Terror Link to blackouts?

International intelligence sources are skeptical that the major unexplained power outages in the United Kingdom and United States occurred within weeks of each other by mere coincidence.

New York and much of the rest of the Eastern U.S. were hit first with a blackout. Then, last week, London was the center of the latest outage. New York and London are the West's major economic centers. The UK and U.S. are the two principal nations leading the war against Islamic terrorism on a global scale.

London's blackout was unprecedented. The U.S. event was the worst in history. Within minutes, in each case, the governments were emphatically claiming terrorism was not the cause – though the cause is still to be determined.

Here's what Osama bin Laden said in a statement released last October in threatening "U.S. economic interests": "The youth of Islam are preparing something to strike fear in your hearts and will target the vital sectors of your economy until you renounce your injustice and hostility."

In a message directed to the American people and released through Al-Jazeera television, the al-Qaida terrorist network leader offered this statement: "I advise you in all sincerity and call upon you to follow Islam, which stands up for justice and opposes injustice and crime. I also call upon you to seize the messages of the conquests of New York and Washington, which was the response to a part of your past crimes.

"However, the criminal gang in the White House, those agents of the Jews, are preparing to attack the Muslim world and carve it up, without you dissuading them, meaning that you have not learnt anything. I tell you, as God is my witness, that if America does not cease or reduce the scope of this tension, we will respond in kind, God willing."

Now, more intelligence experts familiar with electrical infrastructure weaknesses are acknowledging major vulnerabilities to sabotage, though not concluding terrorism was involved.

"What's puzzling," said one terror expert, "is how these government officials rule out terrorism just minutes or hours after an outage hits, yet days and weeks later they still can't pinpoint the actual cause."

Despite the early and public denials of terrorist connections to the separate blackouts, there was precious little media discussion even of the obvious possibility of sabotage.

London Mayor Ken Livingstone said late last week there was no suggestion that the major power cut that hit the capital of Britain was a terror-related incident. But neither was there any reason to believe it was not a terror-related incident – particularly when no other explanations are forthcoming.

During the East Coast blackout, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and other government officials ruled out terrorism within the first hour of the outage.

It's been three weeks less a couple of days now ... has every body gone back into the 'I don't know how a grid can fail' state?

The grid, it's reliablity, why they 'go down'

To the un-initiated, Electrical System design (power grid/generation design) with an eye towards 'reliability' falls in the category of 'moving target'; correct one aspect of 'system failure' and, given time, another un-addressed facet will rear it's ugly head ...

Why is this so the layman asks?

We continue to build larger systems and more interconnected systems as well as experience different circumstances thrown at us from mother nature's direction, both in terms of events (like ice storms, electrical storms, ion storms) but also from the unpredictability of how materials/equipment react sometimes in adverse and severe environment as when stressed during unforseen circumstances

From: http://eetd.lbl.gov/certs/pdf/Dobson_4.pdf

Blackout Mitigation Assessment in Power Transmission Systems Electric power transmission systems are a key infra- structure and blackouts of these systems have major direct and indirect consequences on the economy and national security.

Analysis of North American Electrical Reliability Council blackout data suggests the existence of blackout size distributions [are proportional or related with] with power tails [system size or complexity]. This is an indication that blackout dynamics behave as a complex dynamical system. Here, we investigate how these complex system dynamics impact the assessment and mitigation of blackout risk.
The mitigation of failures in complex systems needs to be approached with care. The mitigation efforts can move the system to a new dynamic equilibrium while remaining near criticality and preserving the power tails.
Thus, while the absolute frequency of disruptions of all sizes may be reduced, the underlying forces can still cause the relative frequency of large disruptions to small disruptions to remain the same.
Moreover, in some cases, efforts to mitigate small disruptions can even increase the frequency of large disruptions. This occurs because the large and small disruptions are not independent but are strongly coupled by the dynamics.
...
In this paper, we focus on the intrinsic dynamics of blackouts and how complex system dynamics affect both blackout risk assessment and the impact of mitigation techniques on blackout risk. It is found, perhaps counterintuitively, that apparently sensible attempts to mitigate failures in complex systems can have adverse effects and therefore must be approached with care.

DOES anybody here know their history?

The history, what happened in the Northeast Blackout of ... 1965?

