Posted on 09/05/2002 9:36:21 AM PDT by Robert357
Significant Transmission Facilities Out Of Service or Limited
The PNSC reported the following outages for today:
For the entire 24 hour period the California-Oregon Intertie (COI) OTC will be 3800 MW north to south and 2450 mw south to north due to the Round Mountain-Table Mountain #1 and #2 series capacitors at Table Mountain being out of service in conjunction with the Lower Monumental-McNary 500-kV line.
The Pacific DC Intertie OTC will be 2506 MW north to south and 1904 MW south to north from 0000 through 2400.
Path #1, BCH/PPoA, is limited to 100 MW in either direction through 9/13 because of the scheduled outage to the Cranbrook-Langdon 500-kV line.
The RDRC reported the following transmission facilities will be out of service today:
Navajo-Westwing Series Capacitor at Navajo Navajo-Crystal Line Reactor
Riverton-Wyopo 230-kV Line Valmont 115 kV cap bank
Arden-Bighorn #2 230-kV Line San Juan-Ojo 345/115-kV Transformer
RM/DSW Transmission Facilities Impacting WECC Qualified Paths: None
The CMRC reported the following outages for today:
Round Mountain-Table Mountain series capacitor banks at Table Mountain cleared for scheduled work HE 0900 8/25/02 through 9/21/02 HE 1800.
Other Comments: Path 26, Midway Vincent, is limited to 500 MW bi-directional due to #1 and #2 Midway-Vincent 500 kV lines forced out of service by wild fire. The Midway-Vincent #3 is in the path of the fire and may trip. If all three lines are open the WECC loop will be open on the Westside.
As noted on the WECCNet message, the CISO utilized the Coordinated PST's on Tuesday, 9/3/2002 from 1700-2000 PDT for USF problems on P-66. This brings the total year to date COPS to 183.
At 0140 CAISO declared Restricted Transmission Maintenance Day from 0500 through 1800 today.
Tuesday's Notable Events: At 1512, CMRC issued a directive to do whatever is necessary to return Path 26 within limit, including shedding firm load. Path limit was 500 MW with flow initially 1350 MW southbound.
1505 to 1534, system frequency declined to a minimum of 59.93 Hz from scheduled 60.02 Hz due to deficient CISO ACE as a result of load shedding not occurring when planned. 1510 to 1522, COI (Path 66) exceeded 3800 MW limit attaining a maximum flow of 4001 MW. At 1519, CMRC issued a second directive to do whatever is necessary to recover ACE and system frequency, including shedding firm load. CISO shed approximately 900 MW of interruptible load in the SCE & SDGE areas.
At 0008 PDT CISO reported feeling an earthquake at the Alhambra control center. CUBE reports a 4.6 magnitude earthquake located 4 miles NE of Yorba Linda in Southern California area. SCE control center did not feel it. No report of any facilities damaged.
(Excerpt) Read more at wecc.biz ...
Anybody see this reported in the news? NOPE! The Gov and his boys are doing a good job on covering things up.
I sure hope that FERC pushes hard to take all control away from the state as they just are not doing a good job handling things.
How about somebody showing this to some California newspaper reporters and to the Simons folks.
Talk about a cover-up!
What is significant about this article, is that the California ISO (Independent transmission System Operator) is suppose to actively monitor and manage the electric transmission system on a real-time basis and make adjustments to keep the power flowing in a reliable manner.
The Cal ISO not only did not anticipate problems, it caused very major transmission lines to exceed their design limits without immediately stepping in! They allowed the system frequency to fall to very low levels (this happens when there is much more load than electricity available to serve that load).
The bottom line here is that there is an organization charged with managing a transmission system that failed to perform its basic functions. This is the same organization that FERC says should have its leadership changed and that Gov Davis of California says is just doing fine!
If the Cal ISO doesn't get its act together soon, California is likely to face some real ugly blackouts and a total the desire by other parts of the country to not be connected. These guys could bring down other parts of the west coast electricity system if they keep this up.
Thought I would add this additional Dow Jones NewsWire story on Southern California Edison as it fills out some of the detail on the Path 26 problem the ISO has been having and that load was curtailed for two hours.
