Deregulation and Niagara Mohawk - Is There a Story?

It's just a few hours after the Northeast U.S. power outage, and facts are trickling in; as of right now, it looks like an accidental overload knocked out a large part of the Niagara Mohawk power grid. A few years ago, California went through rolling blackouts that were largely due to a poorly-executed deregulation of that state's power industry. The question that's probably occurring to many of us is, did late-'90s deregulation play a role in today's power event? I don't know the answer, so I'm turning it over to you -- moderators, please check links and up-mod the most informative, pro or con. Here is some information to get you started: "We support deregulation 100 percent..." (N-M spokesman, 1997; notes N-M wanted to sell generators and "concentrate on the transmission and distribution of energy" -- did it?); N-M made some bad investments and is scheduled to request a rate hike (did it?); and N-M's own website says: "Deregulation [has] changed the laws and regulations governing the electricity industry to promote competition..." (how so?).

Comments

Nothing to do with deregulation

[mjmalone]

I don't see how this has to do with deregulation. It has more to do with poor design of the power infrastructure. From what I have heard, the way the power grid works is there are switching stations which link various networks together much like a router on a lan. When one switching station goes down, for whatever reason, there are fail safe systems which move affected areas over to other switches.

What can happen is, if all stations are working at or near capacity and a part of the network goes down for whatever reason (fire, or too much power being drawn for example) then when power is routed from the other switching stations they become overburdened as well and there is a ripple effect of outages across the grid.

When this occurs, power companies have to be careful when bringing power back online as they may become overburdened again as soon as they become operational. The U.S. power grid has become extremely complicated and vulnerable as it has scaled. Fail safe systems often fail in their fail safe components.

Regarding the rolling blackouts in California, they had more to do with Enron witholding power than with deregulation. I have not researched deregulation sufficiently so I can't really argue for or against it, but blaming everything on it is not helpful.

Re:Nothing to do with deregulation

[antirename]

So far this is an isolated event... it looks more like an accident than the result of bad policies (CA deregulated power, refused to construct new power plants, signed some dumb deals, etc.). The parent post is correct about ripple effects. Everly system has potention bottlenecks/points of failure, and it sounds like one of those went down and overloaded the rest. No clear place to point fingers yet... if there is place to put the blame, CNN hasn't found it yet :)

Re:Nothing to do with deregulation

[TedCheshireAcad]

Oh God no, no power to run the computers.

You mean I actually have to interact with people?????

Re:Nothing to do with deregulation

[Wesley Everest]

I don't know if the overload was due to deregulation, but one of the purposes of regulation is to ensure that the power company can satisfy demand, even relatively unlikely peak demand. It's possible that deregulation led to them running leaner with less margin of error for a big spike in demand.

Add to that an unexpected increase in air-conditioner usage and there you go -- overload and outages. That's one possibility. I suppose we'll find out the facts soon enough, though.

Re:Nothing to do with deregulation

[macdaddy357]

I disagree. It could be related to deregulation. Give greedy businessmen a corner, and they'll cut it. If there were things that could have prevented this, but were costly, they were eliminated with deregulation.

Re:Nothing to do with deregulation

[jabber01]

Right. What we're seeing here is a lan-storm.

Deregulation would only help this sort of crisis, because it would be in the individual stake-holder's best interest to shield themselves from such an event.

But, considering how rare these grid overloads are, increased deregulation would do more harm than good, because it would complicate the normal daily function, and allow price gouging at every turn, while preventing the rare outage.

If it ain't broke, don't fix it. The previous major blackout for the area was in 1965. That is one HELL of a MTBF. By comparison to deregulated California, we in the North East will keep our 29 year uptime, thanks.

Re:Nothing to do with deregulation

[straybullets]

It has more to do with poor design of the power infrastructure

well, bad design is linked to deregulation, since good design takes time, and deregulation wants money fast. It goes the same for taking good care of the existing installation : it costs money, and deregulation is about profit more than service.

the true fact is that deregulation is a joke, it was well seen with the english rail system. And the joke is on us !

Re:Nothing to do with deregulation

[mjmalone]

The power grid was designed and put into operation long before deregulation started.

Re:Nothing to do with deregulation

[PFAK]

I'm going to have to disagree with you.

Deregulation usually ends up having the power company as a corporation, and not a Crow Corporation or such. When a power company (or any other company for that matter), has to become profitable they will cut costs, and when they are cutting costs the level of service usually falls.

The most likely reason that this has happened is that the power companies did not want to spend as much money on the grids to maintain them, and make sure that they were in complete working order, and add more grids and upgrade their equipment -- all because of deregulation, and saving money on in the "short term".

Re:Nothing to do with deregulation

[bperkins]

A deregulated industry will attempt to operate its power system close to capacity at all times as much as possible. This leaves the system open to problems like today's.

Deregulation may work out in the end, but so far what I've seen doesn't impress me very much.

Re:Nothing to do with deregulation

[ascii3f]

Wrong. It has everything to do with deregulation.
If a power company builds a new power line at their expense, they must allow other companies access and sell power using that line.
Companies aren't building power infrastructure beyond the minimum required because they get screwed. You will see more of this happening.

PS Full Disclosure. I am biased as I have worked in the power supply business for several decades.

Re:Nothing to do with deregulation

[Frymaster]

i live in alberta. a few years ago, the provinicial government - which has an ideologicl committment to fiscal ultraconservatism - deregulated the power industry.

the results have generally been regarded as disasterous - most notably a rise in power bills for both domestic and industrial consumers that topped out at well over double. the power rate increase resulted in less disposable consumer income and increased cost of doing business in the province and was regarded as an election-killer by the current administration.

so they spent their way out of it to the the tune of $2.3 billion. that was direct subsidies to rate payers. of course the whole subsidy was a charade since those same rate payers were going to pay for their "subsidies" in income tax increases or reduced social spending in other areas. clearly a case of cutting you a cheque with your own money.

so who got rich? the power companies. same service, same power, more money.

bottom line: electricity is a necessity. like water, or the police service. it is a completely inelastic commodity and privatizing it is only encouraging the new power overlord (since there is, really, only one major power provider... a monopoly) to charge the maximum the market will bear and damn the consequences.

source here: here

Re:Nothing to do with deregulation

[mjmalone]

Then what do you blame all the past outages on? This is not the first time large scale outages in major metropolitan areas has occured.

Re:Nothing to do with deregulation

[OECD]

Regarding the rolling blackouts in California, they had more to do with Enron witholding power than with deregulation.

Not just Enron:

• The CA legislature set up a "deregulated" market in which long term contracts were not allowed. It wasn't deregulated--it was assinine-regulated.
• EDS--who set up the CA "deregulated" market--made a ton of money holding seminars that taught Enron et al how to 'game' their market.

Re:Nothing to do with deregulation

[straybullets]

The same for the british rail : it worked perfectly. deregulation came in and it went down in flames, late trains, dirty wagons, and dead peoples in accidents : you need to take care of the infrastructure, you need to plan for the future, and keep the whole engine running smooth.

You can't do that if you have to keep an eye on your competitors and keep lowering the prices some more, and fire those expansive workers.

forget what you've been told : open your eyes and think.

Re:Nothing to do with deregulation

[PFAK]

The reason that deregulation occurs is to stop these problems, so why do they still continue even after the company has been deregulated.

There is arguements for both sides, but usually when a utility company is not deregulated, prices are cheaper, and service is better.

Re:Nothing to do with deregulation

[Daetrin]

Then what do you blame all the past outages on? This is not the first time large scale outages in major metropolitan areas has occured.

The excuse for the 1965 power outage was effectively "we didn't know." Obviously they know now, so "tbey didn't care" is a plausible theory.

Obviously the power company didn't say "Haha! We've been deregulated!" and then intentionaly pull the plug. However reduced spending on maintenance and backups could reduce the threshold at which such an event occurs.

I don't know enough about the industry to say, but theoretically they've installed equipment since 1965 that should theoretically prevent occurances such as this. Why didn't those systems operate as intended? Was the overload just too big to prevent, or were they not installed or maintained properly?

Re:Nothing to do with deregulation

[plague3106]

That doesn't make too much sense to me. Assuming the blackout is a result of cost cutting, it seems like an unreasonable risk, because now that the power's out, people CAN'T use the power, and thus the utilities can't bill until they lights come back on.

Re:Nothing to do with deregulation

[djblair]

A former DTE employee, I am typing this on my laptop with no power here in Detroit, MI. I agree, this is certainly not a result of deregulation. Perhaps I can offer some insight on some of the specifics.

The reason so many plants are now offline is because of a safety system put in place to protect their generating equipment. An overload can severely damage generators. The device which disconnects the plant from the grid is a shoebox-sized relay. The great northeastern blackout of 1965 was actually caused by a defective relay.

However, it is highly unlikely that a relay was the cause of this outage. If not for faulty equipment, what caused it to happen? Since the problem seems to have originated in Niagra Falls, New York, I suspect that a major line which provedes part of the northeastern US with power from generating plants in Canada went down. This event would have triggered the above scenario, causing plants in both the US and Canada to shut down.

It is interesting to note that, as with land-based phone systems, little has changed in the way power is distributed to customers in the last 30 years (certainly advances in fiber optics have advanced phone systems, but the last-mile copper systems have remained unchanged in over 50 years). Hopefully now, systems will be put in place to prevent outages of this magnitude from happening again. A system of automated switches with real-time network links could be used to disconnect parts of the grid instantly before the problem could spread. Maybe we will see some of this technology in the future, now that there is a definate need to persue it.

Re:Nothing to do with deregulation

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, CNN has been so hard on the Republicans these days, which is so unfair because so many Republicans have been doing so many things so very well. The way they blow any little scandal all out of context and proportion and just harp on it for weeks on end, their steady refusal to walk the party line, their whole anti-war attitude, their open mockery of the president, it's just ridiculous. And I hate how they have that "Impeach Bush" ticker running across the bottom of the screen all the time. Damn liberal media. That's why I only watch Fox.

Re:Nothing to do with deregulation

[murr]

Interesting thoughts here, but I don't agree that electricity is a "completely inelastic commodity". Californians were able to save a surprisingly large amount of power with relatively simple changes during the electricity crisis.

Re:Nothing to do with deregulation

[macdaddy357]

The only risk publicly traded corporations worry about is not making projections for this quarter. If short term buck grabbing causes a long term problem, it will probably be someone else's problem. Besides, the boys in the boardroom can always blame the lowest level drones, and assure shareholders they will be dealt with.

Re:Nothing to do with deregulation

[rsborg]

That doesn't make too much sense to me. Assuming the blackout is a result of cost cutting, it seems like an unreasonable risk, because now that the power's out, people CAN'T use the power, and thus the utilities can't bill until they lights come back on.

That would make sense, if you don't compare what they saved (in running lean) vs. what they lose (in one blackout). In short, I bet "unreasonable risk" you pose, would be, financially reasonable if it only happened occasionally, and that's probably what they calculated. The same concept as "acceptable level of casualties"... and although not as amoral, still causes hell for everyone not making that extra buck that the power utility is.

Re:Nothing to do with deregulation

[Mikeytsi]

Nope, the last one was in 1977. The one BEFORE that was 1965.

Re:Nothing to do with deregulation

[Chris Burke]

Deregulation would only help this sort of crisis, because it would be in the individual stake-holder's best interest to shield themselves from such an event.

Well, that's one possible outcome, but I wouldn't say only. It is also in the stake-holder's best interest to cut as many corners as possible, reducing costs and maximizing profits so they can cash in and get out before the inevitable disaster hits.

Re:Nothing to do with deregulation

[modicum]

The government does not provide water and police services because people 'need' them. If that were the rationale, then wouldn't we want the government controlling all farms (because people need food) and drug production (which many people need to live). The reason we have the government provide police service is because it is a public good, so it cannot be effectively provided privately. The reason we have regulated monopolies provide water service is because that market is a natural monopoly.

The idea behind electricity deregulation is the improved technology allows electricity to be structured as a competitive industry and not a monopoly. It has largely succeeded based on the ability to structure the new electricity market in such a way the competitive providers actually enter. Governments have been largely inept at structuring these markets, which is why the results have been mixed. It sounds like this didn't happen in Alberta, which is too bad. But we shouldn't jump to the conclusion that the government needs to provide everything we think we 'need'.

Re:Nothing to do with deregulation

[letxa2000]

This has nothing to do with deregulation. There have been huge blackouts decades before there was deregulation. Heck, this same grid was the same one that caused the big blackout in about the same area in the late 60's, IIRC.

There is no inherent reason why deregulation will cause problems. In fact, the opposite is true. But electric deregulation combined with new environmental regulation is definitely a bad thing. You have the electric sector needing to do one thing and an environmental sector impeding that. Which is more important is open to debate, but you can't ignore the fact that environmental regulations limit what often needs to be done to keep the electrical sector functioning.

Re:Nothing to do with deregulation

[blamanj]

you need to take care of the infrastructure

Indeed, what often happens with deregulation is that you get a lot of people who see how they can make a quick buck and who cares what happens down the road. One mechanism that could be used is to force companies that participate in these utility industries is to require a very large bond to be put up against future problems and upgrades. They now have a stake in the future. If they cut corners too much, they lose their bond, and so they're economically forced to consider the consequences of their actions.

The other issue is that the "intersection points" need to be addressed in a similar manner. Otherwise you get the situation we have now in the DSL market where the customer gets caught between the CLECs and ILECs.

