Massive power failures hit United States and Canada

Nothing more than grid ripple. One section reaches overload and tries to get more power from the grid... domino effect.

New York needs a dose of Gray Davis... raise power rates ;-)

...Jim Thompson

-- | James E.Thompson, P.E. | mens | | Analog Innovations, Inc. | et | | Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC's and Discrete Systems | manus | | Phoenix, Arizona Voice:(480)460-2350 | | | Jim-T@analog_innovations.com Fax:(480)460-2142 | Brass Rat | |

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For proper E-mail replies SWAP "-" and "_" I love to cook with wine. Sometimes I even put it in the food.

I thought that New York's power system had been partially redesigned since the last time this happened to prevent it happening again?

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(1) General East Coast incompetence. (2) Too damn many people... the area that's down is the same size as the whole state of Arizona... about 400 miles x 400 miles.

...Jim Thompson

--
|  James E.Thompson, P.E.                           |    mens     |
|  Analog Innovations, Inc.                         |     et      |
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            For proper E-mail replies SWAP "-" and "_"
             
I love to cook with wine.      Sometimes I even put it in the food.

Agree Jim, but the GPU grid controller was funded and installed after the great NE Blackout of 1966(?) and which was supposed to eliminate this type of problem in the future.

Could it be that 37 year-old computer controlled technology is no longer up to the challenge, or is it simply that, incredible as it seems, local power companys buying cheap power from Niagara Mohawk simply dropped their guard and let their own boilers get cold?

Harry C.

Having worked on power systems in most parts of the world I am still amazed that America has any power distribution at all, the whole system runs on teacakes and is hopelessly designed.

According to the Federal Power Comm. report, in '65, the 'spinning reserve' steam generators _still_ couldn't get up to power fast enough to prevent the dominoes from falling in the '65 episode. It's just not possible to get a boiler and turbine to put out in a matter of moments.

And the people and investors are not willing to pay the costs of keeping enough gen capacity online to handle the emergencies such as this one that might pop up. So I guess you might say that it's how much they're willing to spend for that last .0001% of reliability.

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In article , snipped-for-privacy@hotmail.com mentioned...

Maybe you could explain that a bit simpler for those of us in the U.S. that don't know their teacake from their elbow. And you might give a further explanation on what is wrong with the design.

The way I see it is it's just a matter of money.

The only consolation I have is during the California energy 'shortage' a few years ago, none of these major blackouts happened, even tho there might have been a few localized outages, from load shedding.

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amazed

It is a matter of money and sadly the privatisation of the power industry in the UK is changing our power network so that there is no redundancy and the backup autoswitching facilities are being reduced in number, networks are driven harder all to give shareholders more dividends (hmm, sounding like a communist here, not true).

As a specific example of something I have seen while in Kansas. There was a power line down on a 25kV network and the length of the line was such that the fault current was not high enough to trip the circuit breaker so the thing danced around on the floor live until someone saw it and turned it off.

I think that safety in the US is also not good and as one example of lots that I have seen, again in Kansas I asked some LV engineers to install a piece of equipment serially in the power supply to a single house while we went for lunch. When we came back they had screwed another box to teh aluminum (aluminium) siding on the house, installed the equipment and used terminal blocks to connect the wires. They had then just wrapped insulating tape round the brass block to "keep it safe". I commented on the unsuitability of this method and the engineer got hold of the wire and shook it saying it's as safe as houses' at which point the connector caught the aluminium of the house, cut throught the tape burnt a large hole in the house and loads of sparks, didn't see much after that as I was about 50 yards away doing a sub 3 minute mile.

British bun thing. Largely bread with a few currants thrown in. They like things like that :-)

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I heard a news report that...

a) it may have been triggered by a single power line failing. b) The cost in NY alone was estimated at $150M or more.

If true then it would seem the system is very vunerable to deliberate attack. It wouldn't be possible to protect all the miles of overhead power lines but you would think that they would have installed systems to prevent the effects of a single point failure/attack spreading to the whole network.

In article , snipped-for-privacy@cam.org mentioned...

It wasn't solar flares it was the Perseid Meteor shower! (Don'tcha just know that some kook will come out of the woodwork with that explanation.) Hellfire rained down on the earth, and took out the power grid! Yeah, right.

Yeah, people don't realize how much those steel pylons have to hold up, with just the wires. Each cable is about 1.4" or 36 mm in diameter, and weighs several pounds per foot (you figure it out in metric). The span is something like 800 feet (244 M) and there are sometimes three cables each side, six altogether. So figure 4800 feet of cable at 4 pounds a foot, that's something like 19 thousand pounds of cable between pylons, or close to 5 tons. That's like a full size luxury car per pylon. Not to mention all the wind loads and like you said, water and ice. Fortunately when it gets cold they can melt some of the ice by keeping the current high, thus keeping the wires warm.

