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Power Outages Strike East Coast
fordp writes "CNN, CNBC and others are reporting that major power outages are happening just after 4:00PM EDT in New York, New Jersey, Detroit, Ottawa and Toronto, Toledo." There are reports of a Con Edison transformer on fire on 14th Street in NYC, and lots of people stuck in trains and elevators. CNN is reporting that it is, according to power officials, most likely not related to terrorism, because you know you were wondering. The Niagra Mohawk power grid is overloaded, which feeds electricity throughout the northeast U.S. and into Canada. Update: 08/14 21:06 GMT by P : The mayor said there was no fire, that it was black smoke brought on by an automatic shutdown because of the power grid failure.
This article detailing using semiconductors to mitigate large scale grid power surges ran in today's NYTs.
I'm in Manhattan right now, near Colombus Circle. All power is out across all 5 boros. No traffic lights, hundreds of thousands trapped in the subway... I'm dialed in through Verizon (wow. good network, right?) on a laptop, through a PBX with a battery backup.
According to the radio, the 14th street power station is burning. Of course, it also is talking about blackouts from Cleveland to Toronto. With no power, my poor tropical fish have less than a few hours to live, and I already hear a crowd in the street screaming, but it's mostly good natured right now.
I'm sorry, this seems like sabotage. I've got 100 gallons of fresh water, and a sword.
And I'm posting on slashdot.
Oh well. I guess I just wanted to say hello. =p
Here is a link to the solar flare situation there is an X class happening right now! http://sunspotcycle.com/
OH THE SHAME I fell off the wagon and use sigs again!
This is kind of weird. I work at a mid size hosting center and ISP and since we normally run on generator power, we didn't know that there was a widespread power outage. Things started popping up on our monitoring system -- and they all seemed completely unrelated. Of course, it turned out that all the things going red were customers with T1 lines and such, that were in buildings losing power. :)
Tired of FB/Google censorship? Visit UNCENSORED!
...that this is due to a single fire at a major ConEd substation.
So this one isn't terrorism (so they say), but I'm sure terrorists will be delighted to know that they can throw five major cities into utter chaos by taking out one substation and getting an assist from the domino effect.
~Philly
With the generating station right accross the street from my house, my workplace in St Catharines is using a powered backup for its alternative energy.
Kewl.
I'm a big retard who forgot to log out of Slashdot on Mike's computer! LOOK AT ME.
most likely not related to terrorism
In related news, the door of the loo at SaintJohns Library being cracky is not a case of terrorism (we know what you we're thinking)
Seriously folks... this is the FUD M.Moore is talking about. Even if one is 100% sure no terrorism is involved, the media can't resist mentioning it, thus keeping the public constant aware of the danger of terrorism.
When will I end this grieving ? When will my future begin ?
Great, now all the terrorist wackos who watch
the news can see how fragile the power grid
around here really is.
From the Drudge Report: Every prison in New York state reported a loss of power and had switched to backup generators, said James Flateau, a spokesman for the state Department of Corrections.
... prisoners ... don't they have mechanical backups? For one, to keep the people in, but for another, to let 'em outta their cell if they hafta for whatever reason.
Power outage
Middletown, CT (south of Hartford by one major town) had a flicker just long enough to knock all the PC's and workstations offline. (*Just* long enough.) Personally, I lost the last bit of progress on a hairy makefile that finally started working, but it could've been worse. (Ironically, I was halfway through the emacs save sequence when it happened, too. Ctrl-X, Ctrl- *poof*). Blah.
Niagara Mohawk Website
Supposedly the electric company that started it all.
I'm typing from 30 miles southwest of Boston. I've heard reports that Boston is affected; but here in the suburbs, we're not having any problems.
It's worth noting that, no matter what caused the initial problem: The results we're seeing are exactly what happens when the populace fails to concern itself with potential problems. We Americans, even today, suffer from a serious case of "It'll-never-happen-to-me." Experts have warned for years that our power grids had dangerous "pressure points," where small problems could cause massive failures.
Unfortunately, when we hear the phrase "potential problem," we hear the first word and never bother to listen to what follows. "If it's not a sure bet, why worry about it?" Well...here's why.
crib
Please don't read my journal
Who needs terrorists? We'll do it to ourselves. Infrastructure maintenance interferes with short term profit, so it gets minimized. Welcome to the unregulated market. What will this cost us? I hope this doesn't turn grim.
I have EE friends who have been predicting a failure like this because the power companies are competing with each other not to maintain the infrastructure.
Assembly is the reverse of disassembly.
Of some interest, the internet in North America seems not to have been affected much.
