Major power surge in NY? (Blackout is in NYC, Detroit, Ottawa and Toronto, per Fox News)

8-14-03 | Joe Hadenuf

[Joe Hadenuf]

Hannity station went dead for about 20 seconds. Said he had never seen anything like it.

[GOPrincess]

It's getting up there in numbers but I don't think we've hit the totals of the first few days of the Iraq war Situation Rooms threads yet :).

[Scott from the Left Coast]

not even close. Hobbit Hole III maxed the system out at over 65,000 posts.

For the record: Sitting out here on the pleasant west coast on a sunny day, with all the power I could want or need, I am NEVER bashing the west coast again...no matter how wacko-leftist the population is out here.

[KarlInOhio]

How long does it have to take for a power company employee, or many of them for that matter, to come forward and say, this is what happened:

The people who would have the slightest idea about what is going on are up to their necks trying to get this fixed. That leaves clueless PR hacks to talk to the reporters.

[Trust but Verify]

I've been seeing your posts. Very welcome comic relief. Thanks!

[JillianMSU]

Any power in Pontiac, Mi? The cell isn't getting through to any numbers out there....

[ninenot]

MSNBC "...something else went wrong and we don't yet know what it was...."

One more squirrel who will never reproduce.

[FairOpinion]

You, for instance, who can't even bear people having a discussion.

[Old Sarge]

I NEED HELP FROM ANY FREEPER IN THE CINCINCATTI AREA!

If there are ANY reports of the Cincincatti area w/o power, post NOW!

[Brad’s Gramma]

!

[ringgold]

Thanks for the explanation. I was pretty young during the blackout in 1977, but I think there had been some debate about "insulating" sections of the grid from one another and building better backups into the system. If it's feasible, we might ought to consider having smaller, more independent, power grids.

You may want to call your Senator about this, because FERC wants to see only 2 or 3 RTO's to cover the entire Eastern Interconnection.

[Trust but Verify]

And I'm not blasting my mouth off like I DO KNOW, either.

[Dog]

Those were the days......Shock and Awe!

[Joe Hadenuf]

We heard via fox that the flights that were in a holding pattern were diverted to other airports 5 minutes ago....Who knows....Lots of chaos.....

[CELTICGAEL (Celt)]

per fox, cinci is out!

[appalachian_dweller]

There are a few here at work that agree with you I.Y.H. They say the outage is just too wide spread.

AQ like a high body count. I just don't see this as a attack, but I could be wrong.

Donning my tinfoil hat now: I do keep a 3 day supply of food, water, clothing, soap, toothpaste, wash cloths, a sleeping pad and blanket, pair of hiking boots, first aid kit, minimal survival gear in the car in case 'something happens'. After I saw what happened with traffic during Tuesday's power outage here in Reston, Va. I realized that if anything did happen (power loss), and the police were busy and couldn't deal with the traffic, no one was going anywhere in a car. I've been known to hike 20 miles in a day and I only live 18 miles from work. Even on foot I could be home within 24 hours.

It doesn't have to be terrorism related. It could be an earthquake. People say we don't get earthquakes in the east, but one changed the course of the Mississippi River in the 1800s.

I would advise everyone to do the same. Be Prepared. Terrorism or not.

[supercat]

I'm stating a simple fact; I don't for one minute buy that this is just a "hiccup".

The basic problem is that when one part of the system shuts down, it will change the loads in other parts of the system (generally, but not always, increasing them). Ideally, the shutdowns would occur in such a way to minimize disruption, but sometimes things don't work out that way.

As a simple example, imagine that you have two communities, each with a power plant, and a link between the two communities. The plants are designed to produce 100 units of power each and have a instant-shutoff limit of 105 units. The link is designed to transport 20 units of electricity, with an instant-shutoff limit of 25.

Suppose community #1 is drawing 95 units and community #2 is drawing 100. Generator #2 shuts down, putting all its load on generator #1.

If the link between the two communities were to drop at this point, community #1 would have power and #2 wouldn't. What could happen instead, though, would be for the link to get all the power generator #1 is producing that isn't being drawn by community #1 (i.e. 10 units), pushing generator #1 past the instant-shutdown threshhold. The link is not overtaxed (it only has 10 units flowing through it), so it remains active. The effect is that both communities lose power even though a different shutdown sequence would have only affected one.

In the real world, there are a many more generators, communities, and links, but the same sorts of scenarios can occur. Although most problems would be the result of generators or links getting overtaxed, problems can also occur if a generator suddenly finds itself underloaded. If a link trips which had been connecting a generator to most of its load, that can cause the generator to run overspeed until a safety trip shuts it down. At that point, whatever part of the generator's load was still connected will either be in the dark or will draw power from somewhere else.

I know there are systems that are supposed to minimize the effects of cascading failures, but breakers don't always trip in the desired sequence.

[BurbankKarl]

well, that and exporting your pollution out of state/country....this can happen just as easily on the west coast, but the effects would be less because more people drive, commuter rail runs on diesel not electricity, etc.


>>>>Well it's the liberal/dems fault this happened. President Bush tried to tell them when he first came to office that our grid system was in trouble. They voted it down. The entire energy package was voted down when the dems were in control of the senate.

[Henk]

I hope the backup diesel generators at all nuclear plants in the affected area have started up. Loss of offsite power is a major design basis accident for nuclear plants.

[Peach]

We used to live in Windsor and are now retired in SC, nutmeg. Just wanted to send my former nutmegger greetings.

[Dane]

per FOX dayton, cinci, cleveland, akron, toledo out! So far Columbus is OK!

Pittsburgh is fine. Didn't hear about Cinci or Dayton.