Posted on 09/14/2003 9:49:46 AM PDT by mjp
MY PAL Marty says he's seen the official reports so far of the power out that affected swathes of North America on the 14th of August last and it's not a happy story. The Joint US/Canada Task Force investigating the power down has so far isolated the time line of the cascade in the electrical grid on that day. Marty assures me that Adamson Rust's attempt to pin the blame on Chicken Little and Foxy Woxy is up to his usual lame standards. [Can't you get over this guy, Eva? Ed.]
The time line is pretty much OK, though the Task Force is unhappy about the time stamps that should note the disconnects. Some time stamps are inaccurate because the computers that record the disconnects either got backlogged or the clocks weren't calibrated properly to the national time standard. Heads will no doubt roll because of this it makes it harder to pin down the times and the events.
It's pretty clear the whole North American power grid needs quite a bit of care and attention.
According to Marty, nearly all of the events in the blackout happened from noon Eastern Daylight until 4.15PM Eastern Daylight. But the power sleuths are tracking from 8AM on the day, EDT, just to see if anything happened earlier.
Conesville Unit, central Ohio (375MW) A generator trip happened at 12.05 Greenwood Unit, north of Detroit Generator trip at 1:14 Eastlake Unit (597MW), Northern Ohio Generator trip 1:31 Stuart Atlanta (345kV) Transmission disconnect at 2PM, because a brush fire shorted the conductors Harding Chamberlain Transmission line disconnect at 3PM Hanna Juniper Transmission line disconnect at 3.30PM
The Hanna Juniper line hit a tree, and that caused a short circuit to ground and the line disconnected. An acorn fell of the tree, hit Chicken Little on the head, and she went off to tell the rest of her mob that the "sky was falling down" as Adamson Rust puts it in his rather non technical description.
Star South Canton Transmission line disconnect at 3.40PM Canton Central Tidd Disconnect at 3.45 Samnis Star Disconnect at 4PM Galion Ohio Central Muskingum Disconnect at 4.08PM East Lima Fostoria Central Disconnect at 4.10 Kinder Morgan Disconnect at 4.10
At this point, says Marty, power flows from Indiana and over the west-east Michigan transmission loads started to feel the strain, while at around ten past four, the Eastern Interconnection frequency showed a demand loss of between 700 to 950MW. The following sequences happened almost at the same times.
Harding Fox Disconnect 4.10 Lake Erie Twenty generators stop at 4.10PM West-East Michigan Disconnect Midland Cogeneration Venture Disconnect Detroit Transmission system northwest of Detroit goes down Perry Ashtabula Erie West 4.10PM, transmission line cuts northern Ohio off from Pennsylvania
The investigators at this point reckon that when the lines along the south of Lake Eyrie fell, the power reversed direction and started going in a counterclockwise loop heading from Pennsylvania to NY, to Ontario and into Michigan.
Homer City to Watercure Road 4.10PM a disconnect Homer City to Stalle Road 4.10PM a disconnect South Ripley to Dunkirk 4.10PM a disconnect East Towanda to Hillside 4.10PM a disconnect
Exceedingly heavy power flows heading towards the New York and New Jersey lines.
Fostoria Central Galion Down at 4.10PM Perry I Nuclear unit This 1252MW unit disconnected off at 4.10PM Avon Lake 9 Off line Beaver-David Besse Cleveland load auto disconnected
Campbell Unit Three Disconnect Keith Waterman Disconnect 4.10PM Wawa Marathon Disconnect 4.10PM Branchburg Ramapo Down 4.10PM
The Eastern Interconnect was divided into two sections.
Picture copyright 2003 Juan Leger
New York split east west 4.10 Transmission lines disconnect. New England becomes an electricity island for a while New York split continued 4.10PM. Northern New Jersey and south west Connecticut stay attached to New York system east. Ontario, east Michigan stays connected to New York West Ontario, New York separate at Niagara Falls 4.10PM Long Mountain, Plum Tree disconnect 4.11PM Ontario, east Michigan Separation 4.12PM
Eastern New York blacks out with small pockets of power left. Western New York manages to support 50% of load.
The End Game The cascade at 4.13PM is nearly finished. Some small pockets stayed up for a few minutes more
According to the Task Force, there's more data to be collected and research to do before it can say exactly what and why it happened, and what the relationship between all of these events are.
The real question as I see it is why the cascade failure? Obvously when that western Ohio line went down causing the reversal of flow with Michigan the line to Michigan should have tripped. Ohio was trying to keep power to the Cleveland area too long. Lots and lots of protection relays never tripped. Maybe hundreds. Very odd. Makes one suspect the grid operators have been setting them higher so they won't trip, and then crossing the fingers. Finally didn't work.
All of the various shutdowns did the job of protecting the equipment.
I don't know why everyday localized shutdowns caused a nationwide failure, but I fear that the changes the Feds want to put in will end up preventing companies from getting off the grid in emergencies. That would cause damage to the equipment (generators trying to run at the wrong frequency, transmission lines handling too much power) and what required hitting the reset button this time will cause a much longer term failure next time as major equipment has to be repaired or replaced.
One of the things which need to be done is building more localized power generation, so the regional grid is used for temporary generation/use imbalances instead of constant movement of power from one area to another. Another is a quicker restart cycle if the grid shuts down again, so a regional power outage lasts an hour instead of a day.
Just so. But that violates the "not in my backyard" principle which governs in most neighborhoods today.
I suspected this from the beginning, but since all plants have backup power for their logging computers (otherwise heads should roll all the way to the top) it is an easy matter to note the time difference after the event and apply a correction to the logged times.
Unless complete idiots began screwing around with the clocks after the event, and before the official inquiry began. Those should be jailed for sabotage and criminal incompetence.
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