Simple Unexpected Concrete Credible Emotional Stories
Seriously, major failures of interconnected electric distribution systems are usually very complex events and it takes a long time to track down the root causes.
sPh
This Salon article debunks that myth that started with a blackout in New York in 1965 (see page 3).
See also the Snopes article on the 1965 NYC blackout.
Aparently all of foxnews.com's updaters are in in the NE. Their site hasn't been updated since a few min before the blackout started.
Good thing we are getting our info from CNN
Just relax. We'll find out soon enough what the cause of this blackout is anyway. MSNBC et al are going to speculate and pander to what they believe their viewers are asking, that's just natural. What they say now isn't as important as what we find out when the facts are in.
Go get a beer. Before they get warm.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
Watch what happens in the wake of this... every news program on the planet is going to talk about how "inadequate" the power system is and how we need MORE, MORE, MORE power. Nowhere will you likely hear anything in the mainstream about CONSERVATION. That's a four-letter word in the eyes of the current hyper-consuming society.
Incompetence strikes again. Welcome to the first world, where croynism, nepotism and patronism rule.
Isn't it great how billions will be lost but the responsible, well paid, people will be nowhere to be found.
Isn't it funny why we never question leadership?
If this thing goes on into the night, I'd put money on a baby boom in the area 9 months from now. :P
~Laserone
http://www.LaserBlog.com
Actually, I understand that most dams (floodgates only) in North America are powered by Windows NT based software. They are not internet connected but have remote dial-up. The FBI's InfraGuard program has fixed what used to be a gaping security problem, where once you found the number you could dial straight in to the damn's control computer. In fact, this happened once before in 1998 as this article mentions. The software is called SCADA and was, iirc, developed at Los Alamos National Laboratory.
I was on IRC when this happened, 8 people timed out. I thought, wtf a netsplit? But my channel has only one server. So I figured something big was going down.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Not to defend the GOP, though. The "deregulation" (it wasn't, really. There was all sorts of bizarre price controls. Calling it deregulation was a propaganda myth.) was, in the end, a completely bipartisan clusterfook. But anyone using it to dump on one side or the other is just being pig ignorant and mentally ill.
--- Ban humanity.
When THEY go 2 straight weeks without power in the heat, like all of my city (memphis TN) just had to deal with a few weeks ago, then I'll read the story. I could care less if a bunch of people have to reset their clocks.
See chart
We recently had an incident here where where the power in the building went out for about a half hour. Walked into the lab to make sure everything was running ok -- greeted by the nice chorus of beeps from the various UPS units. Then we noticed that the db server appeared to have locked up. The lights were on, but nobody was home ... then we noticed something else looked fishy -- the raid array for the db server didn't seem to have any power to it ...
... not a terribly useful arrangement.
Whoever setup the machines in the lab plugged the db server into a UPS, but not the raid array
Um, wouldn't a DIESEL BACKUP GENERATOR seem like a wise move for keeping the automation in such a facility up?
Wouldn't that explain the 'black smoke'
Move along folks. The smoke is a non-story.
CNN is now reporting (5:45 PM EST) that it is a possibility (note- possibility, not confirmation) that the worm that's been going around may have played a role in this blackout. Granted, it's probably pure speculation, but the possibility has been noted. One purely speculative question- if the worm's ability to interfere with MS boxes, would Microsoft be liable for any damages from the blackout? Just a thought... Wishing the best for anyone who's trapped in this situation. I'm in South Jersey, 20 minutes outside Philly, and I've got full power. I'd hate to be caught in the subways or elevators right now in NYC.
great article in Wired about New York 2.0
MRTG Graphs of the temperature from an above.net data center in NYC.
Anyone running off of battaries charged via solar, wind, etc. who is in an effected area? I don't mean generators either, I imagine there is at least *one* person who is perhaps running a couple energy efficient bulbs from a modified stationary bicycle and I'd like to hear from them :)
There is also the Enron factor. A couple of years back when Cheney gave Enron the green light to manipulate the California energy market California was making deals to buy any capacity it could
During the period the market was being manipulated the cover story was that it was California's fault for not allowing new plants to be built. Power plants have a major lead time so the only way to get generator sets for new power plants to be built in the West was for NYC to give up the generator sets for a bunch of gas turnbine systems planned to be deployed in the East.
Thank Bush, Cheney and their big friend 'Kenny boy' Lay for putting the interests of Enron before the national interest. First they screwed California and now NYC may well be getting hit by the unexpected results.
Looking for an Information Security student project suggestion?
