Posted on 09/04/2003 7:50:53 AM PDT by doc30
During the hour before the Aug. 14 power blackout, engineers in the control centre of an Ohio utility struggled to figure out why transmission lines were failing and complained that a computer failure was making it difficult to determine what was going on, transcripts of telephone communications released Wednesday show.
At one point, an engineer at the Midwest grid managing organization asked engineers at the Ohio utility, FirstEnergy Corp., to explain why they had not responded to a line outage reported earlier and asked that they find out what was going on.
"We have no clue. Our computer is giving us fits, too," replied a FirstEnergy technician identified as Jerry Snickey. "We don't even know the status of some of the stuff [power fluctuations] around us."
A short time later, a technician at the Midwest Independent Transmission System Operators, the group that monitors the Midwest power grid, expressed frustration with FirstEnergy's failure to diagnose the problems erupting in their power system.
"I called you guys like 10 minutes ago, and I thought you were figuring out what was going on there," complained the MISO technician, identified as Don Hunter, according to the transcripts.
"Well, we're trying to," Mr. Snickey replied. "Our computer is not happy. It's not co-operating either."
The exchanges were contained in 650 pages of transcripts of telephone communications provided by MISO to investigators for the U.S. House energy and commerce committee and made public by the committee Wednesday at the conclusion of the first day of congressional hearings into the blackout.
Executives of FirstEnergy, as well as other Midwest utilities and Midwest transmission grid managers, were scheduled to testify before the committee Thursday.
Although investigators have said previously that power-line failures in Ohio were the first indication of an electricity grid problem on the afternoon of the blackout, the transcripts for the first time revealed the confusion in the FirstEnergy control centre in Ohio as the utility's engineers sought to get a handle on what was becoming a growing and mysterious power problem.
According to previous timelines made public, the first sign of a problem developed when FirstEnergy's power plant in Eastlake, Ohio, tripped off around 2 p.m. Eastern time on Aug. 14. Next, at 3:06 p.m., one of its transmission lines failed and at 3:32 p.m. another high-voltage line, known as Hanna-Juniper, went dead.
That caught the attention of the MISO engineers monitoring the grid from their control centre.
"I was wondering what's going on there?" Mr. Hunter asked the FirstEnergy control centre shortly after 3:43 p.m. The FirstEnergy engineers were unsure, but Mr. Hunter knew something was amiss.
"I've got to get my calculator," he said.
"We've got something going on," replied a FirstEnergy technician identified only as Schwartz. "I'm going to have to take a look and see what's happening."
NO it does not sound like a terrorist cyber attack, it sounds like an inside M$ job. Purely unintentional, but happened none the less.
Does every thread that has something even remotely to do with computers have to turn into a Microsoft bashing thread? Only the third post...I congratulate you!
Nope. It sounds like a bunch of little problems cascading into a big problem -- which has always been the most likely explanation.
No, not unless you have a tin foil hat. This is the standard blame human error on the computer. A plant operator in Ohio motorized a plant, which caused the shut down. Period . I was an Air Force power plant operator once upon a time, and a simple power plant motorization is the only thing that can cause this type of failure.
Not at all. It was hot in London, and it was hot on the East Coast. In both caes, heat has the same effect: high demand on the power grid (to run things air conditioners). A side effect of high demand is that a failure can propagate throughout the system.
Pretty much the culmination of several smaller problems coupled with a lack of response.
Here is another thread where the computer issue is discussed. I am famaliar with that computer, having worked in that very control room in the past.
I agree. IMO this is not one of those coincidences you simply accept and move on from. The last time they raised the alert status to high a couple of months ago, a warning of a possible attack on the power grids and 911 calling system was high on the list put out by the feds.
I knew Miles Davis was behind this!
This is particularly true when economic considerations are given strong precident over reliability considerations. There's plenty of financial reward for marketers to "overbook" the system. There's financial rewards for the owners of transmission lines to "overbook" the system. But, there's no penalty (yet) for "overbooking" the system to the detriment of having adequate contingencies.
The system operators, incidentally, don't get the financial rewards when luck is on their side, but they will catch holy-heck when the system collapses. I have yet to see any mention of the role of the common-carrier model in this scenario.
Doesn't sound like BSOD. More likely their communications channels were knocked offline.
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