Well here's the 'short' version, and, mark my words we're going to (we have already!) find *a lot* of parallels with what happened back then and what happened on August 14th ...

1965 NorthEast Blackout
The Commission's initial report, published December 6, 1965, pinpointed the initiating cause of the interruption as the operation of a backup relay on one of the five main transmission lines taking power to Toronto from Ontario Hydro?s Sir Adam Beck No. 2 Hydroelectric Plant on the Niagara River.
This relay, which was set too low for the load which the line was carrying, disconnected the line. This caused the flow of power to be shifted to the remaining four lines, each of which then tripped out successively due to overloading.
With the opening of these lines, about 1500 megawatts of the power being generated at Ontario?s Beck Plant and the Niagara Plant of the Power Authority of the State of New York, which had been serving the Canadian loads in the Toronto area, reversed its flow and attempted to get to the Canadian loads through the only remaining U.S.- Canadian tie at Massena.
This overloaded the Massena intertie and it opened, thus completely isolating the Canadian system. As a result, a total flow of something over 1700 megawatts to Canadian loads was blocked, and the power surged into the United States.
These flows exceeded the capability of the transmission system in New York and the interconnections to the south, and triggered the breakup of the systems in Northeastern United States.
The power failure had three stages.
The first encompassed the initial shock to United States systems from the sudden thrust of the 1700 megawatts of power from Canada. A widespread separation of systems through New York and New England followed in a matter of seconds. If this had been the end of the disturbance, the power failure would have touched only one-third of the customers who were eventually affected, and none in southeastern New York and New England.
The second stage marked the attempted survival of the electric utilities in eastern New York and New England which had been separated from the rest of the interconnected systems of the United States. Isolated from other systems, these ?islands? (seefigure 2) generally were left with insufficient generation to meet their loads.
Power generation in virtually all of this area except Maine and eastern New Hampshire (area 5, figure 2) ceased within a matter of three to twelve minutes.
During this period, system operators attempted to interpret the information provided by their control center instruments, some of which were operating erratically, and to determine, with relatively little information, and in some cases with inadequate communications, the extent of the interruption and the appropriate course of action each should take to keep his particular system functioning.
The third stage of the failure-the restoration of power-was prolonged in some areas of the region, particularly in New York City and Boston, because power was not readily available to restart the steam-electric generating units. Moreover, substantial delays were encountered in energizing the high-voltage underground transmission networks.
The Northeast power failure affected the most densely populated area of the nation. It caused inconveniences to about 30 million people and estimates of economic losses run as high as $100 million. It left more than 800 hospitals without commercial power, and in some cases, particularly in New York City, no standby sources of power were availabie.
In some sections water and sewerage services were interrupted. Fortunately, there were few fires during the interruption. Many persons were confined for long periods in darkened elevators stuck between floors, and in subway trains stranded between f stations. Economic losses and impact on the public welfare were greatly lessened because the failure occurred on a mild moonlit evening. Public and ; individual anxieties were moderated because tele- phone service and many radio stations continued to operate
Key issues from the 1965 and 1967 reports to the president 
by the "FEDERAL POWER COMMISSION" on '65 Blackout:

1) Events commenced at approx. 5:16 p.m. Nov. 9 and 
   by 5:30 p.m. (14 mins) most of the northeastern 
   United States and much of the Province of Ontario, 
   Canada was in darkness. 

2) A number of major circuits 'tripped out' in the first
   four (4) seconds after the initial event occurred (based
   on looking at the log data) in the 1965 Blackout. 

   It took an additional couple of minutes before system
   operators finally began to manually cut ties to adjoining
   regions and/or the various generating facilities 
   shut down either automatically or manually 

3) Power interrution lasted from a few minutes (in some 
   locations) to as much as 13 hours in some parts of 
   New York City (a function of bringing power back up).

4) They were *three* nuclear plants in the US licensed 
   for operation at that time; one in Michigan (the since
   de-commisioned 'Big Rock' site that I had read about 
   as a kid - I had this nifty fold-out brochure from 
   Consumers *Power* at-the-time describing it) and *two* 
   in New York state.
   
   None of them were operating at the time, however.

THIS is closer to the truth ... blame it on incompetence at FirstEnergy's "System Operator" control room of anything.

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Article Last Updated: Sunday, August 24, 2003 - 3:39:38 AM PST

Portrait emerging of causes of nation's worst blackout
By Michael Weissenstein, Associated Press

NEW YORK -- It all may have started with an untrimmed tree.