Re:Nothing to do with deregulation

[utmecheng]

No way. The cost of dealing with a wide-spread blackout like this one is gigantic. Think about how many man-hours were billed in today's fiasco? They had to shutdown all generators and then turn them back on. That combined with the damage done to their system and the repairs they will have to make means big losses. Not to mention parent's point about loss of money tonight. When you have rolling long term blackouts due to localized stresses then you can point the deregulation finger, but with major grid-wide blackouts its a huge financial burdon.

Re:Nothing to do with deregulation

[Zeinfeld]

The same for the british rail : it worked perfectly. deregulation came in and it went down in flames, late trains, dirty wagons, and dead peoples in accidents :

British Rail did not work 'perfectly' by any standard - with the possible exception of the privatized service.

The problem is not regulation, deregulation, privatization, nationalization or any of the surface reasons thrown about. The real problem is people who substitute ideology for thinking about a problem.

The free market is not the solution to every problem. Get over it.

The state is not the solution to every problem either. Get over it.

There are occasions when you have to use one strategy and occasions when you have to use another. Understanding that there are potential problems with a proposed change is essential if you are going to avoid them.

Instead what we get is politicians who use ideology as a substitute for thought. The solution to every domestic energy issue must be to drill oil wells in Alaska. The problem to every foreign policy problem must be to invade a country in the gulf with large oil reserves. The problem to every economic problem must be to give stupendous tax cuts where at least 80% but hopefully as much as is possible goes to the richest of the rich, and in particular rich Texas oil-men. One thing is certain, W. is not going to say a word about the NYC power cut until he can work out how it can be used to justify some policy to benefit Texas oil men.

The free market is one thing, if you could establish a free market in energy that would be a great solution. The problem is that it is not possible to do that, the market is illiquid, supply and demand are constrained in certain ways. But to the ideologue these problems simply cannot exist, they don't exist in the theory so they cannot exist. Its like a robot in a bad 1960s Sci-Fi serial. So the ideologue plows ahead with a broken scheme and creates an unmitigated mess.

That is exactly what happened with privatization of BR. There is no reason the UK rail network cannot be private, it was built entirely with private capital. But the Tory privatization plan based on the politics of sticking your head in the sand was never going to improve matters.

Re:Nothing to do with deregulation

[qtp]

You are still held subject to the transmission charges of the private monopoly that owns the lines between your home and the plant. Cost of electricity goes down, transmission costs go up. Everybody happy except for the customer.

In California, the supposedly competing power generation companies created a scarcity of power by bringing down one third of thier power plants for "maintenance" during peak season, the largest reseller (Enron) refused to increase supply to meet demand, and instead decreased supply and raised prices. The only municipalities that remained unaffected were the ones that held on to thier municipal (socialized) power companies.

Gray Davis was blamed for the mess, and the companies got off scott-free (thanks to deregulation).

Re:Nothing to do with deregulation

[stmfreak]

bottom line: electricity is a necessity. like water, or the police service. it is a completely inelastic commodity and privatizing it is only encouraging the new power overlord (since there is, really, only one major power provider... a monopoly) to charge the maximum the market will bear and damn the consequences.

The real problem with so-called deregulated utilities is that they are all a single monopoly from the consumer's point of view.

When your utility fails, you are screwed. Short of getting in your car and driving to where the utility is working, you are at the mercy of the utility . This is not deregulation; this is monopoly.

When your utility hikes the rates, you are screwed. You cannot just flip the switch over to the other utility's lines and start paying less. This is not deregulation; this is monopoly.

For utilities to become truly deregulated, all levels of government need to relinquish their grip on their citizens and allow companies to negotiate contracts directly with you and I. Presently, power, phones, water, sewer, garbage, cable... these utilities are selected by your city or county in a one-size-fits-all contract. The winning company has to follow the government's rules for the courtesy of raking you over the coals. Competition is over once the selection has been made. This is not deregulation...

If you look at what cellphones have done to the telecom industry, you can see how only when consumer choice enters the equation do companies get on the "more for less" bandwagon. Until customers can choose between power company A and power company B from their current home, we're going to have no end of problems brought about by waste, corruption, greed and the lack of customer service or concern you would expect from a monopoly.

Re:Nothing to do with deregulation

[IM6100]

So you're saying a regulated power industry has no qualms about wasteful excess capacity? Because they're guaranteed a sure-thing market?

Re:Nothing to do with deregulation

[heli0]

"The most likely reason that this has happened is that the power companies did not want to spend as much money"

No, they want to spend billions building new plants so this does not occur. The NIMBY crowd prevents this from happening. Hell, they won't even let them build windmills. Without new production capacity this is going to become a more common occurance.

Re:Nothing to do with deregulation

[Darby]

I suppose we'll find out the facts soon enough, though.

Ladies and Gentlemen, we have an optomist among us.

Re:Nothing to do with deregulation

[Gilmoure]

But they now have the perfect excuse for a rate hike. A quarter or two will look bad but profits will be up in the near future (or so I surmise, based on my long experience playing Alpha Centauri, whacking people with sticks in the SCA and drinking large amounts of Guinness listening to Clan N'gal late at night).

Re:Nothing to do with deregulation

[S.Lemmon]

Deregulation will be fine the day I have a choice which power company hooks to my house. Problem is they usually have a local monopoly - regulated, at least there's some control over pure profiteering.

Re:Nothing to do with deregulation

[scorch89]

Regarding the rolling blackouts in California, they had more to do with Enron witholding power than with deregulation.

The blackouts in CA were a direct result of a poorly designed market. In the politicians rush to be the first deregulated state, they let a PhD economist set things up so that the big three utility companies had to sell off most of their generating assets. They also forced them to buy most of their power in the short-term market instead of letting them procure longer-term power supplies. They did this in order to make sure the market had liquidity - but it came at the expense of reliability.

It came down to how much CA was willing to pay to keep the lights on. And boy did they pay through the nose. I should know, I'm not only directly involved with power markets in CA, I'm also a ratepayer. Ouch!

Re:Nothing to do with deregulation

[stanwirth]

I agree with you, macdaddy. The power failures in Auckland NZ in 1998 were caused by deregulation. Lasted over a week. The cause was failure to properly maintain underground mains -- lines maintenance had been farmed out to a variety of cut-rate contractors who just didn't do a bloody thing. They had to call back in the old AEPB (Auckland Electrical Power Board) engineers who'd been made redundant in the deregulation craze of the mid-90's. Brought back in as contractors at top dollar, might I add.

The solution was to separate the lines companies from the generators and retailers -- i.e. re-regulation was introduced

This hasn't fixed things, really, because the lines companies now have no incentive to invest in maintenance, and the maintenance the do do (when there's a blackout -- we get 'em all the time where I am) is way piss-poor and the contractors do it in such a way as to maximise their own revenue.

For example, a few weeks ago, the power went out in a big rain/windstorm like it always does. So, Alstom (the same contracting outfit that maintains the public telephones for NZ telecom, which is the latest spectacular privatised public services failure story here) comes out to solve the immediate problem, which is the fact that some wet bamboo had blown over the three main lines servicing the whole valley, shorting us out. So they remove the one piece of bamboo causing the short. I watched them. This bit of bamboo had come off a whole stand of bamboo right next to the main lines, and there were over a DOZEN other bits of bamboo in the stand that had obviously also been blown over the same three lines -- burnt off at the same spot. I asked the Alstom guys if they could request that the stand of bamboo could be reported as the cause of repeated problems -- Answer? oh, no, that has to come from "head office."

Now, there was another contractor (different company) halfway up the road cutting down some foliage on behalf of the lines company -- foliage which had nothing to do with the problem . Funny, that. So I went and asked the tree cutter guy, there with all his gear and ladders, if he could please either cut down the stand of bamboo that was the real source of the problem, or notify "head office" (the lines company) that there was just a tad more foliage trimming that would need to be done to solve the source of the problem . No, he couldn't do that. He'd been sent out to cut down some tree branches, and by god that's what he was going to do.

Now why should either of these contracting companies do anything to solve the cause of the problem? After all, leaving the source of the problem in place assured them of ongoing work -- at top dollar . While this ate into any budget the lines company might have for other maintenance (like maybe uh, moving the 40-year-old overhead lines to a safer and more modern underground system so we don't get the spectacular exploding-transformer effect every time there's a lighting storm maybe? DUH!)

Privatisation is the cause of our blackouts, that's for sure! And it's caused the rates to go up. Worse service, higher cost, poorer maintenance.

And what's the deal? They privatised and deregulated the airline, the electric companies and the phone company -- but in each case, as a sop to the poor NZ citizen, who may have been losing an asset but was certainly getting poorer and more expensive service, they earmarked blocks of stock that could only be issued to New Zealanders.

So that some New Zealanders could have the privilege of purchasing an asset FROM THEMSELVES. They only fell for it because of this farking myth about competition leading to better service and lower cost. Yeh right.

Re:Nothing to do with deregulation

[caramuru]

The problems with the Northeast grid are well documented. Technology Review had an article, http://www.technologyreview.com/articles/fairley07 01.asp, two years ago that discussed the vulnerabilties of the Niagara-Mohawk link between Canada and NYC as well as possible solutions to the problem. Unfortunately, it takes time and a great deal of money to implement solutions to problems such as these.

Re:Nothing to do with deregulation

[dspeyer]

Or not get out.

Seriously, I don't think the power companies have been significantly harmed here. They won't lose customers, seeing as the outage was purely geographic. All bad will is directed against the power companies equally.

Let's face it: the only thing power companies compete on under deregulation is price. They have the same product, the same reliability, etc. This means the only viable business model is to cut every corner you can.

But money is the one true god, and questioning deregulation is unamerican, so we don't see a problem here, right?

Re:Nothing to do with deregulation

[nathanh]

You mean I actually have to interact with people?????

You are interacting with people. The fact that you use a computer to do so is no more disturbing than speaking to someone via a phone.

Re:Nothing to do with deregulation

[stanwirth]

And involving the government would have solved any of this how?

First of all, rather than having two different contractors, both with a profit motive for not solving the problem, you would have had basically lazy government employees that would have had it in their best interest to solve the source of the problem -- so they wouldn't get future callouts on cold rainy days. Who the heck wants to go out on a rainy day for n+1 emergency calls-- when they could schedule preventive maintenance requiring them to go outdoors during the months when it doesn't rain nearly as much.

When the government was directly involved (i.e. owned the power companies, and the telephone companies, and the national airline), there was *one* bureaucracy -- that was still ultimately accountable to the public. And the quality of service was very high.

Now there are half a dozen "state owned enterprises" (SOEs) which means the public still foots the bill, but now (being "privatised") we have absolutely no oversight, and they are accountable to their boards to make a profit, rather than directly to the people to provide a service. In the case of the lines companies and phone companies, the quality of service is directly related to the integrity of the lines themselves -- and without public feedback, there is no incentive to improve service, because the lines companies still have a monopoly. No such thing as competition there. Yet the SOEs were set up on the pretext of "providing competition" where no competition can possibly take place. It's an argument that would only appeal to a neocon ideologue.

Furthermore, because it's ex-government department employees in these SOEs that operate the SOEs but now without public oversight -- well, it's the same fat, lazy, corrupt, theiving do-nothing slobs you get in government departments, but now they can do nothing for more money and nobody but other fat, lazy, corrupt, theiving slobs --other ex-government bureaucrats--are looking over their shoulders. The public has no right to even find out what's going on---because now it is a private company.

They're more organisationally inefficient and cut more corners on service and funnel more plum contracts to their buddies now than they did when it was a government monopoly/bureaucracy-- because at least when it was a government monopoly/bureaucracy, we had some right to oversight. New Zealand has seen how the privatisation of public services gives you the worst of both the private and public sectors.

Unfortunately.

(You've got a red-tape bound beuacuracy. Governments are famous for them.)

And when the NZ government-run electricity, telephone and airlines were privatised into SOEs, the tape only got longer, redder and meaner--and more expensive.

Re:Nothing to do with deregulation

[jmorris42]

> There is arguements for both sides, but usually when a utility company
> is not deregulated, prices are cheaper, and service is better.

Kid, you are obviously not old enough to remember the bad old days of The Phone Company. Since the big breakup Long distance rates are fast approaching flat rate for everyone everywhere and local service is very affordable if you just say no to all of the optional crap they try to peddle to get their margins up. Hint: Answering machines are $20, voice mail is $5/mo, you do the math.

If you want to see what the loving hand of government does do a business, go look at Amtrack or the Post Office.

Re:Nothing to do with deregulation

[jmorris42]

> The excuse for the 1965 power outage was effectively "we didn't know."
> Obviously they know now, so "tbey didn't care" is a plausible theory.

A temporary failure of a complex system like the American power grid every few decades doesn't sound like a "I don't care" attitude to me. Sounds like imperfect systems built by imperfect humans. The engineers will study this incident and improve the system. And we will discover yet another failure mode after another couple of decades of rapid demand growth. NIMBY attitudes towards building power plants are most likely the largest contributing factor though, since had the industry been able to build new plants to keep up with demand the system wouldn't have been running so close to capacity and that isn't a problem for engineers.

Of course as a Dean supporter, brains and rational thought isn't likely to be your strong suit. Raw emotion, mostly a blind hatred of Shrub, are his draws.