Well, that's part of the problem. There are dependencies among the sources and loads. And when things go awry, then there is hell to pay. There wouldn't be so much of a problem if the sources and loads were localized, but the problem is that some or many of the sources can't handle the loads by themselves so they have to import power to run. The only way to get the some or most of the loads up and running with local sources is to shed some of the loads.

Yeah, they said that in the blackout of '65, the steam gens that were "spinning reserve" online couldn't respond rapidly enough to handle the imbalances. It takes some minutes to build up a head of steam to get the gen to put out max.

"Mutual aid" turned into "mutual dominoes".

In the blackout of '65, they mentioned that the hydroelectric generators were trying so hard to adjust the water flow to the load that the gates ran low on hydraulic fluid, and couldn't respond. Weird!

"Stuff happens." They were talking on the news that Gen Motors in Mich was one of the first to go offline. Holy Toledo! Then Ohio got it.

Hey, on MSNBC they have pics of a bunch of people lining up in front of a hardware store begging to buy some flashlights and batteries. Maybe it was a good idea that I bought that "Forever Flashlight". I can shake it and get a whole minute of not very bright LED light out of it. Looks pretty silly tho, all that shaking. I think I'll make sure all my Ni-MH reghargable cells are charges and ready to go, just in case. I'm also glad that I have a AA charger that runs off the cig lighter in the car. If power fails, that's about the only place that will let me charge the batts.

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In article , snipped-for-privacy@pandora.be mentioned...

Well, they did. Or at least they say they did. Apparently it's easier said than done.

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[snip]

Two layers ;-) ROTFLMAO!

...Jim Thompson

-- | James E.Thompson, P.E. | mens | | Analog Innovations, Inc. | et | | Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC's and Discrete Systems | manus | | Phoenix, Arizona Voice:(480)460-2350 | | | Jim-T@analog_innovations.com Fax:(480)460-2142 | Brass Rat | |

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They put in a junction box made of sticks. Much better than the first one made of straw.

Blake

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Gee, that's tough. How about *several* kilograms per meter?

5 tons? If you don't understand the Fred Flintstone units, don't use them.

What's that "M"?

Figure 250 m span times 6 cables, each with a density of 6 kg/m, and you have 9000 kg = 9 Mg. That's 9 metric tons; what kind of tons are you using, when you only get five of them?

Gene Nygaard

But if it be thought that, either now, or at any future time, the citizens of the United States may be induced to undertake a thorough reformation of their whole system of measures, weights and coins, reducing every branch to the same decimal ratio already established in their coins, and thus bringing the calculation of the principal affairs of life within the arithmetic of every man who can multiply and divide plain numbers, greater changes will be necessary. U.S. Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson, 1790

In article , snipped-for-privacy@hotmail.com mentioned...

Sounds like SBC Pac Bell. Some days two of their techs show up to fix two different problems. Seems like they could dispatch a single person to take of both problems.

I think I'm glad I work with datacom and telecom, not electric power. Lot safer, tho on occasion I've been bit.

Amazing that someone didn't get hurt.

The guy from the Nat'l Electric Reliability Commission (?) was on TV this morning, and he said that the companies have been reluctant to spend money on transmission facilities because they're a poor investment, etc. He wants congress to make a law to allow his organization to oversee the power industry like the SEC oversees the stock exchanges.

They were saying that it all started in Cleveland. Which brings to mind the old saying, "Will the last person leaving Cleveland please turn the lights out." I know a guy who lives there, and I'll have to email him and kid him about causing the blackout. ;-)

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"There were fluctuations hours before the failure" . Sounds like a positive feedback effect caused the problem .

e.g. so many control systems trying to compensate for the original glitch, due to the sheer size of the grid it began oscillating at a low frequency which built up and finally caused a system failure .

Recall Tahoma Narrows bridge . Wind was just at the wrong speed to induce resonance .

Perhaps a seismic event caused it ? Something caused a slow build-up (perhaps current was being drawn in the right pattern + some other event) causing the above scenario a couple of hours later .

In article , testing snipped-for-privacy@yahoo.com mentioned...

network.

Tahoma? Or Tacoma? Either way, it was called Galloping Gertie. That was a resonance that could have been found with a model and a wind tunnel. I don't know if it would be possible to build a model of the octopus they called the northeastern power grid.

Unforeseen circumstances, to put it in laymen's terms.

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Attacks are going to be hard. I suspect that it would take lots less than $500K to get detailled maps of power transmission lines. Proper recon, 10 people drive up to 10 seperate sites, and let off an RPGs into a large transformer at the same time.

Large transformers are not available at radio shack.

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