and software and I still say they were sabotaged somehow through this.

[Red Boots]

Thanks very much for sharing your insight. I knew I'd find someone on FR that really knew what he was talking about, and would share the info.

[ringgold]

I agree with your assessment of FERC. Since '96 when the transmission lines were opened up (Orders 888 & 889) FERC has been letting the marketing community call most of the shots. To me this is like letting the fox guard the henhouse. Reliability has been taking a back seat to economics. Of course no one at FERC or any utility or marketing firm will publicly admit this, but for those of use who keep the system going it's rather obvious.

[Dolphy]

A belated thank you. My question about the "surges" was trying to understand what was planned/matched and when it went into a reversal. I am in Michigan from where power was being supplied before what they describe as a "violent" reversal.

[Cold Heat]

Technically, a power plant is un-affected by which way the power goes after it is produced, (as far as direction)

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)

[Cold Heat]

True enough.

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]

I'm no expert, but it seems to me that the entire electrical grid is a very complex, highly nonlinear system. That it works so well is amazing in itself. But complex nonlinear systems are difficult to understand/control; the "nonlinear" part says that a small perturbation can lead to a large response, or vice versa.

--Boris