Re:Nothing to do with deregulation

[nelsonal]

The problem in California was that their "market" was set up in a really bad way. The set the price for everyone based on the final bidder's bid. The reason that there was constant "maintenance" work being done was pretty simple as long as the down firm rotated and the down firm could make money by shutting down prices remained very high. There is an excellent, if a little simplistic, example of this market on Prof. Krugman's page. Whatever you think of his politics, his economic thought is generally spot on. Most of the problem keyed off of the drought in the Northwest, and rules that changed that required that certain levels of water run through for salmon runs. The dams weren't ready for either change and had to cut power by enough to allow the limited power systems of California the chance to greatly increase prices. I think the big lesson to learn here, is when you set up the rules that will create a market, you shouldn't let the groups that could be the biggest beneficiary of those rules write them without some independant expert checking.

Re:Nothing to do with deregulation

[deanj]

Yes, but it's something Arnold's far from being, which is what the implication that Curic had. What she didn't mention were things like this this article but instead when on her Democrat talking points, trying to screw him over with false implications.

Re:Nothing to do with deregulation

[allism]

Given the remarkable aplomb NYC seems to have handled this outage with, I think terrorists may be considering power grids LESS of a viable target. The residents just aren't reacting in a way that would encourage thinking that mass chaos would be triggered by a power outage (I'm talking about outside of the inconvenience of the outage itself).

I am proud of the reactions of the residents of the affected areas.

Re:Nothing to do with deregulation

[grendel_x86]

Its kinda funny, the news here (Chicago) has been harping on the fact that it cant happen here.

Apparently there were a couple of screw-ups here a couple of years ago, and Daley(Mayor) Gave them the ultimatium to fix it, or get out. The power grid here is now redundant, and made to NOT do the cascading falure thing, according to 'them'.

I was going to move East... but now i think ill stay here.

Re:Nothing to do with deregulation

[jmorris42]

> Amtrak runs efficiently, with a very small number of accidents compared
> to, say, airlines.

Compare the number of commercial aviation takoffs per year with the number of Amtrack departures. Now compare the failure rate. And lets not even consider the difference in complexity between running a train along nice straight steel rails and putting jetliners up and bringing them safely back down again.

> As far as the USPS goes, figure out a way to handle the exceedingly
> high volume of mail that goes through every facility's doors every
> day, and I'll tip my hat to you.

I haven't a clue how to do that, but FedEx and UPS would love to have a go at it.... if it weren't illegal. And that my young liberal friend is how the Post Office stays in business with their abysmal service; threaten to put any competitor in jail.

Re:Nothing to do with deregulation

[Anonymous Coward]

Add to that an unexpected increase in air-conditioner usage

It's summer. Fucking expect it.

Re:Nothing to do with deregulation

[pavera]

Only one very large problem with your logic.
Clinton deregulated the power grid, not Bush.
Power Deregulation started in 97-98 not in 00-01
so you need to check your dates before placing blame, just because the problem occurred during this presidency, doesn't mean this president created the problem.

Re:Nothing to do with deregulation

[LimeColoredSloth]

IANAE (...not an economist), but from what I've heard from an economist professor who was involved with the deregulation in california, the jist of the problem is that the transitional phase that government set up artificially restricted prices, which resulted in lowered revenue and resultant output problems. In the end, it was gov't regulation during a phase of deregulation that caused the problems.

Re:Nothing to do with deregulation

[sql*kitten]

The same for the british rail : it worked perfectly. deregulation came in and it went down in flames, late trains, dirty wagons, and dead peoples in accidents

I'm guessing you're too young to have ever actually used BR, or have clear memories of doing so. It sucked. Not quite as high-profile as modern failures, but then nothing was because the media lacked the ability it has now to actually be there as things went wrong. But it was late, and filthy, and unsafe.

The problem faced by the old BR was that it was forced to provide services where they weren't economically viable - running trains to tiny, out-of-the way villages where almost no-one used trains anyway, for example. This starved it of resources for the core infrastrucure - the busy intercity and commuter routes. And it also faced the same problem that modern train companies face, unions who refuse to link pay to performance.

Re:Nothing to do with deregulation

[sql*kitten]

The solution to every domestic energy issue must be to drill oil wells in Alaska. The problem to every foreign policy problem must be to invade a country in the gulf with large oil reserves. The problem to every economic problem must be to give stupendous tax cuts where at least 80% but hopefully as much as is possible goes to the richest of the rich, and in particular rich Texas oil-men.

It was all going so well before you went all rabid. Let me just point out:

• The solution to every domestic energy issue is not to put up windmills
  
• The solution to every foreign policy problem is not to blow up their pharmaceutical industry with cruise missiles, as Clinton did in Sudan
  
• The solution to every economic problem is not to give huge raises and generous pensions to government workers thus bankrupting your state, as Davis did in California.
  

Incidentally, of course tax cuts are going to benefit those who pay the most tax. If people who don't pay Federal income tax anyway get the money, it's not a cut but a grant. No wonder lefties can't run economies, they even struggle with simple language!

Re:Nothing to do with deregulation

[spurious cowherd]

Actually they do know.

Federal Power Commission investigators found a single faulty relay at the Sir Adam Beck Station no. 2 in Ontario, Canada, which caused a key transmission line to disconnect ("open").
This small failure triggered a sequence of escalating line overloads that quickly raced down the main trunk lines of the grid, separating major generation sources from load centers and weakening the entire system with each subsequent separation.

As town after town went dark throughout the northeast, power plants in the New York City area automatically shut themselves off to prevent the surging grid from overloading their turbines.

Re:Nothing to do with deregulation

[stan_freedom]

My wife tried to send two packages via UPS ground yesterday. She was quoted $13. She went down the road to USPS and sent them for $5. However, if I needed to get the packages sent overnight, I would have chosen UPS. If my wife was ideologically impaired, she would have only gone to UPS or she would have only gone to the USPS. However, as the original poster indicated, she thought through the problem and came to a logical decision.

The USPS fills an important role that private enterpise would never fill, by providing service even in rural areas. Think about the crappy job private enterprise has done in providing broadband to rural areas. My father's farm didn't get electricity until after WWII when the Rural Electrification Authority showed up.

Re:Nothing to do with deregulation

[doinky]

California did not refuse to construct new plants; this is a Limbaughesque lie. In fact, the predictions were that deregulation would lower the cost of power so much that nobody _wanted_ to invest in building a plant; there simply weren't any applications made during the period which deregulation was being discussed because nobody thought they would be anything but a big waste of money.

Re:Nothing to do with deregulation

[nanojath]

Concur. The myth of privatization is the myth of the "free" market in general - that competition is always and ever leading us to the best possible product at the best possible price. We all know how business actually runs. However, that doesn't necessarily mean deregulation is universally bad. I'm against it, personally, because the experience so far is that it has been implemented very poorly. But in theory, it could work - provided it is properly, pardon the irony, regulated.

It doesn't take a genius to see how an insufficiently robust and redundant power grid and poorly implemented deregulation could be synergistic. Mmm, maybe we could start getting China-style electricity in the good ol' USA.

Re:Nothing to do with deregulation

[bheerssen]

if there is place to put the blame, CNN hasn't found it yet

Oh, but they will... they will. Even if they get it wrong the first time, they can always contradict themselves later.

Re:Nothing to do with deregulation

[ealar dlanvuli]

Refusing in this sense probably means:

Arguing against building a power plant in the face of information that would lead one to think they were required.

If there was no information to say they were required, no one ever refused to build one, they just never saw the need and it never made debate.

I have to agree with the left wing poster.

Re:Nothing to do with deregulation

[arivanov]

It is a result of american dislike of mathematics and long term scientific projects.

You cannot replace mathematics with elementary computer control systems based on simple feedback. That is the reality. And the american power blackouts are one of the common illustrations given in mathematical modeling classes in most of Europe of why simple feedback systems fail.

After the big blackout of the sixties every single European country has put this task to their universities and/or specilized institutes. In all cases it was given to mathematicians, not engineers (or ended up with the mathematicians after the engineers failed).

I happen know some the people who did the modelling in three countries. It took anything between 7 and 11 years to come up with viable models as well as analysis of viable failure scenarios. The scenarious have been rolled out by the 80-90-es so we are talking 20+ development and deployment cycle.

As a result you simply cannot take out the grid like this in any European country unless the country has grown complacent and has stopped updating the models to account for change in power usage patterns.

Re:Nothing to do with deregulation

[sphealey]

Actually power companies didn't fire many engineers, the advent of deregulation made many of them quite rich and many took early retirement, especially during the tech boom. However if you are refering to those who aren't actually degreed or have their PE I guess you're right

Given that I sat in a division where 700 engineers were fired, many of them only a few months away from qualifing for lifetime health benefits, I would have to disagree with you there. And I have never heard of a "rich" electric utility engineer. One with a lot of accumulated vacation time, yes. But monetarily wealthy? Not in my experience.

sPh

Re:Nothing to do with deregulation

[doinky]

The "refuse" power of California was typically blamed on environmental regulations and NIMBYism; portraying the power debacle as a failure not of deregulation itself but of overregulation (silly environmental laws, as Limbaugh would say).

The problem with that point of view is that nobody applied to build a plant while deregulation was being discussed.

It is entirely possible that California (the state) and its local governments would have "refused" to approve any given plant which was proposed by a utility or private company, but the misleading part of your statement is that you ASSUMED they would have refused to approve; when in fact, nobody ever applied.

This is, again, because deregulation was being painted as a panacea for lowering rates; and nobody (utility or private company) wanted to risk a huge capital investment on those terms.

So again, for those keeping score, the "conservative lie" is that "California refused to build any plants" (implying that California refused a bunch of plants which were being proposed by helpful businessmen); the truth is that everybody (outside perhaps Enron) thought no new plants would be needed.

Re:Nothing to do with deregulation

[doinky]

Limbaugh _has_ said in the past that California (government) was to blame for the lack of local supply that was partially responsible for the high prices. He has _also_ said that California shouldn't have agreed to subsidize retail electricity for the end-user; but that would have been political suicide given the astronomical spikes which occurred (and which have now been shown not to be natural market forces at work; but rather, an illegal manipulation of the market by Enron et al).

Re:Nothing to do with deregulation

[Anonymous Coward]

Well...technically open markets are more efficient than government controlled markets.

However, California's electric market wasn't an open market. Also, the rules for the market were written by companies like Enron who had put wrinkles in the rules to allow them to manipulate the market.

Basically, the problem with California's "deregulation" was that three fold. First, it only allowed wholesale power to be bought and sold at the market price. The prices charged to customers were still set by the Californian Goverment. Second, the rules forced power companies to buy power on a "spot" market. In most power markets, the spot market is used to make up for short term defficiencies and not for all power consumption. This meant the power companies couldn't have long-term, stable price contracts with power generators, they had to buy power at whatever price was available at that time of day. Finally, a whole power market was created from scratch without any oversight. There was no way to catch obvious price manipulation in the market.

If any group is to blame, it is California's Legislators for allowing themselves to be coerced by Enron into creating an uncontrolled power.

Re:Nothing to do with deregulation

[Peaceful_Patriot]

Perhaps there are industries which are so important to the well being of society that they sould not be left to the private sector to run. Private companies have one all important goal: to make a profit. Perhaps the larger good of society (like building and upgrading old power plants) is more important than profit and these are constantly at odds.
I think Health Care, electricity, water, and a few other essentials should not be administered by private corporations. They must constantly weigh the common good against the bottom line. In private insustry, the bottom line will always win.

Huh?

[Henry V .009]

The rolling blackouts in California were rationing exercises. This, however, is an unplanned disaster.

Re:Huh?

[mjmalone]

Not to mention that the power needs in california were caused by witholding of power by Enron, not by deregulation.

history repeats itself

[REden]

This certainly sounds like the 1996 Great Northest Blackout.

http://blackout.gmu.edu/events/tl1965.html

Robert

It would much more responsible...

[Anonymous Coward]

...if you asked us to pass judgment on the guilt of Scott Peterson or Kobe Bryant. It's way too early to turn this into a rant against deregulation.

Fraud a significant contributing factor

[Anonymous Coward]

"California went through rolling blackouts that were largely due to a poorly-executed deregulation of that state's power industry"

Actually, there was a significant amount of fraud involved. Check it out here: http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/03/26/national /main546097.shtml

Re:Fraud a significant contributing factor

[rgmoore]

Actually, there was a significant amount of fraud involved.

Realistically, though, the deregulation and fraud were closely tied together. Under the old, regulated system, there wouldn't have been the opportunity to commit the fraud in the first place. The exact form of the deregulation, specifically the way that long-term contracts weren't allowed, was also important. Had the California Legislature done a better job on the deregulation then the fraud probably wouldn't have taken place.

That doesn't excuse the power industry, of course. The opportunity to commit fraud profitably is not an excuse for doing so. The power industry was also deeply involved in writing the deregulation legislation, so they're also partly responsible for setting up the damaging conditions in the first place. (Note that this is an example of one problem of legislative term limits; the legislators involved were inexperienced, which tends to give more influence to lobbiests and beaurocrats.)

DAMN!

[DAldredge]

The people that RUN THE FSCKING GRID do not know what went wrong and /. is posting articles asking if X caused it???

Are you insane?

Re:DAMN!

[TedCheshireAcad]

You must be new here.

Wild speculation is our business.

