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"Unusual" Conditions uncovered in blackout inquiry
http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/nation/6565056.htm ^ | August 19, 2003 | Kenneth Bredemeier

Posted on 08/22/2003 8:10:51 PM PDT by DittoJed2

Edited on 08/22/2003 8:50:18 PM PDT by Admin Moderator. [history]

Investigators uncovered fresh mysteries Monday about the way the electricity transmission grid operated in the eastern half of the United States last Thursday in the hours before the nation's largest power blackout occurred.

Meanwhile, businesses forced to shut down by the blackout returned to near normalcy Monday. Automakers began turning out cars again and Wall Street trading resumed on time. New York City officials estimated that businesses in the city lost about $1 billion in the blackout. Tallying the economic impact in Ohio and Michigan will take longer because power was slower to return in those areas.

For full story click here


TOPICS: Front Page News; News/Current Events; US: Michigan; US: Ohio
KEYWORDS: blackout; bush43; cause; powergrids; terror
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To: dighton; aculeus; BlueLancer
"Unusual" Conditions uncovered in blackout inquiry

The main unusual condition was that it appeared to be unusually dark.

21 posted on 08/22/2003 9:48:37 PM PDT by general_re (A clear conscience is usually the sign of a bad memory.)
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Comment #22 Removed by Moderator

Comment #23 Removed by Moderator

Comment #24 Removed by Moderator

To: Samwise
I love that cartoon!
25 posted on 08/22/2003 10:00:30 PM PDT by MEG33
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To: Battle Axe
Sagged so it touched trees? Huh? The large power lines that I am aware of are stripped clean of vegetation beneath all and any lines.

A wide clear ROW used to be standard for utility lines, but because of environmental/aesthetic/NIMBY influences, some corridors are now being allowed to grow trees beneath the lines. In fact just today while driving I noticed a tower power line corridor with 20+ foot tall trees growing in the ROW and under the lines. Not the norm in DFW, but it was through a wooded, fairly recent upscale neighborhood.

26 posted on 08/22/2003 10:00:59 PM PDT by Diddle E. Squat
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To: DittoJed2
This situation is beginning to look a lot like the Big Northeast Power Failure of the 60s.

After that failure, they determined that the overloads of the interconnect lines were set too high, allowing an abnormally large load in one part of the system to drag other systems down. The talk of overloaded power lines heating enough to strech and sag, and one part of the system draging down another, sounds like the overloads were set too high.

In the event of an overload in one section of the interconnected system, the interconnect lines are supposed to interrupt, isolating the problem to one small area.

After the 60s event, all the overload relays in the system were adjusted to lower values, to enable the system to shed the problem areas as it was supposed to.

Over the years, I suppose that overloads were increased so as to not be a bother.
27 posted on 08/22/2003 10:28:34 PM PDT by Chief Engineer
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To: woofie
I have never believed that it was an electric failure.

And I wonder if all these worms won't be traced to terrorists.
28 posted on 08/22/2003 10:37:12 PM PDT by Salvation (†With God all things are possible.†)
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To: DittoJed2
bump
29 posted on 08/22/2003 11:14:12 PM PDT by Captain Beyond (The Hammer of the gods! (Just a cool line from a Led Zep song))
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To: DittoJed2
Multiple Failures

PJM Interconnection and American Electric, among others, sealed themselves off from FirstEnergy keeping the lights on in Boston, Philadelphia and other cities. This article says Detroit didn't seal themselves off which spread into Ontario and then New York. Though they don't say, it seems like Ontario and New York should have also separated themselves.

I can buy that FirstEnergy failed on a large scale. (There are various stories of their persistent shortcomings in recent months.) But how does that explain Michigan, Ontario and New York failing while PJM and others were able to separate themselves?

30 posted on 08/22/2003 11:19:19 PM PDT by Dolphy
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To: DittoJed2

31 posted on 08/22/2003 11:32:50 PM PDT by DittoJed2
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To: dighton; MEG33; general_re; BlueLancer; AnAmericanMother
The Captain was heard yelling "shut up, shut up" at the Ground Proximity Warning System as it announced "pull up, pull up."

Note to self: stop talking to microwave oven.

32 posted on 08/23/2003 7:28:02 AM PDT by aculeus
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To: Brian S
8 days since the event and we still haven't a concrete cause

Such impatience. This reminds me of the "30 days since the end of the war and Iraq is still dangerous" crowd.

There is a mountain of evidence to pull together from thousands of data sites across two countries, eight states, quite a few utilities, about 100 power generating units, many many substations, several transmission companies, and too many power monitoring stations at universities, hospitals, schools, and businesses to count. We are talking about a situation where a millisecond can mean the difference between getting the events right or wrong, and most of the data time stamps are not synchonized that well. It is possible that subpoenas will need to be resorted to in some cases. This will all take time. Jumping to conclusions could be very embarrassing for the investigators and costly for some innocent people and/or companies. The investigators will be quiet and thorough. It's very frustrating I know, but it has to be that way to get it right.

Have you ever done a root cause analysis on a complicated system? Sometimes, the piece of data you need does not exist. So you have to infer it from several other pieces of data. Maybe some of those data bits are not available and have to be found through experimentation and analysis. The report will come. If the worm did it, I'm sure that that will come out too.

33 posted on 08/23/2003 7:54:02 AM PDT by SteamShovel
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To: r9etb
I think it will turn out to be a three to five unrelated, relatively normal, no-big-deal-by-itself, things that happened to be going on at the same time

I've seen the same thing happen before too. It makes finding the cause very very challenging. When you come to the result, sometimes it's too unbelievable, but it DID happen. Too many people are coming to conclusions too fast without ANY hard facts to back the conclusion.

34 posted on 08/23/2003 8:03:39 AM PDT by SteamShovel
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