Dow Jones Business News
CAISO:1 Of 2 Path 26 Pwr Lines Back, Fire Threat Remains
Wednesday September 4, 2:55 pm ET
LOS ANGELES -(Dow Jones)- One of the two Path 26 power lines that was taken out of service Tuesday due to fire is back on line Wednesday, but the fire threat to all three lines remains, a spokeswoman for the Independent System Operator said.
Capacity on the two north-south lines, operated by Edison International (NYSE:EIX - News) unit Southern California Edison, is now 2600 megawatts, up from a derate of 500 MW earlier Wednesday morning, said spokeswoman Stephanie McCorkle.
"Line two is back in service but the winds did shift. We are watching lines two and three very carefully. We are not sure if we will be able to get line one back today," McCorkle said.
As reported, the ISO Tuesday directed SoCal Edison to call two hours of voluntary outages for its 700 megawatts of interruptible customers because two of the three power lines were down. Interruptible customers pay lower electricity rates in exchange for cutting power use when asked.
It's rare for all three Path 26 lines to be threatened at once, McCorkle said.
"This is the first time this summer where we have one line down and two threatened. There is some fear, because the wind shift is not working in our favor right now. If we lose those lines, we will see a huge impact" on the grid, McCorkle said.
The 14,600-acre Azusa fire, ignited Sunday, is burning about 25 miles northeast of Los Angeles and is about 10% contained."
-By Jessica Berthold, Dow Jones Newswires; 323-658-3872; jessica.berthold@dowjones.com
There are very limited resources for moving power around the grid. A fire at a switching station can compromise numerious lines simultaniously, and no political force on earth can change that.
Load shedding is regretable, but sometimes necessary.
Oh, I forgot, they had "planned" to have enough power, so there was no emergency...
Therefore, either some load tripping relays didn't work (which is really, really bad) or somebody refused to dump load when they should have (which is also really, really bad).
This whole thing smells of something strange going on. Yes there were fires that were beyond the control of the various transmission facility owners and the ISO, but the ISO is really suppose to follow Standard Operating Procedures or else things will end up in complete chaos.
Last time I did transmission system planning and submitted it to the WSCC (now the WECC) there were NERC reliability criteria that the transmission system was suppose to conform to. Some of the criteria included no loss of load during a projected system peak demand and the loss of the largest single generating unit or major transmission line. We use to spend months doing load flow analysis to see which transmission lines could fail and we would still be able to carry full load.
Yes, the fires caused some multiple contingency potential failure modes, but common mode failure is also suppose to be analyzed during the transmission system planning. Further, the loads in California were far from system peak conditions.
Yes, sometimes load has to be shed. However, there are suppose to be rules for when that is and is not to happen. From what I know about the industry (and I have advised some pretty large organizations on transmission planning/reliability criteria), I don't think that 900 MW of load should have been shed.
No it's not. You know exactly why there wasn't an announcement.
somebody refused to dump load when they should have
I'd bet money on that. It happened once before, remember? I'm pretty sure that it was the City of Lodi that set the trend. I can't find the article on FR, sorry.
They clearly have been squelching these Stage II emergency alerts for political reasons (e.g. to get Davis re-elected).
In doing that, they run the risk of bringing down the entire grid in the Western States.
As to Lodi, they did refuse to dump load when told to do so and shocked all kinds of folks. Lodi felt that their contractual and generation rights didn't requirement to shed load, so they weren't going to turn power off.
Shedding Firm load is a very serious thing! It is usually called utility initiated Blackouts. The WECC had the following to say....
Other Comments: The CAISO declared Restricted Transmission Maintenance Day from 0500 through 1800 today.
Wednesday’s Notable Events: At 0621, CMRC issued a directive to do whatever is necessary to return Path 26 within limit, including shedding firm load. From 0605 to 0621 PDT, Path 26 Stability Limit south to north of 500 MW’s was exceeded with a high of 691 MW.
CMRC & RDRC reported that APS requested 100 MW emergency assistance during the hour for HE 1600 PDT and the following 2 hours. Emergency assistance was granted and delivered by CISO.
Hitler would be proud, especially because the American press tows the party line voluntarily. Hitler had to buy his own newspaper, the Volkisher Beobacter, to get his message out.
What are CMRC & RDRC & HE? (APS is Arizona Public Service, my old Alma Mater.)
The media is really on top of it, aren't they! / sarcasm
They are covering up for Davis!
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Thanks!
Why not call the local utility and get their "official" explanation? It might be fun.
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