*Sees 4-digit UID* oh...wait

Re:DAMN!

[kzinti]

You must be new here. Wild speculation is our business.

Yeah, but not just ANY wild speculation. We can achieve wild speculation based on crazy assumptions, tortured logic, and all in the lack of a single relevant datum! Geeze... don't sell us short!

Re:DAMN!

[EmbeddedJanitor]

people that RUN THE FSCKING GRID do not know what went wrong

I worked in the power control/data aquisition field for a while and can assure you that in a complex grid it is very difficult to pin-point failures.

Consider that there are normally many redundant lines and generation points. If a generation point goes offline, then the load through the lines changes. If a line's capcacity is exceeded it trips. This increses the load through other lines and you can get run-away instability. All this shit goes down in a second or so, so figuring out where things went wrong is not easy. Figuring the *trigger* might be easy (eg. generation point failed), but at what point does the redundancy fail (ie does the system itself fails)?

To keep on top of this, most grids run constant 'what if' analysis of their network. ie. if line x or generator y trips what will happen? if load increases at point x what will happen? The analysis helps to ensure that sufficient redundancy is switched in to cover certain failures to a certain risk level.

Unfortuantely with cost cutting etc, building of new lines and upgrading often gets delayed. Thus, the opportunities for redundancy are decreased and the risk levels are increased.

BTW: It is also a hell of a task to restart a grid.

Re:DAMN!

[MegaFur]

Wild speculation is our business.

That would be an excellent slogan for slashdot.

Re:DAMN!

[Phroggy]

Kids these days, with their fancy 4-digit UIDs. Why, back in my day, wild speculation was all we had, and we were grateful. Doesn't anyone show any respect anymore?

hehehehe

Re:DAMN!

[justins98]

Okay since you worked in the industry you might be able to answer this question:

Why isn't the system set up so that when a major generator goes down and the other generators can't support the additional load, some part of the grid is immediately blacked out to reduce the load? That way only a small portion of your customers get blacked out instead of an entire region of the country.

Re:DAMN!

[EmbeddedJanitor]

Sure I can answer that question. Shitty old SCADA technology combined with higher risks.

Shitty SCADA technology: the responsiveness of the control and monitoring systems is often very slow. Many seconds, by the time the data arrives at the control centres, the lines have tripped automatically. When shit happens you get many events (data overload) and knowing which ones to respond to is difficult. [Example: Three mile island: Each event gets logged to a printer. So many events were triggered that the printer was hacklogged three hours within a minute].

The mighty buck: to save money, the networks are run with less redundancy and at higher risk levels. This means that you lose control (time/space to respond) and the consequences of a failure are more ugly.

Re:DAMN!

[HiThere]

Be aware that there can be multiple layers of "causes". At one level the cause may be "the insulation on some wires failed and a short developed across the coils of a transformer".

OK. But why?

OK. But after the last New York blackout, there were many promisses that new switches were going to be emplaced that would automatically shutdown connections to large areas that were failing. This doesn't seem to have happened. Did the switches fail, or were they never installed.

OK. But I heard that there was this computer model of the entire electrical system that was being built, which would be able to examine it's sensors an from a log of failures would be able to instantly report on what the cause had been, and where it had occured. Did the model fail? Is there some reason it isn't being used?

Ok. But...

Some of these could be answered immediately (by those with knowledge), some require on site investigation. Some are obvious without any statement, e.g., clearly the super power grid model isn't being used, or they could immediately pinpoint the problem. But why? (Probably it takes a super-computer to run it, and they can't afford to have it running most of the time...if it actually works, that is.)

We will have to wait and see a bit

[Zachary Kessin]

But I don't think de-regulation is a major part of this. The california problems were cronic problems that went on over a long period of time.

As far as it is known now (3 hrs into the event) this is a one time deal due to equipment failure. In the summer due to Air Conditioning and other things power grids run very near the max so if something major fails then you are running much above 100%, this starts blowing breakers and shutting things down. The radio just said in 3 minutes 21 plants shut down, so once things start to fail and they can fail fast.

Re:We will have to wait and see a bit

[Dastardly]

The california problems were cronic problems that went on over a long period of time.

What no one seems to talk about is the 1100MW nuclear reactor that could not produce power during the time due to refueling and then a busted turbine. That is what put the production on the hairy edge of demand, and then by gaming the system other producers were able to extend their profits.

Dastardly

Re:We will have to wait and see a bit

[LinuxHam]

The california problems were cronic problems

cronic? Yeah, I guess the power failures did happen at regular intervals.

Re:We will have to wait and see a bit

[Kevin DeGraaf]

1100MW nuclear reactor

Would that be one point one jigga-watts?!?

Re:We will have to wait and see a bit

[bigpat]

"this is a one time deal due to equipment failure."

equipment failure doesn't explain why 50 million people were without electricity. This is a failure of the entire system. Problems in any grid system need to be isolated not propagated over a larege portion of the continent. This is more akin to a design flaw, or a overall management failure.

On this one I vote that this is a design flaw, there were far too many people saying that this was the way it was supposed to work coming out right after this happened... If cascading failures are a design feature, then the design is flawed.

I would go further to suggest that the grid system in general is a bad idea inherently, people need to build generating capacity near the people that use it, not transmit it over thousands of miles of lines in an interconnected system that runs near capacity. This should be similar to how the Internet operates, if the Internet backbones are running over 50% capacity that is a problem, since you are not providing redundancy if that is the case. Same thing here, the immediate problem is that the rest of the system was probably operating near capacity which means that there is no redundancy. In this case the solution is either to isolate parts of the system or add capacity. Or this is going to happen again soon.

There *will* be a test

[dfay]

"We support deregulation 100 percent..." (N-M spokesman, 1997; notes N-M wanted to sell generators and "concentrate on the transmission and distribution of energy" -- did it?);
N-M made some bad investments and is scheduled to request a rate hike (did it?);
and N-M's own website says: "Deregulation [has] changed the laws and regulations governing the electricity industry to promote competition..." (how so?).


Also, show your work.

Pencils down!

Damnit, look - California was NEVER deregulated!

[raehl]

Just because a politician calls it something doesn't make it true.

CA got messed up because their power system was RE-regulated with a set of stupid rules that certain less-than-ethical companies took advatage of. It was the REGULATIONS put in place that caused everything to fall apart, not a lack of them.

Fraud was a contribution factor in California...

[DaveJay]

"California went through rolling blackouts that were largely due to a poorly-executed deregulation of that state's power industry"

Actually, there was a significant amount of fraud involved. Check it out here: http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/03/26/national /main546097.shtml [cbsnews.com]

rumours?

[forgetmenot]

Yes. Let's turn slashdot into a rumour-mill.
Oh wait...

let's be polite...

[Anonymous Coward]

i think that we should hold on this discussion topic until those from the north east coast can join in. everyone please stop posting.

Re:Power Outage - More of the same

[Xerithane]

I guarantee you that if a power outage happened anywhere OTHER than New York City, the mass media outlets would barely be covering this event at ALL.

Like the Nevada power outage?

I am sick of the NYC bias we see in the media. Self-importance is so passe. Please make this story go away, I give CNN and Fox News a big "OFFTOPIC" (To their credit, Fox is now reporting the story that some terrorist mastermind yadda yadda yadda has been capture).

Sorry, this is national news. The Nevada power outtage was national news. And CNN has been reporting the Al Qaeda capture for several hours.

Re:Power Outage - More of the same

[SubjunctiveSam]

Your problem is tv. I get my (non-nerd news) from news.bbc.co.uk and my subscription to the Wall Street Journal. If you give it a try, I think you'll find that you're disgusted a lot less by the BBC than you are with CNN. It's really not very UK-centric either. It's very world-centric, if you know what I mean, and I think does a better job of covering American news than CNN does.

The real question

[Pompatus]

I like the last bit in that title line, "Is there a story?". A friend of mine from Bangladesh recently moved back there. I was chatting with him on ICQ when I noticed every 2-3 minutes he'd go offline and come back. He told me that the power kept going out. It is a regular occurance, and the external modem he was using to connect to the net wasn't on the backup power system.

Here in New Orleans, we lose power about once a week for 10-20 minutes (more frequent if it rains, also depends on where in the city you are). Sometimes, power is out for a few hours. It's just a way of life.

I realize that it's impressive that such a wide area recieved a blackout, but really, is this such a big deal? Everything should be fixed soon. People just need to relax. Maybe GO OUTSIDE!!! :)

Re:The real question

[Poeir]

Go outside? But there's this weird kind of light. It doesn't seem to make any kind of buzzing sound at all. I don't trust it.

Re:The real question

[analog_line]

Have you eer been to the Northeast? New York in particular? We live on electricity up here. It's worse than crack, refined sugar, and nicotine combined. It's like oxygen. No power, and life stops dead in it's tracks. No power and the elderly will start falling over dead within an hour in the heat of a New York summer. Go outside? In New York City? In the heat of summer? Are you MAD? I mean yeah, people are doing it because they HAVE to, but once the power comes back on, you bet your ass they're going to be inside where it's safe, and likely a hell of a lot cooler.

In the Northeast, if we started regularly losing power for 10-20 minutes once or twice a week, political careers would be ended in quick succession until someone fixed the problem, that or the region's economy would start crumbling because businesses couldn't keep reliable power happening, and people would get sick of dealing with regular power outages.

New Zealand

[SimonInOz]

In March, 1998, Auckland - New Zealand's major city (though not the capital, that's Wellington, in case you need to know) - had a FIVE week blackout.
This was after the system was privatised. They cut back on maintanance and instead of three main feeds, they had one. It blew up.
Five weeks with no power. In a major(-ish - hey, I live in Sydney) city. Incredible.
If any city NOT privatised has suffered such an indignity I have not heard about it.
So I blame privatisation - the accountants tend to outrank and overrule the engineers (heard that one before? Remember Challenger?)

Re:New Zealand

[blake182]

A friend of mine wrote up a rather entertaining summary of the Great Auckland blackout. Hope they don't mind the Slashdotting. http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut001/misc/mercury .txt

Re:New Zealand

[automatix]

After doing some research on this for an undergrad paper, it turns out that it was a combination of bad luck and accounting/management.

The major 110kV CBD feeder lines had their lifetimes "reassessed" and it was decided that there were still plenty of years left in them. So they took their time replacing them (it was underway when the crisis started), but it turns out their lifetimes were more like the original specifications (funny that).

One major 110kV line failed while one was down for maintenance, which lead to the failure of another two 110kV lines a few days later due to overloading. It didn't help when some monkey roadworker dug thru one of the smaller 40kV feeders that were helping prop up the cbd either.

Then it got fun - rolling morning/afternoon blackouts, companies moving to offices out in the suburbs, temporary overhead lines erected running 20km to one of the other distribution yards, generators everywhere...

Deregulation hadn't been completed at that stage - the new lines/distribution company in Auckland which came in to being a year or so after the crisis is taking their job very seriously and has done a lot to improve uptime and redundancy.

Rob :)

Re:New Zealand

[RodgerDodger]

In a major(-ish - hey, I live in Sydney) city

Just for the record: Sydney is the 31st largest city in the world, with a population just above 4 million, according to this site.

The US has only one city larger, and that's the Big Apple (with LA coming second, at about 3.8 million); there are 9 US cities with a population exceeding one million.

The population of the greater Auckland region is just above 1 million. So yes, it's a major city (and yes, I know that administratively it's actually 4 cities)

Re:New Zealand

[stanwirth]

SIMON: They cut back on maintanance and instead of three main feeds, they had one. It blew up.

GAV: Sorry but you're wrong. Go read the final report.

Give it up, Gav. You're playing the same game of misdirection-at-the-details the government played.

The bottom line is, even taking your technical details into account, corners were cut on maintenance, and as a result, most of the 1.5 million people in Auckland either had no power at work, or no power at home -- or both . Rather than fixing the problem within a week, after a week it got much worse . Many companies went out of business -- so even if you weren't working in head office downtown, and didn't live in the blackout area -- if you worked for one of these businesses, you were still affected.

Furthermore, you can't compare Auckland to a city of 1.5 mil in the US, and you certainly can't compare the Auckland CBD to a city of 300K -- Pittsburgh?. Auckland is the New York of New Zealand, and the Auckland CBD is the MANHATTAN of New Zealand--not the Rochester or Pittsburgh. In terms of economic impact on the whole country , the Auckland CBD is where the national offices of most corporations and banks are located.

After the blackout, both Coca Cola corporation and IBM decided to move the bulk of their Australasian operations to Sydney. Now how does that affect everybody purchasing IBM gear who now have to get on the horn to OZ every time a new APAR is annouced? All the New Zealand IBM employees? All of the New Zealand employees of Coca-Cola? These weren't the only two major corps to flee. And then there were all the small shops in the CBD that went out of business. It was like a ghost town.

Another thing that makes it just cynical and callous in the extreme to dismiss this as "only" between 300,000 and 1.5 million people were affected is that -- this is between a tenth and nearly a half of all the people in the country!!! So it's comparable, in terms of the percentage of citizens affected -- to most of the US eastern seaboard going out. for months .

Kudos to Jamie for using Google cache for NM site

[caferace]

As a subscriber, I saw this being prepared for posting, and dropped him an email saying it would be a bad idea to slashdot them in the middle of this. Granted, the public site may not be linked to anything internal, but it's good that they changed the links from Niagara Mohawks site to the Google cache.