Try http://dotcrimeManifesto.com/
Now for a quick opinion on air conditioning. Is it just me, or have people confused refrigeration with air conditioning? Crikey. I walk into some large supermarkets, stores, restaurants, etc., and I have to watch my appendages for frostbite. Where I work, the hotter it is outside, the colder it is inside. Some staff have resorted to wearing sweaters, sweatshirts, and run space heaters!
It's just my opinion, but if you can't live at least around 72 degrees (and is a dry, conditioned 75 that bad?), then you should consider a move beyond the polar circles for the summer.
Reporter Shepard Smith at JFK airport said over the Fox News network that airport maitainance workers were delayed in fixing the generator because they were initially denied access to it because they could not be cleared to access the generators without the metal detectors being powered.
I've read that the stability of large power grids is still a poorly understood problem. Normally they are reliable, but what happens when they are already running close to the limit of safe operation and a major generating facility goes off line?
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
A decentralized power grid is only going to help so much.
Smaller generators are less efficent than larger ones. Solar power and wind power only works when you've got solar power and wind power. Works fine for certain parts of the US, but works pretty crappily in the eastern seaboard. Plus, it multiplies the maintenence costs to have a lot of different generators.
Lately, I've become more pro-nuclear. And that's the sort of thing where, despite the fact that it's been incredibly safe so far, you still want it out where people are more sparsely populated, just in case. Solar power is a waste of space and only works in some parts of the world, wind power kills the little birdies in large numbers, hydrothermal power destroys scenic river views... Hydrogen is a code word for "we'll build lots of nuclear plants in Mexico or Canada or maybe even Japan, electrolyze the seawater, and then ship it to the US". Eventually the non-whacko environmentalists are going to realize that there's three options, and the one that's unarguably the easiest and most palatable is nuclear power. (the other two are to bring it all down and space-based solar power)
The only thing that would alleviate this is to maintain a higher potential power surplus. This means either build more generators, in general, or use less power. The problem is that it's very hard to use less power and make it stick, except by collapsing back to anarchy. About the only lasting change in california from the blackouts is that everybody keeps the timers to turn off lights, the energy-saving florescent bulbs, etc. A lot of the other stuff they cooked up for conservation is quickly passing from people's thinking.
Gentoo Sucks
I know it sounds strange, but I'm sort of sorry that I'm not in New York for this (I moved to Boston 25 years ago). Yes, I know that it's a monstrous pain in the ass for everyone and even has the potential for injury and loss of life (e.g., heart attack from climbing stairs), but both blackouts I've been in ('65 and '77) were interesting experiences.
I was five years old for the first one and scared out of my wits when the lights went out. It was an early evening in November, around 5:30 PM, and I was sitting on the kitchen floor, watching TV (the Winchell-Mahoney hour). Lights, television, even the streetlamps outside went out. My first thought: "Mommmmmmmmm!!!!!".
We ended up walking over to my aunt's house a couple of blocks away and eating the cake that my mother had baked that day. That was our dinner. Blackout cake. She never made it again after that, but I remember with all the flickering candles it seemed like someone's birthday.
My father got stuck on the subway for 36 hours, though. Bummer for him.
When the '77 blackout hit, I was living with my father on the 15th floor of a building on East 96th St. I'd just gotten home from my summer job and turned on the radio. The DJ was complaining about the turntables running too fast (overcompensating for low voltage?). Looking out my bedroom window, I saw the blackout roll uptown: the Empire State Building went out first, then the rest of Midtown, the Upper East Side, and then us. It was a hot, humid night and you could see the occasional flash of heat lightning.
I checked on my neighbors, an elderly couple, before heading down to the street, where I bartered a couple of cold beers for a handful of candles. People were bewildered, wondering if the Indian Point nuclear plant had blown, or if the Rooskies were attacking. It took about an hour for the looting to start north of us and for most of the night there was an endless parade of NYPD patrol cars headed uptown, four or five cops in each, all in full riot gear.
I don't want to downplay the millions of dollars of damage that happened that night, but my neighborhood was pretty peaceful. It was like an instant block party, people sharing food and beer and the occasional joint, oldtimers (I guess that's me now) talking about the '65 Blackout (which, like today, started at the Mohawk grid and covered roughly the same area).
Fifteen flights up was nothing for me back then; I ran track in high school.
A couple of years ago my neighborhood in Boston lost power for 36 hours. Nothing big, maybe 25,000 households, but I was bereft. No cable, no Internet, just a battery-operated radio and, of course, candles. Off the grid.