Then, like a wildly malfunctioning Rube Goldberg machine, the creaky Eastern power grid took less than an hour to turn a slumping transmission line outside Cleveland into a cascading multistate blackout that snuffed traffic lights, froze elevators and brought subway cars shuddering to a halt.

A preliminary portrait of the Aug. 14 power failure is emerging as industry officials, federal investigators and outside analysts piece together millions of pieces of data.

The picture is blurred by corporate finger-pointing, political jostling and the sheer complexity of tracing power's lightning-quick movement through thousands of interlinked miles of transmission lines that are managed by different operators.

Missed opportunities to address power grid disturbances in the hours preceding the blackout may have given the cascading events such momentum that, like an avalanche gathering speed as it rolls downhill, it eventually became impossible to stop.

One of the first signs of trouble came around 1:35 p.m., when a generator at FirstEnergy Corp.'s Eastlake Power Plant failed, coughing out a cloud of ash and steam.

The failure was preceded by unspecified irregularities in the surrounding electric grid, according to FirstEnergy and the Midwest group that oversees regional transmission.

It remains unclear whether the Eastlake failure caused the event some experts point to as the likely trigger for the chain reaction through the Midwest, Canada and Northeast.

That trigger pulled when, for some reason, a FirstEnergy power line outside Cleveland failed just after 3 p.m. That's hardly an unusual occurrence. But when the line's power flow shifted to its neighbor, that parallel FirstEnergy line sagged onto tree branches that should have been trimmed away, causing that second line to fail.

"The plan was that the second line would take more power," said Hoff Stauffer, a senior consultant at Massachusetts-based Cambridge Energy Research Associates, a private firm.

After that didn't happen, problems quickly began on the lines connecting FirstEnergy's system with American Electric Power Co. in northern Ohio.

One after another those six lines failed, each transferring more power onto the remaining lines, Stauffer said. Finally, the last line failed and a power surge rocketed through Indiana, into Michigan, careening up the west side of the state, across its center and back down into Ohio, leaving dead power plants and transmission lines in its wake.

AEP says that electricity meant to move through FirstEnergy's system reversed itself when the transmission systems in northern and southern Ohio separated, sending the power through AEP's system into Indiana, Michigan and Ohio.

The various failures swiftly spread to Ontario, Canada, which had been importing power from Michigan. With its source of power down, electricity began moving out of Ontario, crippling lines and power plants, Stauffer said.

By the time the problems reached New York, operators and equipment were able to detect the problem and cut themselves from their Canadian neighbor.

"New York's different," Stauffer said. "They saw the problem and they proactively cut themselves off from Ontario."

Suddenly, New York's power plants had nowhere to send their output and shut down to keep the excess energy from damaging their equipment, according to Stauffer. With those plants down, the remaining plants in New York began revving up to compensate and swiftly reached their own shutdown points, killing power across the state, he said.

The Cambridge hypothesis is based upon accounts gathered from the firm's utility company clients in the affected areas, including timelines publicly released.

The Department of Energy -- which is taking the lead in the joint investigation with Canada -- the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and an industry group, all have declined to discuss any early conclusions of their research into the blackout.

Pat Wood, chairman of FERC, listened Friday to the Cambridge theory -- which tracks many other experts' findings so far -- but said he wouldn't speculate on the cause.

In the end, Wood said the root problem may be something as mundane as an untrimmed tree. "That's not a really deep policy debate," Wood said, but would be a matter of saying, "Here's what your job is guy -- mow the grass, cut the trees."

In the wake of the blackout, Wood said he believes the intricate interconnectivity of the nation's power grid -- which makes one region vulnerable to another's problems -- makes it imperative to have a market designed in a way so that communication between utilities and system operators flows more smoothly than it did a week ago.

Communication across a low-tech system of telephone hotlines linking regional operators was inadequate or absent in the blackout, some utilities and politicians say.

The Ontario province's premier also has complained that U.S. power managers did not notify their Canadian counterparts as required under protocols put in place after a blackout darkened much of the same region in 1965.

Also in the spotlight are government regulators and the group overseeing the Midwest's transmission grid, the Midwest Independent Transmission System Operator. In New England and the mid-Atlantic states, grid operators with more direct control were able to cut off themselves off from the worst of the blackout.