Now they just have to deal with Google. ;)

There's a difference

[sxltrex]

There's a difference between designed rolling blackouts and catastrophic cascade events that cause blackouts (California had one of these as well, years before the rolling blackouts). Neither is directly caused by deregulation.

The rolling blackouts were caused by energy companies gaming the market and withholding power in order to drive up prices. Cascade events are purely accidental and difficult to predict due to the complexity of the grid. It's like a butterfly causing a hurricane on the other side of the world, or something like that.

Re:I say...

[TedCheshireAcad]

How can I steal data if all the computers are off?

Ohhh, you mean stealing in real life.

That ain't gonna happen, there's natural light out there. You know what natural light does to a well CRT-baked skin.

This happened in 1965 too

[young-earth]

On November 9, 1965 this happened before. Maybe not exactly the same thing, but from roughly the same area, and cascading in what sounds like (based on preliminary reports) in the same way.

Deregulation was not in effect then; so if there is a strong parallel between the cases, it's then doubtful that it was due to dereg.

When more facts are in, we will know.

Can't survive without electricity? WTF?!

[Anonymous Coward]

"Everyone needs electricity," says Toth. "You can't be without it.

That is just a goddamn stupid comment.

I am not an outdoor person. I did go hiking with my father when I was a kid, but since I've lived most of my life in various cities and spend most of my waking hours basking in the cold glow of CRT tubes. Still I do know how to survive without electricity: how to light a campfire, build an adequate shelter, boil water so that it's safe to drink and cook and dry food on fire. How do I know it, I ran a rehearseal for before Y2K (yeah, go ahead and laugh but better safe than sorry) and went outdoors for a night. Just me and my rucksack.

Goddamn moron. "You can't be without it" my ass.

How the power grid works...

[Zachary Kessin]

In case people are wondering how the power grid works, here is an article on howstuffworks.com on how
The power grid works

Other problems with the power grid?

[karpenl]

Maybe regulation/deregulation is not as much the issue as redundancy in the power grid. I would think that it would make sense for there to be enough reduancy and backup systems in a power grid as large as the one described so that black outs such as this one do not occour.

On the other hand, the need for redundancy, or possibly for areas to draw power from other sources is expensive, and does not fit the model of a profitable buisness. Regulation could help by fueling money into redundancy and requireing a certian ammount of backup systems in place so that major black outs occour. Also, as far as I understand, the power grids is large cities have not grown to keep up with demand in said cities making blackouts or atleast brown outs more plausable.

Then again, this is only news because black outs of the magnitude happen so rarely. In all likelyhood this was a freak accident on the level that will not happen again for another 30 years or so. Hopefuly the people in charge of both the power grid in most areas as well as most major metropolitan areas have backup plans for when events such as this one occour. One can only hope.

The problem is it WASN'T deregulated

[digrieze]

I just saw the first political spin on this mess. Bill Richardson, the Former Energy Secretary, was on CNN saying we have a "third world power grid". What he didn't say and the CNN sycophant wouldn't bring up is that while he was in office the Clinton administration turned down every request to build new or upgrade existing power stations. The theory of the grid is that when one part of the grid needs power it can be shunted from areas with excess capacity. Just as in California (who also refused to build new capacity) THERE IS NO EXCESS CAPACITY! When one part is at capacity, they all are.

Quite frankly, we're a living in a tech world now. We need the power. Until we stop politically cowtowing to "eco-nuts", "consumer advocates". and other neo-luddites this is going to keep happening.

Re:Power Outage - More of the same

[gilroy]

Blockquoth the poster:

I am sick of the NYC bias we see in the media.

Well, as an ex-patriate New Yorker, I am sick of the middle America bias we see in the media's coverage of culture. This is news and, whining aside, it's bigger news because it happened in NYC. Tough. New York is the financial capital of this nation and incidentally of the world, too. What's there? Hmmm, ignoring the 8 million residents and 5 million daily commuters, we also have the New York Stock Exchange, and NASDAQ, and one of the Fed Reserve Banks, and, oh yeah, the United Nations. These make it news.

If a power outage had roiled through London and an equivalent land area, it would also be news. Losing power in the desert -- not so much news.

Sorry!!!

[Chester K]

Sorry everyone, this one was my fault... I accidentally plugged my toaster oven in the same outlet as my microwave. :(

There is no such animal

[b-baggins]

It has been my observation that when the government says they're going to deregulate an industry, what they really mean is they are going to re-regulate it.

The California energy "deregulation" included such wonderful non-regulatory freedoms as: Prohibition on construction of new power plants, Purchasing power at a higher, mandated rate, and selling at a lower mandated rate, etc.

Re:Damnit, look - California was NEVER deregulated

[commodoresloat]

CA got messed up because their power system was RE-regulated with a set of stupid rules that certain less-than-ethical companies took advatage of. It was the REGULATIONS put in place that caused everything to fall apart, not a lack of them.

So let's see... you think these "less-than-ethical companies" would be better behaved with fewer rules? That makes a lot of sense. You're blaming the regulations because companies found ways to abuse them. How about a little blame for the companies that abuse them?

Thunderstorm US side of the border 19:35

[Ummite]

Last theory from Canadian governement is a thunderstorm near the border of canada-us, US-side, that cause the blackout.

Re:Thunderstorm US side of the border 19:35

[ruprechtjones]

Both sides of the border confirmed that lightning struck the Niagra plant. It's all ready to be switched back on, but they're spreading the message (well, trying to) for everybody to turn appliances and lights OFF before they crank back up the power.

Power drains required for Nuclear plants...

[Erik_]

What you need most is that Nuclear plants have ways to keep working when their connections to the Grid are broken. If they can't output electricity to the grid, the plants have to power down, because the electricity can't go anywhere. And Nuclear plants will take more than a few hours to cool down enought to be started up again.
At least 9 nuclear plants are power-down right now, it's all that electricity that won't be able to rejoin the grid fast enough to normalize the situation.

Yes, in some ways

[jhines]

In a deregulated environment, the interconnection of the systems becomes even more critical, since more power is being moved between companies and networks.

Without a well regulated grid in operation, the market in power breaks down, just like it did today.

Speculation is pointless...

[YrWrstNtmr]

At this point in time...the situation is still being evaluated. *we don't know*

More importantly, the people that run the power grid *do not know*.

Some poor schmuck on the front lines probably knows...but he ain't talking yet.

Re:Power Outage - More of the same

[hondo77]

At least it's a break from hearing about the recall in California (and I live here).

CA rolling blackouts not due to deregulation

[geekee]

"California went through rolling blackouts that were largely due to a poorly-executed deregulation of that state's power industry. "

The CA power crisis was a direct result of the failure to build a single power plant in CA for the last 15 years. The fact that the state was playing around with a half-assed form of deregulation in which the price to the consumer was still regulated is a coincidence. The fact is, CA wasn't able to supply enough power for itself, so was forced to by power on the open market.

Re:CA rolling blackouts not due to deregulation

[Anonymous Coward]

You are deeply misinformed. California's power outages weren't due to genuine insufficient power supply, but instead due to a set of games Enron played with the system there to reduce supply and make the state desperate enough to pay vastly inflated prices for energy. this page gives a short list of the various tricks used, taken directly from Enron memos. To make the various plans ("Death Star", "Fat Boy", and "Richochet") even more profitable, Enron ordered its powerplant owning subsidiaries to take several of their plants offline for wholly unnecessary "maintenance", rendering power in California scarce.

Search on google for "death star" enron for more information on this -- there's a LOT of sources on it. Except in the event of Enron-style malfeasance California had more than enough power plants to provide continual service, and even if they had built more Enron would have taken just enough of them offline to make the state desperate.

IMO it's an absolute travesty how little national attention the Enron "Death Star" plan received, even after Ken Lay and friends channeled all the profits to their private accounts and let the empty shell of Enron fall over. As far as I can tell, the only places it got reported at all were local California and Texas newspapers.

Deregulation a contributor to that fraud...

[poptones]

And so it goes. Widespread deregulation of public infrastructure is going to be remembered as a phenomenal mistake. People with way too fucking much money and power are driving this phenom, and only a fool believes they're doing it out of some touchy feely public compassion.

They used to point at the airline industry - remember? "Oh, look how great the airline industry did after it was deregulated!" Yeah, well, so now the taxpayers get to bail them out to the tune of tens of billions of dollars. Might as well have subsidized them from the beginning...

Re:Deregulation a contributor to that fraud...

[leviramsey]

That's part and parcel with capitalism: companies go out of business.

Indeed, it is that capacity for creative destruction that gives capitalism it's power and its benefits. For instance, Southwest and JetBlue are both doing fabulously well relative to their fellow airlines. Neither could have gotten to this point without deregulation (Southwest would have still been a small regional airline and JetBlue wasn't even a glimmer in someone's eye). Why are they successful? They identified what the core of the business is (getting people from point A to point B) and, in their own ways, came up with a better way to do it than anybody else (in Southwest's case, not heavily unionizing, picking one aircraft and using it for everything, and cutting non-essential services to their customers while cutting the prices). It's not surprising that their competitors, with byzantine, adversarial labor relations, too much overhead, and extremely complex networks couldn't compete.

But then they start to show glimmers of possible failure (which everyone could see coming), and, because they're job machines and have wealthy shareholders, both parties fall over themselves to bail them out.

The best thing to do is to let them fail. What then happens? You get a shitload of planes, hangars, and airport berths on the market. Some of those are obsolete (indeed, Southwest has the newest fleet in the airline industry; their average plane is about 7 years old, versus 25 years for a few airlines), but a lot are saleable. The demand for air travel hasn't gone away; investors will be lining up to buy the planes to start new airlines and coming up with new ways of doing business.

A similar thing is happening with telecom. Investors are snapping up the fiber from bankrupt telcos at fractions of the original cost and using those networks to offer remote backup services and enable (eventually) new broadband technologies. New businesses, with smarter management, are taking over assets of those who failed and improving things.

Alternate power

[bigjnsa500]

After this incident I think all of us need to consider some kind of other power source than electricity. For about 10k you can get enough panels to power a small house. For another 5-10k, you'll have enough power to sell *back* to your local power company. You can easily get your money back in 1-2 years.

Personally, I spent $800 on a moderate 10w solar cell, cables, power invertor, deep cycle battery and assorted switches to power an outdoor shed. It would have cost twice that much to run electricity to it. Now I have enough power to run all my power tools and a few lights.

They've behave better because they'd have to.

[raehl]

California put some rather peculiar rules in place regarding how much should be paid to move power at certain times. What ended up happening is that companies were able to take advantage of these fees by moving power around unnecessarily and at peak times, forcing the state and other consumers of the power to pay more. It was the rough power equivalent of having your cab driver take you from O'hare to the Loop via Milwaukee.

So yes, in this case, eliminate the rules that dictated that the price of power was based on the competition for transmission lines at a particular time (something the people controlling the transmission lines could easily inflate by moving power around unnecessarily) and the companies would not have been able to misbehave. The regulations gave the power companies the ability to set the prices for what they were selling.

So much for private entreprise.

[Pig Hogger]

40 years ago, Quebec nationalized all power-procuction and put it under Hydro-Quebec's umbrella. The State-owned corporation has never since failed to yield enormous profits (all going to the Quebec government - that's so much we won't have to pay in taxes), yet is providing the cheapest electricity in the world.

Private-entreprise zealots quickly lose steam whenever you point Hydro-Quebec at them as a shining example of profitable State ownership.

Re:So much for private entreprise.

[Anonymous Coward]

Quebec has huge amount of cheap hydro power.
Quebec produces more power than it consumes, it is near a large energy consumer US east coast.

Quebec goverment does not permit anyone to build powerlines to transmit Newfoundland's labador hydor power to the US across Quebec, instead they buy the power at cost and sell it to the US.

Quebec's goverment ripping of Newfoundland and having lots of natural resources is not the shinning example you think it is.

Kamil

Re:So much for private entreprise.

[Anonymous Coward]

Quebec does have one of the best electrical systems around - even discounting the ice storm :). Electricity is not simply a commodity like milk or eggs because it is highly inelastic, it has significant barriers to entry and it has very significany economies of scale.

1) Inelastic - demand does not flucuate tremendously due to price. While higher prices due lead to decreased demands and energy conservation, electricity is almost a need - unlike eggs which competes against food - for heating, cooling, lighting and computers. So having electricity out of government hands can lead to tremendous gouging - look at all the examples of unsuccessful degregulation attempts.

2) Barriers to entry - additional competitors face tremendous barriers to entry. Plants and transmission lines are incredibly expensive and governments are the only ones that can build and invest in the system without an immediate payback demanded by investors. Plus, in a truly free electicity market, switching providers would be incredibly expensive because each provider would have their own lines to your house. That is why in most deregulation systems the supply of electricity is deregulated but tranmission is still a government monopoly.

3) Economies of scale - Hydro-Quebec, being the only supplier, can exploit huge economies of scale to provide electricity at a cheaper price. Multiple electricity generators would split the market and increase the average unit cost simply due to a smaller economy of scale. Sometimes - like public transit - monopolies are better (even government ones)

It's all the Sims' fault!!!

[slouie]

If the damn Sims would simply accept paying more taxes, I could build the nuclear plant and maybe get a stadium too. It would make them all happier too!

Why Is My Power Plant Aging So Quickly?

Hmm. Night approaches....