But it was educational. I never realized how dependent I was on technology and the network, how much of my time is spent in front of the silicon devils (TV and computer). Thirty hours with nothing but books and an acoustic guitar for entertainment. When the power came on, the first thing I did was fire up a web browser. It was like a refreshingly cool shower of meaningless information after having to sit and stew with my thoughts.
Shit. I think I'll go to the basement and throw the main breaker. Just for old time's sake.
k.
"In spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart." - Anne Frank
Are you really that Stupid, or are you just another Republican shirker? I bet you are the latter.
FACT: The power plants existed, ENRON and other electricity brokers flat out refused to allow those plants in California to be started, even when the rolling blackouts became a daily event throughout the Bay Area and Southern CA. Even when The Governor of California went to ask the White House to intervene, Bush/Cheney backed ENRON, even though all the evidence pointed to the fact that the supply was being heavily manipulated. This was PROVEN when ENRON finally collapsed under the weight of its own debt.
FACT: ENRON manipulated the market, with falsified transfers of power out of the State, then back into the state, and totally falsifying their records, DELIBERATLY to reflect transactions, then charging the State for all the transactions involved at a cost approximatly 4000 times the original contract cost. This cost the State nearly 40 BILLION dollars, and the odd thing, thats almost exactly the same amount of money California is in the hole for, and the GOP is using as a lame excuse for a recall. Pete Wilson, a former GOP Governor is heading the campaign to put Arnold in the Governors office in Sacremento. He is also the man who pushed for the State Electricity utilities to be "deregulated", (that means sold off to the highest bidder) The only single person that should take the blame is Wison, not Davis. Davis was not even in public office when the Utility was sold to ENRON.Get your facts right man, or just quit lying about things.
Stupid Humans.....
It's a gift. Some folks might actually be able to see Mars tonight. This will be the first time in ~40 years that some will get to see the heavens!
Enjoy!
Stoptional
The 2nd Amendment was made for times like this
The USA is a funny funny place! People seem to be worried about all sorts of crimes being comitted now that there are no lights. Riots, Murders, Home Invasions...possibly even an Army of Darkness attacking (Great Movie!).
Why are you so worried? You seem to be more afraid of each other, then other things!
Auckland CBD (New Zealand) was without power for several weeks. Us in Oz thought it was a bit of a joke. But people just went home. No big deal. I've been in major blackouts (obviously not as major as what just happened in the USA), but so far have never worried about being attacked. Go home early. See some stars. Snuggle. Have fun.
Is the veil of civilization so thin in the USA that simple darkness will create the downfall of mankind? In the past people thought it would take a nuclear war to break up civilisation. Now it seems turning out the lights will do it.
My other question is...isn't the 2nd Amendment about creating a mulitia to defend your country...not about defending your house? And is it the gun culture of the USA that brings about this fear?
Here is a link to the
second amendment text
i'm not going to read every comment since it is not that much interesting to see thee great #1 masters of the world falling into darkness because of failing powerplants
lots of jokes can be make, but the point is that everyone, including big money eating corps SHOULD USE LESS ENERGY. AND ALSO LESS WATER.
err, i'm getting a littla carried away. Talking about wired, a while back they published a great article [wired.com] about the energy grid.
With that aggravating beauty, Lulu Walls.
Um.. yeah it is...
The inrush current causes a voltage drop on a system. V=I*R If I goes up, then so does the voltage drop. That is not only basic electronics, that is basic math.
Watching nightly news on one of the major networks, they actually discussed this topic, and that the outage could have been done by hackers.
The gist of the discussion came from that 3 weeks ago Power Authorities met and acknowledged that there was a security threat from their systems connected to the net. During that meeting, they set up some new guidelines to regulate the software that controls the power grids to make them more secure, and to take them off the internet. He said, however, those new regulations had not taken affect yet.
Now this is a far stretch, and I think they even acknowledged this, but nevertheless the topic was discussed.
Another possibility they said that could also of happened, instead of computer hacking, radio hacking. The power control centers are connected by radio, and it wouldn't be hard to override those signals.
Interesting thoughts, but I still doubt these possibilities could ever happen.
"Hack the Planet!"
1 - Yes it was designed to facilitate in creating a militia. However defense of ones neighborhood also falls under the job of the militia members.
2 - "Gun Culture".. bah... that is just a typical response from outsiders that don't truly understand how this country works and the freedoms that some of us strive to protect. Its not a "culture" as you put it. Regardless of what admendment we speak of.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
A long range video down a stretch of road in NYC with lots of traffic lights as the power comes back on. :-)
Slashdot - The one stop shop for procrastination
Here's a link to guidelines to living off the grid. The most notable quote:
A while back, I saw something on the Discovery Channel a while back about this.