Giving regulators and the operator in the Midwest more control might have helped them contain their problems, some experts say.

FirstEnergy subsidiaries have had localized blackout problems in Ohio. Meantime, AEP has been criticized by Ohio electric regulators for poor maintenance on its lines.

The allegations have not been tied to the Aug. 14 blackout, but unions and some politicians in states affected by the outage have blamed industry deregulation and cutbacks in staff numbers and maintenance schedules.

Utilities and their supporters in turn have blamed environmentalists' and local communities' objections to new lines and power plants.

Or this:

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http://www.ohiocitizen.org/campaigns/electric/2003/error.htm

Human Error Likely Cause of Blackout, Timeline Says

August 27, 2003

Investigators of North America's biggest blackout say all signs from a nearly completed timeline point to human errors in the early stages in Ohio on Aug. 14 as the cause of the cascade into darkness.

They have nearly finished assembling a second-by-second chronology composed of millions of bits of data collected from computers, voice recorders and hundreds of sensors scattered from Detroit through Canada into New York, officials said.

The retracing of the 600-mile electrical storm track starts at 1 p.m. on Aug. 14. Three hours passed before local problems in the Midwest grew into a crisis that cost billions of dollars and darkened the homes of millions of people.

Industry officials involved in the inquiry said they were not prepared to point to a particular cause, human or technological, but they generally voiced enthusiasm for the pace and progress of the analysis.

"We think we have the timeline nailed pretty well," said Donald M. Benjamin, vice president of the North American Electric Reliability Council, the industry group created after the 1965 blackout to maintain electricity flows.

"It's down to the second in terms of what happens, which transmission paths opened, when areas became isolated," Mr. Benjamin said. "It provides a good understanding of how the power flows."

But an expert from the federal government taking part in the investigation was much more definitive about a probable cause, saying all the data pointed to mistakes by people in the event's earliest stages.

The crucial missteps, a federal investigator working on the analysis said last night, appear to have occurred in the handling of an hourlong sequence of line failures and plant shutdowns preceding the full-blown blackout, which swept parts of eight states and eastern Canada starting around 4:10 p.m. on Aug. 14.

"Had all of the existing policies been followed, this would not have developed into a cascading event," the investigator said. "What we see are institutional breakdowns, not a breakdown of the system itself."

He and other investigators declined to discuss details, but others involved in the investigation said the timeline essentially matched independent analyses done recently by several grid experts and utilities.

The chronology also shows that by the time the problems left the Midwest, the disruption could not be stopped from exploding through the large portals linking that region with Canada and then with New York.

The reliability council, also called NERC, assembled the record for its own investigation and for a task force created by the Department of Energy and the Canadian Ministry of Natural Resources.

The findings so far will be discussed today with Spencer Abraham, the secretary of energy.

Mr. Benjamin said utilities were still assembling records from earlier in the morning of Aug. 14, with the goal of comprehending what conditions existed around the electrical grid of wires and plants before there were any signs of trouble.

Officials at the FirstEnergy Corporation, the Ohio utility whose territory and lines have been identified by many experts as the most likely trigger for the event, yesterday stood by the company's contention that there were power plant and line failures outside of its territory in the hours before its own troubles began.

"As far back as noon, there were other generation-unit trips and other transmission-line trips outside of our area," said Ralph DiNicola, a spokesman for FirstEnergy. "We're certainly hopeful that the Department of Energy and NERC are looking at all of those conditions."

Yesterday, officials from the Midwest Independent Transmission System Operator, the group responsible for overseeing the safe flow of electricity around the Midwest, said they remained convinced that the group had not contributed to the cascade.

In the Northeast, officials said they were still unable to answer some basic questions about how and why the blackout spread from the Midwest and Ontario into New York, both across the major web of transmission lines that cross the international border at the Niagara River, and at a bottleneck in upstate New York that separates the eastern part of the state from the western part.

In both places there are relays - essentially large versions of the circuit-breakers in a household fuse box - along the lines. When something goes wrong, the relays are supposed to trip, interrupting the flow of current, protecting other equipment from damage and keeping the problem from spreading.

Yet officials say many relays - which are owned by the New York State Power Authority and Niagara Mohawk, a major upstate utility - continued to conduct power even as the system gyrated out of control.

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