Why Am I Getting Riots?

Calm down... don't forget Occum's Razor

[EmagGeek]

Look, people. There isn't anything or anyone to blame for this.

The Niagra Mohawk power grid serves the area in question. The way a power grid works is that there is a mesh of generation stations that are all interconnected by high-voltage transmission lines, 480kV on up. Each generation station has a primary service area and one or more (usually more) entry/exit stations where energy can either enter or exit the primary service area, depending on what they're telling the control system to do.

A network of generation stations makes up a grid, and at the boundary of a grid, there are similar entry/exit stations.

All generators, whether they be nuclear, hydro, wind, or whatever, have TONS of safety interlocks that engage at various points during abnormal conditions to prevent catastrophic failure. One of these interlock behaviors is to shut down and remove the generator from the grid in the event of an overload.

The likely sequence of events in this situation is that there was a failure at one of the generators in the N-M grid that resulted in the shutdown of that generator. What happens when a generator shuts down is that all of the entry/exit points flip to "entry" mode to allow neighboring generators to take up the slack. Most generator companies have agreements with their neighbors to buy however much electricity they need at whatever the current price is, without acknowledgement, when one of these shutdown events happens.

Anyway, once the initial generator shut down and the entry/exit stations flipped to entry mode, the neighboring generators were unable to take up the slack, so they in turn shut down as well. Then, a domino effect set in until it reached the boundary of the N-M grid, or when someone at the operator station woke up and hit the red button that prevents the transfer stations from automatically flipping to "entry" mode.

Keep in mind that it didn't necessarily have to be an overload that caused it - a generator can shut down for a number of reasons.

This all could have been a control system failure, an operator error, or some other unfortunate combination of events that happened to lead to a catastrophic grid failure.

Re:Calm down... don't forget Occum's Razor

[shlashdot]

nonsense. If you live adjacent to a power plant that would be working just fine except for a sorry-arsed control system that can't limit the load to that plant, you would justifiably be miffed. Think about it. It's like chaining a bunch of boats together so they get there at the same time. If one of them sinks? oops we didn't think of putting a release on the chain...

Re:Calm down... don't forget Occum's Razor

[The Famous Druid]

I agree with pretty-much everything you said, except for
There isn't anything or anyone to blame for this.

Until recently, I worked in the electricity biz, programming the control systems you mentioned, and I suspect the system failed in precisely the way you describe, but you haven't asked why it happened.

It happened because the system was running so close to capacity that when one component fails, the neighboring components are not able to take up the slack. This is very poor design, and in the good old days engineers built enough redundancy into the system to prevent it.

These days, of course, the bean-counters have far more control of the industry than the engineers, so they don't "waste" money on back-up systems, it's far cheaper (for the suppliers, not for their customers) to just let the system fail every now and then.

That's no way to run an essential service, and the politicians who allow it to happen need to be taken out behind the wood-shed and given an attitude re-alignment they'll never forget.

Re:This is poor journalism

[bigjnsa500]

Oh cmon!! Its natural for journalism to delve into a story for sheer *thrill*, THEN report the facts after the fact on page 18 in small print three days later.

Re:I say...

[TedCheshireAcad]

Thanks god idiots like you don't receive karma for those "jokes" anymore.

Yep. That's why I got modded up. Twice.

So Much For The Reliability Of Private Power

[berwyn]

I posted this in the ealier article about the power crisis. This thread didn't exist then, but it seams more appropriate here.

I live in British Columbia, west coast of Canada, and we have a publicly owned power company called BC Hydro. However our provincial government, which is very pro business, has been making moves to privatize this public utility by selling off portions to private companies.
The most recent branch to be sold off was to Accenture, a Bahamas based (i.e. tax shelter) spin off of Enron. If you don't remember Enron, here are some highlights: one of the biggest bankruptcies in US history, massive corporate crime, a major contributor to the California energy crisis due to power brokering, a major political contributor to one George W. Bush's election campaign and one of the script writers of Bush's current US Energy policy.
One of the major arguments of our provincial government's privatization campaigns is that companies can run these utilities far better and at lower cost to the consumer than can public institutions.
Well, I'm wondering, how many of you the east cost have seen your power bills going down. Don't every one raise there hands at once.
Now the reason I point this out is I see a direct coloration between the movement to have Open Source Software being deployed in public infrastructure Vs. Closed Source, and Public run utilities, such as water and electricity, Vs. Private Market Driven Operation.
I think most people who frequent Slashdot don't need an explanation in why an OSS solution should be the only standard for a democratic government. Just as I think they can see the rationale for publicly accountable organization running the fundamental utilities that support society, consisting of both Business and the People. However I think no one really understands the extent that Business now has in dictating government policy, and shifting that policy from serving the people to creating profit at the expense of the People, You and Me, whether we are American, Canadian or any other nationality. Health care is a prime example. The Struggle between Linux and Microsoft in India is another.

It's about votes....

[EmbeddedJanitor]

Why are so many US cities and states broke? Upping taxes to fix the problem is not a vote winner.

Same thing with power, personal debt and quarterly reporting. Doubling the cost of electricity to expand the grids capability or rationing power (no aircon) will not be well received. A short-term view will always win over a long-term view if there is some pain involved.

Moment of silence

[abe ferlman]

Let's all have a moment of silence for all the linux and *bsd boxen whose legendary uptimes were mercilessly snuffed out by this service interruption. Some clung to their UPS's bravely until every ampere of juice had been drained.

They will be missed, and we will build even longer uptimes to replace them.

Re:Moment of silence

[Martin Blank]

Pfft. If they were TRUE geeks, they would have had a backup generator to provide power, 24 hours of fuel, and contracts with at least two companies to provide additional fuel.

Not that I have any of this. :P

Re:Moment of silence

[erpbridge]

I live in the affected area (Northeast US) and have the same method of heating as 60% of this area: Home heating oil.

I've half considered trying to find a generator that would tap into my home heating oil tank for fuel. Hey, a 300 gallon tank, even half full at 150 gallons, would power a generator for at least a couple weeks, right? Also, it would power my furnace (which requires electric ignition to operate the spark plug.)

Of course, if power were out for a couple weeks, I'd have a little more to worry about than just generating my own.

Re:Moment of silence

[AntiOrganic]

True, but Verizon's entire fiber network was down in the Northeast. You'd be really lucky to get online even if your computer had power from a generator.

Re:Moment of silence

[grendel_x86]

The one good thing... there has been FAR LESS trolling since this started... im guessing the most trolling /.ers are from the North-East USA/ South-East Canada.

Re:Moment of silence

[clone22]

Real geeks use natural gas generators.

Re:Moment of silence

[eam]

Just buy yourself a diesel/electric locomotive. It should be able to turn that home heating oil into electricity for you.

Seriously, it is possible that your home heating oil is the same thing as diesel fuel. It all depends on what additives have been mixed in. I did a quick search and found this:

Diesel generators

If you can ignore the fact that they're trying to sell you something, you might notice that there are quite a few portable diesel generators which could possibly be powered using your home heating oil.

Re:Moment of silence

[rsax]

I know that your comment was meant to be humourous but on a more serious note, perhaps this event could serve as a wake up call to all the people who needlessly consume more than they have to (Yeah right, I can hope can't I?). I know so many geeks who run non-critical computers 24/7 which are chugging along just for the fact that they want to see those high uptime numbers. We all know *BSD/Linux is stable. You don't need to suck up power (pollute more by making fossil fuel power plants work extra hard) to prove something that's already obvious.

It went something like this...

[raehl]

One of the costs in getting power is that power's distribution - transmission lines cost money, and moving power over transmission lines thus costs money. California, as part of their "deregulation", put in place a system where the price of wholesale power was affected by not only the amount of power, but how the power got from point A to point B. The real pitfall with the rule was that it ALSO took into account supposed congestion on transmission lines - prices were set higher for wholesale power delivered when there was apparently a lot of people wanting to transmit power over given lines.

The obvious pitfall being that power line congestion could be artificially created - Enron (and others) took to moving power around more than necessary, creating more congestion, and thus artificially inflating the prices local power providers had to pay to get power over transmission lines.

Even worse, not only did the "deregulation" regulations allow Enron et. al. to artificially inflate the price of wholesale power, they ALSO prevented local power providers (the guys who actually delivered the power to your house) from raising the prices to make up for it, forcing them to sell power at a loss.

This could only go on so long before the local power companies started to run out of money, at which point they just said "Screw it", and instead of delivering power at a loss that they couldn't pay for anyway, they just stopped delivering power at all.

Re:Damnit, look - California was NEVER deregulated

[Elwood P Dowd]

You are obviously correct in that California's power system was never deregulated. It was re-regulated in a manner that all the politicians and relevant corporate stooges called "deregulation." And that doesn't necessarily make it so.

Of course, so long as my power company can force me to give them an easement to put power lines on my property, they will not be, technically, deregulated. So long as they can use public resources, they will not be, technically, deregulated.

That suggests to me that it is completely impossible (due to political reality or physical reality is unimportant) for the US to actually deregulate it's power industry. All we will ever get is "re-regulation." Unfortunately, all the politicians (liberal & conservative alike) called this "deregulation." All the media called it "deregulation." All the think-tanks called it "deregulation." If the public doesn't have any way to know about the true consequences of legislation that's this complex... we'll get fucked every time.

I guess my point is... ok, no point. Still. What do you think we should do about the power industry? If you want *real* deregulation, then you're going to have to explain how the hell you'd define *real* deregulation. And before you ever passed your law, you'd get a bunch of politicians and corporations in there fucking things up.

The one source that I want someone to dig up for me is this: a pre-shortage, pre-"deregulation" article suggesting that the California "deregulation" legislation was the wrong kind of deregulation. Then I'll know who to follow for the right kind of local political coverage for the rest of my life.

If you can find that, I'll kiss you on the mouth. (You can kiss my girlfriend if you'd prefer.)

Movie of burning power transformer

[sploxx]

Actually, I found this a long time ago and think it is somewhat related... a movie of an exploding power transformer:

http://205.243.100.155/frames/mpg/XfrmBlast1.mpg

(from www.teslamania.com)

California never deregulated!

[kwiqsilver]

The law that some called a deregulation law in California did not deregulate the power companies.
Electricity transmission is (and was during the blackouts) controlled by the Independent System Operator, which is a CA government agency. In addition to controlling the flow of electricity, it also implements price caps and production limits. It also refused to let power companies build new stations.
How exactly is that "deregulation"?
True deregulation (which politicians will fight to avoid, because it takes away their beloved political power) is the only thing that will prevent crises like these.
We have a similar problem in Phoenix this week. One of the two gasoline pipelines into the city was shut down, because of a problem (when inspectors said it could run at 80% with no risk). So now we have gas shortages and inflated prices.
Companies with a government regulated monopoly provide piss-poor service, because they have no competition. Government babysitters don't increase the quality of a service, only the price. Competition imcreases the quality while decreasing the price.

Re:Un-fucking-believable.

[jvonk]

Aha! However, no entity has a 'right' for their revenue model to be successul. If I were to block slashdot ads--and therefore they were denied income--it is not an ethical (or even moral) problem for anyone involved.

Since I am not under contract regarding their revenue model when I read slashdot, I am not bound to ensure they make money. This is the heart of entreprenurial success: the business owner has to ensure that their income model is practical and profitable.

Your perspective leads to the network pigopolists claiming that I am stealing if I watch a show and flip channels during a commercial. What if they made their commercials interesting to watch, instead?

In summary: "the success of their revenue model is their problem, not mine."

NO, this started long ago...

[TheAwfulTruth]

It USED to be that people thought ahead. It was normal to keep the electrical capacity at 30% above usage peaks. This way parts of the system could go down for planed and unplaned maintenence and there would not be black outs. It USED to be very well planned.

In the last 30 or so years. It has become harder to build new plants, coupled with a lazy engineering and planning malaize that has come over nearly every part of the civil engineering branches of local and federal government. This left the west with less than 5% of capacity over peak usage (It's still about that today).

Obviously the same back east. So a single failure anywhere cannot possibly be taken up by anyone else.

A complete lack of far range thinking/planning over the last 30 years has brought us to this. Here in the west we have a similar crisis involving water that is very close to blowing up in our faces.

We had it too good for too long. Everyone "forgot" what it took to make it that good in the first place :(

Oh well.

MWAH HA HA BLASTER STRIKES AGAIN!!!

[DCowern]

I wonder if the systems at the power plants had DCOM enabled.... :-)

LINUX FOR THE NUKES!!!

You cannot regulate greed!

[ratfynk]

There are eco nuts, but American LostWages (Los Vegas) style power usage is also largely to blaim. Conservation measures have largely been ignored by the republican "pigs in paradise" attitude toward resources. This goes for all forms of resources. You want it all right now, and the concequences of blind consumerism are starting to hit home! Canada tried a wage and price control sceme and it failed also. The upset of Kensian market forces are the result of rabid consumerism and no way to regulate. Cost is the only way to reward conservation and punish gluttony. There are going to be power price increases and the pigs will howl till they finally get the message. It is the only other alternative, if we do not, then the limitations of resources will. As you pointed out it just did!

Enron and Power Deregulation

[tsikora]

Enron pushed through electric power deregulation in 24 state legislatures, which made it possible for them to create the "markets" they needed to rip off consumers. They also had personal contacts and meetings with George W. Bush and probably most congressional and state legislators. By removing the accountability factor of government oversight it makes you wonder. Congress investigating themselves? Do you think they will find themselves guilty of any wrong doings? What a sweet deal.