Currently, there are two water tunnels bringing water into NYC. They are both extremely old, their physical conditions are unknown, and their combined capacity is just enough to meet the city's current needs. They cannot shut one down to inspect/refurbish it. If anything happened to them, Manhattan would probably be unable to support its population due to sanitation concerns.
They are now constructing a third water tunnel, due to be completed in 2020, that will enable them to shut down and refurbish the other two tunnels one at a time. Until then, someone determined to really screw New York's pooch could fuck with either or both of the existing tunnels and essentially put New York out of business for much longer than any blackout.
...temperature wise that is... online via GPRS modem card looking over the city of Toronto from the balcony... nothing but dark mass where buildings are, emergency beacons from office towers and condos and some contrails overhead from airplanes that have been flying. ...and stars in the night sky - an absolute rarity for any large city.
online - almost 1am Eastern Daylight Savings time and total blackout... gotta be something to say on that.
In order to generate a specific voltage, the entire steam turbine-generator shaft has to spin at one speed, 1800 RPM. Amperage is a matter of torque.
If we continue to spin the turbines and connected generator with no load, we risk overspeeding them and blowing them apart- so automatic safety systems would often kill the plant in seconds, before operators had a chance to act.
Moreover, we can't go from a 1207 MW load to a 40MW load (what we use in house) instantly- properly ramping down involves changing the chemistry (preferably), or inserting the control rods part way. (We don't like to have these anywhere but all the way in, or all the way out).
Both of those transients take some time (hours) to do in an orderly fashion, and the equipment will be damaged far sooner than that if we stay connected during a large power drop.
In order to give you and idea of how much energy is in the system, and why it needs to be dealt with quickly, consider this: we throw away 2/3 of our thermal energy, turning only about 1/3 of that into electricity. The energy we throw away is enough to raise the temperature of 400 000 gallons per minute of seawater 34 degrees F. (Instead of cooling towers, we use the ocean. Incidentally, cooling towers can be found at plants other than nuke plants.)
Please also click on my slashdot profile and read my other posts.
Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms should be the name of a store, not a government agency.
I am STILL in my rackspace. I was here when all the overhead lights went out.
First reaction: I see happy LEDs, whew.
Second Reaction: when the overhead lights came back on seconds later, you see 10 techs looking at their hands as if the ethernet cables they plugged in caused the problem! Funny.
This is the most comfortable place in Manhattan right now. Sleeping here on Sun cartons and bubble wrap in the AC due to zero transport home to CT.
Verio's got all generators working, and should weather this. For this I am eternally grateful. Let's take a moment to praise the folks who plan for this kind of problem in our data centers!
Guess what's on TV? (at 4:16 am, cbs channel 2)
Exactly what you said would not be:
"People are buying food and water for strangers when the shop keepers aren't just giving it away for free. People are taking in their friends and coworkers and giving them a place to stay for the night if they can't get home. People are sharing their cell phones so strangers can call home and let their families know they are alright. I saw a man walking with candles to the houses of older members of his church to make sure they were alright and had what they needed to make it through the night. What is going on right now is the true American spirit and it crosses all racial, social and economic lines."
Ever notice that the U.S. govt is the most stable democratic entity? The system has been clicking effortlessly for over two hundred years now and going strong. Of course it has its (big) problems, but for a democratic state such durability is practically unheard of.
Look at us (France), we had democracy about the same time as you did, but we've had coups, wars, revolutions, and our own current regime (called the Fifth Republic, and you guys are still on your first) is little over forty years old (old Europe, HA!).
It's pretty obvious you have the Second Amendment to thank for that. Anyone staging a coup would be extremely foolish, because anyone knows that even though most people don't have guns because they're in a "well-regulated militia" they would appear pretty soon and swarm over D.C.
Of course people shoot each other for wholly different reasons than the defense of democracy, but the guys who wrote the Constitution weren't stupid. 18th century or 21st century, if you give everyone guns, they will use them to shoot each other -- but they chose to pay that price for the durability of their system.
I'm not defending the Second Amendment, this is an extremely high price to pay and one has to wonder if in a modern state it really should be paid anymore, but I don't see that issue brought up in many 2nd Am debates, so I thought I'd share it.
Yea, you are right, its outdated, thats why Hitler
banned guns to his citizens, so they couldnt fight back when he went on his reign of terror.
Good idea there junior.
And when the founding fathers said its time to trash a cumbersom gov and rebuild it back with the const. in mind, that would never happen w/out guns.
We have seen that living things are too improbable and too beautifully "designed" to have come into existence by chance.