Re:Damnit, look - California was NEVER deregulated

[Arandir]

You can kiss my girlfriend if you'd prefer

Woohoo! I hope she's cute! One quick question though, is this a full french kiss, or just a quick Aunt Maybelle peck?

Anyway, here's some articles from the Cato Institute. The first two came our immediately after AB1890, but before any effects of it occured. Maybe they don't count because of the date, but they do have references to pre-AB1890 articles: "Stranded In Sacramento", and "High-Voltage Swindle".

And two not specifically about California, and before AB1890, so these should count: "A Historical Perspective on Electric Utility Regulation", and "Regulatory Reform in the Electric Power Industry".

And some others for your reading pleasure: "Electric Utility Reform", "Time to Repeal the PUHCA", and "The Public Utility Holding Company Act".

Just a quick trip to Cato. I'm sure there's other stuff from local California publications, but it's time for me to move on to other posts.

p.s. Please send photo of girlfriend, so as to heighten the anticipation...

Good article on Wired about power grid

[hanson_mark]

There is a good article in the Wired archive that talks about the power grid and how overloaded the New York section is, definitely worth a read:

The Energy Wed

Liberals are not to blame

[kurtkilgor]

For all of you who are saying that because liberals or environmentalists are to blame for this because they prevented infrastructure improvements:

Every single (democratic) country in the world has liberals and environmetalists. Yet presumably, their grids are better than ours (otherwise there is no cause to complain).

If a government can't reconcile these differences of opinion into a coherent policy, this is the failure of the government as a whole. If someone made a decision that new plants have to be built, it would happen, and there would be very little that liberals could do to stop it, other than picketing and writing letters.

It is when elected officials have no policy in the first place, and the relevant departments are asleep at the wheel, that important work becomes subject to the wihms of the populace.

Re:Thunderstorm US side of the border 19:35 - NOT!

[Ummite]

Finally, I revise myself : they said it was a thunderstorm, but now a Canadian's official said that it was a fire near a nuclear facility in states that started it all. And then, an assiatant stop it and said that any details must be said by american official, we don't know more. So a terrorist incident CAN'T for the moment be absolutly denied. A nuclear accident cannot neither be denied.

I can readily attest to this

[Hamster Lover]

I moved to Alberta from BC, to the left of Alberta on a map for those that don't know Canada, where the power is generally supplied by two companies, BC Hydro or West Koutenay Hydro (recently changed their name to something I can't remember). BC has abundant supplies of energy in the form of hydro electric power and depending on where you live you are supplied by one of these two companies.

My electrical cost in BC was more than half the KWh rate it is in Alberta, somewhere around 4.5 cents/KWh. On top of the KWh rate, I pay a consent fee and a storage rider and a whole host of bullshit fees that I did not see in BC because of REGULATION. I paid usage in KWh and that was it. I could even look on the meter and calculate my KWh usage and get a rough idea of what my bill was going to be (if you remember this from High School). You sure as hell can't do that here, who knows what the "storage rider" will be this month.

I have never understood the deregulation mentality; electricity is a necessity and business, especially high technology sectors, require and are attracted to cheap, reliable power. Deregulation has done none of that here in Alberta, costs are up and generation is down to maximize profit. I know several companies that locate themselves in BC due to the high demand they place on electricity, power that cannot be supplied by other provinces at such an attractive rate.

Now they are talking about partial deregulation of the BC market. Once again businesses small and large will get the shaft and the electrical producing companies will reap the rewards. Talk about robbing Peter to pay Paul.

Look on the bright(no pun intended) side!

[British]

Right now, numerous stargazers are pulling out their dusty telescopes for some clean astronomy. Something not possible unless you drove out into the boonies where the light interference and pollution is minimal.

Think of them all pulling their fist and going "YES! Mars here we come!".

Niagara Mohawk's Problems

[Anonymous Coward]

As at this time it has not been determined exactly why the Northeast Blackout of 2003 has occurred, there has been much speculation that it is due to Niagara Mohawk's grid failure.

Being an "insider", I would just like to say that the thought that is running through my mind about this is that several years ago, when the original Niagara Mohawk wanted to sell the company, suddenly all the engineering employees were told that they were no longer to perform preventative maintenance work on tranmission and distribution lines. For quite a period of time, they literally sat around with nothing to do. Then the company was sold to a British company, and this "hands off" attitude has continued.

So, I am very curious to know whether NiMo's lack of maintenance has something to do with today's problem. Another aspect of this problem is the fact that many long-time technical workers at Niagara Mohawk have either retired or been forced out, with their jobs not being filled. The crew sizes are down considerably. The amount of work never decreases - it mostly likely increases - but there are less KNOWLEDGEABLE people on board to handle such technical matters.

I truly hope that a full investigation into this matter is done, and if NiMo has dropped the ball, they be held accountable.

Re:Do I hear a chorus of 'Blame Canada'???

[Anonymous Coward]

I was waiting for it too - as soon as it came on that a Canadian part of the grid was down, I was thinking, "They'll be blaming Canada any minute now." Sure enough, right on cue, it starts flying back and forth from CNN to MSNBC to FOX - Canada Canada Canada Foreigners it's all the damn furriners.

Turned out not to be true, but honest to god the USA needs to get a grip. Not everything bad that happens is the fault of other nations. It's getting impossible to even talk to Americans these days - the concept of the USA being less than heavenly perfection personified, coming down from above to light the way for backwards and brown peoples who should shut up and do as they are told is rampant - you can see the rage rising behind their eyes when you even suggest that the USA is not to be envied in all things.

The USA is becoming strange and unpleasant. If it were a high school student it would be a wealthy jock, well-dressed, undeniably smart and handsome but with an ugly, arrogant soul. "They only hate me because they're jealous."

I know America - I like America. All the same America as a whole needs to rediscover a bit of humility.

Catch 22

[Eisenfaust]

Im a programmer for a provider of automation equipment for electric utilities. One thing that many may not realize is that it actually requires power to operate much of the power grid. Once the power is gone things like substation batterys quickly die out. Once they die generators have to be brought in to supply things like breakers with energy to operate. There are thousands of substations and other portions of the grid that take a long time to bring back.

In addition some power companys have switched to completely "high tech" systems in which power has to be present to operate physical equipment and power to operate things like fiber ethernet infastructure. In other words some power companies do not have a means to control equipment in anyway other than over a network which requires power to operate.

It could be argued that a power grid is much more difficult to maintain than a data network due to the fact that the service which it provides isnt required to provide the service that it provides =). A router can go down but it can always be replaced and power and network hookups will be waiting for it.

Due to these factors power grids are very vulnerable to the domino effect.

Lets Play the Happy Terrorist Asshole Game!

[Greyfox]

What did the terrorists learn today? They learned that with their next major attack, two or three well placed attacks could plunge the entire nation into darkness, exponentially increasing the chaos. Anyone even want to think of what would have happened if they'd taken out that power station on 9/11?

On the other side of the coin, we just learned that two or three well placed attacks could plunge the entire nation into darkness and we can start planning now to make sure that doesn't happen. Do you think we will?

I'd start by mandating that towns either take their traffic signal systems off the main power grid or insure adequate backup power for them. The last thing we need in the middle of a blackout is traffic jams preventing emergency vehicles from getting where they need to go.

I'd also make sure hospitals and air ports have adequate backup capacity. Apparently a lot of them don't.

Then I'd have the Al-Capone Teamwork dinner with the CEOs of the various power companies, during which the NiMo CEO would get asked why one power station going down can take out a quarter of the nation's power. You know how that scene goes. Teamwork!

That'd be a good start I guess. Gives us something to do for the next 5 years or so.

Thanks for not disappointing

[Scratch-O-Matic]

The first thing I did when I came to this discussion was search for 'Bush' to find out how people were going to use this event as an excuse to do some Bush bashing. When none came up, I was a bit disappointed, but I started to wade through the posts. Yours was quite sensible...at first.

The real problem is people who substitute ideology for thinking about a problem.

Excellent!


The free market is not the solution to every problem. Get over it.

The state is not the solution to every problem either. Get over it.

Very well said, and balanced, too.

The solution to every domestic energy issue must be to drill oil wells in Alaska. The solution to every foreign policy problem must be to invade a country in the gulf with large oil reserves.

Oh, you lost me. You could have taken one of those, plus one of these: "The answer to every attempt at oil drilling is 'No!' The solution to every foreign policy problem, even those involving violent thugs who have no problems killing and torturing citizens and neighbors, is to talk and plead over decades," in order to sound as thoughtful as you began.

Not everything is about Bush. Get over it.

Regulation / DeRegulation no difference

[TheSync]

This same kind of blackout happened twice during full regulation of electrical energy, and now once during the (still early days of) deregulation.

This event has all the hallmarks of a transmission failure, not a generation problem. There appears to have been plenty of power capacity. Transmission is still handled by highly regulated ISOs, despite generation deregulation.

This isn't like the California situation where the state set up a "deregulation" law that made the ISO incapable of getting an efficient market rate for power from generators.

What does need to happen is that NIMBY anti-transmission line political forces need to be eradicated. We need more transmission lines in the East, and more generation in the West.

Power is down but (my) network is up...

[LinuxParanoid]

You all know that phone system conveys its own power so phones stay working when power is down.

But did you know that also hold true for DSL service?

It does in my area (north of NYC). Power has been down for seven hours, but I just hooked up my DSL modem through an extension cord to my car (which has an cig-lighter-to-AC-adapter) and DSL is working fine and that's how I'm posting this.

Oh, and my laptop is running off a battery which, using the above mechanism, I can recharge in my car as needed.

Quite handy. I'm not positive if this works for cable modems but I don't think so. I'd be curious if someone could confirm/deny that.

--LP

Cause: Overloaded grid and bad logic

[Jimithing DMB]

The original post was very informative. EmagGeek was right on track when he mentioned that one generator got knocked offline for some reason and because of that the power grid compensated by rerouting electricity from other generators.

My dad was vice president of electric supply for NIPSCO for a number of years after having worked his way up the chain of command starting off working at a power plant as an electrical engineer. As VP of electric supply his job included ensuring NIPSCO was generating enough power to cover the needs of all the power customers (including several steel mills), working with regulators to ensure the rates were reasonable so that money could be spent to increase capacity when needed, and working with environmentalists to ensure that emissions were well below accepted government levels.

NIPSCO was a company very interested in serving its customers. As a heavily regulated utility the only reasonable business decision is to service your customers the best that you possibly can. My dad took that to heart. He was strongly opposed to deregulation. Why? Because the simple fact of the matter is that my dad was somewhat of an exception. Most executives tend to look strictly at the bottom line and lose sight of the forest for all the trees. He knew that deregulation would inevitibly lead to cost cutting in areas where costs should not be cut simply because without regulation the power company is at the mercy of its shareholders and shareholders are very often in it strictly for the money.

So, tonight I had a discussion with him about this mess. First of all, the background. Apparently a generator went off grid this afternoon forcing other generators to take up the slack. That can happen for a number of reasons. Equipment does fail, humans do make mistakes, etc. What's supposed to happen is that the rest of the generators and the grid should have enough capacity to take up the slack. Should there not be enough capacity then someone needs to lose power. This should happen at the customer side. That is, a portion of the customers should be blacked out to reduce the load on the grid and allow normal operations to continue. I believe that is what you meant by "putting a release on the chain." You are correct, that's what should have happened. The fact that it didn't indicates that there was some major problem with the logic of the grid. It would have been far better to cut the power to thousands of customers than millions.

Bad logic was part of the cause. The other problem was a seriously overloaded power grid. The power grid was designed to handle the situation where a power company normally had sufficient capacity but due to generator failures was unable to meet demand. Notice that I said failures (plural). If a few generators are knocked off the grid the company ought to have enough energy to supply all of its customers. Furthermore, it ought to have backup generators that can be started and on the grid within an hour. Those backup generators are just that: backups. They cost a hell of a lot of money to operate but they aren't as expensive to build as a main generator. If a few more generators get knocked off grid it's reasonable to expect that a power company will be unable to handle this situation without buying power from another company. That is what the grid is for.

Unfortunately, because of government stupidity (deregulation) and corporate greed the grid is now being used in a way it was never intended to be. It is often loaded to near full capacity drawing power over very long distances. The idea of deregulation was that loosely regulated for-profit companies would compete to generate electricity which the local power companies could purchase instead of generating their own. Because the power companies no longer had to be responsible for providing capacity in excess of what is needed the rates could be

Re:Cause: Overloaded grid and bad logic

[EmagGeek]

Thanks for the backup on this one.

While I don't necessarily agree that regulation is the answer, it's a simple matter of ethics.

De-regulation wasn't really de-regulation. It was RE-regulation. The rules simply changed, and there became many more of them, one of which was that no new generating plants could be built. Why the hell they decided this was beyond me. Most of these generators were built "way back when" before the age of computers and ubiquitous use of air conditioning. PECO Energy became the most expensive electricity in the nation after PA "de-regulated" the electricity industry. I pay almost $0.16 per kWh, which is ridiculous by any standard. That money is used to pay for electricity that is practically given away to neighboring producers like PP&L and ConEd.

Anyway...

You'd be AMAZED at what percentage of all generated power is dissipated in either a computer or an air conditioner/chiller/etc. 100 million computers at 200 watts each is 20 BILLION watts. 20 GIGAwatts. That's the capacity of more than 20 average-sized nuclear reactors. Limerick here in PA has two reactors each capable of about 1.134 (I was really hoping it was 1.21, really I was!) gigawatts.

Here's a Link to a list of all U.S. Nuclear facilities and their statistics and capacities.

And here is a link to a list of all the reactor statuses showing they're loaded to the teeth - almost all of them at 100%.

The U.S. Department of Energy maintains lots of useful information about the power grids in the United States and how they are running. There are also publicly available status reports on each generation facility.

One graph on the DoE site showed that generation capacity hasn't increased at all since about 1992 (when Clinton took office, what a surprise... bastard killed the military AND our power infrastructure... but that's another thread)...

It's not surprising that this happened since we've been increasing generation rapidly due to the deployment of computers and other tech gadgets, but not increasing capacity to make up for it. It also doesn't help that there's no incentive other than cost for people to use Alternative Energy like solar or wind. Well, that's not totally true, there are actually Lots and Lots of Incentives in some states for end-user renewable energy, but it's still really expensive.

Outage Pictures

[Anonymous Coward]

Theres a pretty good photo album of all the news coverage today.

Available at:
http://hackingthemainframe.com/gallery/albun4 2

insufficient margin

[Wansu]

This is not the first massive northeastern blackout. There were wipespread blackouts like this in the early 1960s. The engineers learned that all sections of the grid must have significant over-capacity designed in so that the entire system could recover from large transients and short duration system oscillation without tripping protection devices. They beefed up the system so it could ride through these events.

The safety margin is gone. Demand has grown but capacity has not. If lightning runs in on a substation, it can trigger a chain of events leading to a couple generator switchyards opening their air breakers. From there, the overload snowballs.

Does deregulation play a part? Yes. Power brokering activities create additional burden on the system. There is less incentive to increase capacity. There is also diffusion of responsibility.

The electric power industry was not broken prior to deregulation and didn't need fixing. It's infrastructure and regulated monopolies suck less than gov't run or private run ventures.

This is apt to get worse.

This had to do with the design of the grid!

[Newer Guy]

What causes cascades like this actually has very little to do with megawatts
and everything to do with frequency. See, every generator on the power grid is
syncronized to a common source. Indeed, before a power plant comes back on
line it must first syncronize its generators. The generators normally sit
there running at a boring 3600 RPM (60hz*60 seconds). All plants have a
monitor that kicks them off line if their frequency varies by more than +/- a
hz or so. As an aside, the power grid is not always EXACTLY 60 hz. The
frequency of the entire grid is allowed to float a bit, though drifts are
corrected so the frequency averaged over a certain time is a nominal 60 Hz.
The cascade happens when a either big plant or a big load suddenly goes off
line. In the case of a big plant the other plants try to take up the load, but
in the process their frequency drops as the generators get loaded more (much
like shifting a car's manual transmission to a higher gear before it hits the
right engine RPM). Once a generator drops below 59 hz, it also trips off
making it even harder for the ones left to keep up, and generators begin to
fall off the grid like dominoes.
The opposite happens when a load suddenly goes away, but in that case the
generators' frequency abruptly jumps upward, which also results in it tripping
off the grid. Either way the result is a cascade like happened today.

Once the dominoes (generators) begin to fall off, the grid becomes unglued.
There's an old saying in the power industry:
59.5 Hz = trouble. 59 Hz = BIG trouble!

I believe the new power management software mentioned in the news reports that
should have prevented this works by intelligently shedding loads distant from where the anomaly occurrs (for example, shedding load in NYC for an anomaly in Canada). This would give the generators time to react to the change. Obviously it didn't work.

What liberals??

[rEWDBOi]

As I had just posted on www.fark.com the other day, I didn't even know you guys _had_ liberals in the United States. I thought it was just conservatives and.. well.. guys a little more conservative.

I have to admit there's those very few leftists like Noam Chomsky, but it's not like he has any influence other than on people who agree with him anyway. All five of 'em.

Re:What liberals??

[charon_on_acheron]

What do you define a liberal as? Someone who needs government assistance to wipe their own ass, with government issued toilet paper, in a government owned toilet, and with a government finger shoving up their ass afterward checking for any hidden money that they didn't tax yet? And that person likes this? That sounds like your version of liberalism.

There is a reason that millions of people left Europe and migrated to the US. They were tired of Big Brother, long before the book was written. They wanted a place they could raise a family, work for their own future, and not have the government round their sons up and send them to die in every piss-ant skirmish that the king/queen/prince/mayor/etc decided was needed to save their honor.

The biggest problem with the US today is that too many people have forgotten that aspect of living in the land of the free. They think we should emulate Europe. Why? Where did both World Wars start? Why should we be dragged into acting like that? Unfortunately we have. Now we think we have to do all the stupid things Europeans have been doing for a thousand years. And of course tax everyone to death to pay for it (oh wait, that is another of the stupid things Europeans think is normal).

And for the record, the second biggest problem with the US today is that the religious right can't dissociate their version of GOD from their civic life or their political and legal activities. I don't care if someone wants to marry another person of the same sex, and it's none of my business what two or more consenting adults do in the privacy of their own house. I also don't care if people want to avoid reality for a few hours, or bet on the score of a football game, or watch movies of people having sex. Laws are not meant to be interpretations of the Bible. Laws are supposed to prevent people from causing harm to other people, not save their souls.

And finally, for those who want to throw the race card into the argument, there was a reason I specifically said people left Europe to live in the land of the free. While many Africans did the same, and were free men, the majority were brought over as slaves. I don't think that entails their entire decendant group to live off the government. Liberals in the US like to make this group think they deserve every drop of public assistance that the Democrats are willing to give them. But sucking from the public teat is just keeping them dependant on that teat, rather than helping them become successful in their own life. I would rather see the government helping these people find a solid job and live in good neighborhoods. Instead the liberals herd them into ghettos and housing projects that are unclean and dangerous.

A long term fix will be DC distribution

[NKJensen]

The power distribution everywhere in the western world is done using high voltage 3-phase AC systems.

They fail, if
a) the frequency slips or
b) if the power balance between production and demand gets to big.

The reason for all the hazzle of AC distribution is that it's simple to change voltages via transformers.

With modern power electronics, transformers will no longer be needed.

A DC distribution grid will be much more stable since the only reasons to take a generator off the network will be overload or overvoltage.

There is no frequency to lock to. There is no syncronizing phase when the generator starts production again.

At times with high demand, the DC grid voltage will drop. Surplus production will push up the grid voltage.

Circuit breakers can be set to turn on at a certain voltage, that automatically will turn on demand when the grid voltage can drive the load. Low priority areas can have the high-voltage switches, high priority areas have low-voltage switches.

Combine this with a varying price: Low voltage = high price, high voltage = low price and you'll get system which can smoothe out changes in the balance between supply and demand.

Will it work? Well, we do have some DC links from Denmark to Germany and to Norway. They are relatively small but power electronics are developing fast.

Re:A long term fix will be DC distribution

[Paddyish]

But what about resistance? The original power distribution framework set up in this country (USA) was DC...but AC quickly overtook it because AC is not nearly as susceptible to line loss. It just makes more sense to use AC...unless you've got some room-temp superconducting power lines.

Re:A long term fix will be DC distribution

[NKJensen]

Resistance loss depend on the current.

Loss = R*I^2

So if you want to minimize resistive losses, you must increase voltage and decrease current.

If you want to transfer say 100 watts, that's possible with several combinations of voltage and current:

P=U*I

100W =
10V * 10A =
100V * 1A =
1000V * 0.1A

Since it's easy to pump up the voltage and thus decrease the current using a transformer, AC seems to be the best way to go. But ...

now we have power electronics! You can now convert the voltages as needed. E.g. the PSU in a PC often converts from several hundred volts to 12, 5 and -12 (perhaps also more low voltages) without any transformer in a "step-down" converter.

So you'll use high voltage (and therefore low current) for long distance power transfers and convert to low voltage and high current when you arrive near the consumer.

The resistance depends on the length, material and thickness of a power line.

For long distances, AC has more loss than DC because a power grid has inductive losses and capacitive losses. DC transfers do not have those losses.

I know EXACTLY what they'll do about this -read on

[Denver_80203]

"Today's failure is a dramatic reminder of the importance of the uninterrupted flow of power to the health, safety, and well being of our citizens and the defense of our country. "This failure should be immediately and carefully investigated in order to prevent a recurrence. "You are therefore directed to launch a thorough study of the cause of this failure. I am putting at your disposal full resources of the federal government and directing the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Department of Defense and other agencies to support you in any way possible. You are to call upon the top experts in our nation in conducting the investigation. "A report is expected at the earliest possible moment as to the causes of the failure and the steps you recommend to be taken to prevent a recurrence." Signed, Lyndon B. Johnson

De-regulation and Competition

[sterno]

De-regulation works well when there is a competitive marketplace and it fails utterly when there isn't. Witness the airlines for examples of both how it succeeds and fails. If you are travelling between major hubs in the US, you have multiple airlines to choose from and the price you pay is pretty low. If you are travelling between off-hub points, then you pay a premium because it's likely only one or two airlines serve that route.

The electrical industry, much like the phone and cable industry is too dependent on the connection to the house to be truly competitive. Ultimately whoever controls the wires into the home runs the show and has a competitive (and frequently regulatory) advantage over anybody who would need to run new wires.

There seems to be this belief that privatizing and de-regulating are magical cure alls for many problems. They aren't. If a market is naturally prone to creating uncompetitive monpolies, then neither government nor private industry will make it more efficient over the long run. Thus you are better off with government where at least the motivations are to please the citizenry rather than please the shareholders.

Singeltons should be government owned

[ClarkEvans]

and places where there can be competition should be privately owned.

Thus, the grid (a singleton) should be operated by the government so that we have internal competition, that is competition amoung contractors who do the actual work.

And power plants should be operated by private interests (regulated/charged appropriately and equally for pollution of public goods, such as the air or water, etc).

Companies should not run the grid beacuse there is no external competition, the only way to get competition is to have contractors competing on very small jobs /w oversight. In a complementary manner, since there can be competition between power plants, this should be let up to the market, if we need more power, corporate interests will build more plants, etc.

A "fair and balanced" analysis

[useosx]

Greg Palast takes a look at why the lights went out.

history your weak subject?

[Sivaram_Velauthapill]

There is a reason that millions of people left Europe and migrated to the US. They were tired of Big Brother, long before the book was written. They wanted a place they could raise a family, work for their own future, and not have the government round their sons up and send them to die in every piss-ant skirmish that the king/queen/prince/mayor/etc decided was needed to save their honor.

None of what you said is true. First of all, monarchy has nothing to do with liberals/left/etc. If anything leftists are the ones who are strongly in favour of overthrowing institutions like monarchy, along with stuff like religion, etc. The French Revolution is a good example of that (other revolutions like the Russian Revolution and Communist Revolution accomplished something similar). If anything, it is conservatives who are in favour of status-quo establishments. Just go and study your history--proper history. You'll find that the people who were advocating the overthrow of monarchies were liberals. Those who were in favour of the monarchy were often conservatives (although I admit that these were only the elites). Conservatives actually LIKED the monarchy because it supported and strengthened religion. Conservatives only got sick of th establishment after taxes were raised high.

Second, what you said about people leaving Europe was complete nonsense. They did not leave because they wanted to be away from the monarchs. That is wrong because even when the settlers came to USA (for example) they were still under the power of the monarch. If the people really left to get away from monarchy, they would have formed an independent country. Of course this never happend for a long time (until the American Revolution). Most people who fled to USA were fleeing from religious persecution and economic suffering.

The biggest problem with the US today is that too many people have forgotten that aspect of living in the land of the free. They think we should emulate Europe. Why? Where did both World Wars start? Why should we be dragged into acting like that? Unfortunately we have. Now we think we have to do all the stupid things Europeans have been doing for a thousand years. And of course tax everyone to death to pay for it (oh wait, that is another of the stupid things Europeans think is normal).

Clearly shows your lack of understanding of history or the world. You blame both World Wars on Europe yet you fail to see the cause of those wars. The wars happened in Europe, and not in USA, for a simple reason. Europe was a superpower. The wars, if you recall, was mostly a battle betwen these superpowers. The reason USA never had any war is because it wasn't a superpower at that time (it's true whether you admit it or not), and it is geographically isolated. If there is a next world war, USA will be right in the middle of it. Do you know why? And no, it's not because of Europe. It's because USA is a superpower.

As far as taxes are concerned, contrary to your beliefs, Americans paid similar taxes (to Europeans) throughout most of the 1700's and 1800's. The whole anti-tax movement only started in the 1900's. Even hardcore conservatives didn't preach anti-tax views until the last century.

And for the record, the second biggest problem with the US today is that the religious right can't dissociate their version of GOD from their civic life or their political and legal activities.

Since you are on the right, that's your own problem. You are probably more religious than anyone on the left (just a guess) so you go and figure out how to solve that.

While many Africans did the same, and were free men, the majority were brought over as slaves.

AGain, your lack of history is appaling. The majority of Africans weren't brough over as slaves. ALL of them were. Every single African-American (don't mix up with hispanics or Carribeans) can likely trace their life to slavery.

Liberals in the US like to make this group think they deserve