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Satellite Views Of The Blackout
An anonymous reader writes "These Before and After satellite views of the blackout, from the NOAA, show the geographic extent and intensity of the outage. Toronto, Ottawa, and Detroit seem the worst hit. Currently, a cnn article mentions that a reverse of power flow around Lake Erie may have caused an overload that triggered the programmed shutdown of the power grid. Would be interesting to know how the system and software works, but then again, that information could be dangerous in the wrong hands."
If a private citizen were to show the interconnections of the power grid on their website, what would happen? How long would it be before the government ordered him/her to remove that information in the interest of "National Security"? Why is it that CNN can show it freely? A similar map was being broadcast on TV all morning.
;) ) as soon as there were variants on the Blaster worm, a large section of the power went out? Hhhmmm...
And as for how the software works, it would be interesting to know just what OS the power company computers were running. Not to sound like a conspiracy theorist (well, ok, that's exactly what I'm trying to sound like
libertarianswag.com
Nearly any information, used incorrectly, maliciously, or by evil people can be devestating. Making information secret in the interest of "security" is a bad move. This is why many people advocate full disclosure, and why most security experts think that "security through obscurity" is a bad idea. Security should come because systems are strong, not because those systems are "secret".
And your telling me that publicising a blackout's cause as being one grid station, and then showing how its braught half of the northeast practically to a halt for a day or two isnt information in the wrong hands?
;-p
I'm just waiting for some half baked terrorist to whack off a couple of power grids now... Then our excuse of an administration will want to inspect everything about power right down the the electrons because of "national security"...
On a larger note, I'm surprised that nobody has really taken it seriously that there are other things in America then commercial airplanes that can bring this nation to its knees (like power, water, lack of a starbucks...)
We don't need an "overrated" so much as we need a "you completely missed the parent's point, dumbass..."
Somehow, even during the blackout, it doesn't look as bad as North Korea on a normal night.
Whatever happened to UFO theories? Are we SURE that space aliens didn't cause this? Didn't the movie "The Day the Earth Stood Still" predict this nearly exactly?
It's a good thing all the green lights marking the state borders stayed on, or there could have been real trouble.
I cant see my house from here !
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
*viewing from space*
... !
Kodos: Foolish Earthlings! Relying on such a primitive thing as electricity!
Kang & Kodos: HA HA HA HA
*the ships lights go out*
Kodos: You forgot to feed the hamster again didn't you?
New York's governer blamed Canada for the cause of the outage but our Mayor Mel Lastman answered back with, "How many time have you seen the American's take the blame for anything?"
I don't think the 'after' picture is accurate at all. I live in columbus where we were *not* affected by the outage. however, the after picture clearly shows that columbus was 'dark'. We were just fine. Most of our power comes from the Ohio River IIRC. Sure, the picture is 'neat' to see parts of NY state and other areas under darkness via satellite, but I am treating it more as an 'artist's rendering', not a legitimate photo. I would expect more from NOAA.
Anyone else notice the same thing?
-John
"The definition of insanity is continuing to do the same thing and hoping for different results"
Read the reports in various newspapers, you will have come across many articles saying how antiquated the power transmission system has become.
Power companies have specifically stated that putting in new power grids is very problematic because people don't want this anywhere near their property.
This view is exactly like those bastards at Cape Cod. They scream themselves hoarse that they are enviornmentalists and then fscking say no to wind mills 6 miles off the shore.
Same thing with this power grid. Companies that want to lay new power grids cannot go foward and lay lines because the residents will not waste anytime taking them to court. "We don't want it in our backyard".
Well, somebody has to pickup the cost.
Also, Canada has an excess of power generation capacity. If the US had better lines, it could have taken up the excess power Canada generates.
[ "The strain on transmission capacity is particularly acute in New York State, which is known in the industry for having far too few high-voltage power lines",
"community resistance to new lines has been high and continues to prevent new lines from being built, particularly in high-density areas like the northeast. While the federal government can step in and insist on construction of natural gas pipelines, it has no such power related to electrical transmission lines. "People want more power, but they don't want those lines"".
"Most of New York City's and Long Island's power at peak times must be generated in the city and on the Island, because it is physically impossible to transmit that much power into the area along the existing lines." ]
Would be interesting to know how the system and software works, but then again, that information could be dangerous in the wrong hands."
... This sounds a lot like the explanations of why Open Source software is so much more secure and reliable than proprietary software. ;-)
Well, maybe, but if it can be kept secret by the authorities, they'll just "explain" it with reassuring PR, while not bothering to do any real fixes to the problems.
A lot of us have had far too much experience with big organizations to believe that secrecy will lead to solving the problems. The right way to prevent such things is to make the entire system public information. Then independent engineers can study it, point out the weakness, and suggest solutions, without worrying about losing their jobs if they go public with the bug reports.
(Hmmm
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
It may have stopped short of Rhode Island, but apprently it may have actually started in my home town. Check this.
--Kevin
Most universities have couses on power systems. As a mechanical engineering student, I took several courses on nuclear power plant design and operation. These classes included several tours to working power plants and training sites. This information is not really hard to get.
I can't speak on power plants in general, but I can comment a bit on nuclear plants. Most plants running in the US are quite old, thanks to public perception preventing any new plants from being built. So, most of them run pretty old systems. Most I've seen run on unix variants, mostly HP-UX and AIX. The software used is really just a backup, the plants can operate pretty much without the computer systems. The hardware is pretty much big old mainframes and mini-mainframe type stuff. IBM, Sun, HP, etc.
The primary function of the computer systems it to simplify some operations and to more easily report on conditions. For example you can view the power output of both reactors on one screen at the control center rather than having to walk over to the analog dials to check it out. They also monitor safety systems and can report on the state of different valves and things in the plant, rather than requiring you to go look at all the lights for individual valves.
Most plants are starting to modernize and new software is being developed to allow complete control of the plant. Currently most of the software used is for monitoring only, but it's starting to be deployed for control as well. So, rather than having to walk over and switch a lever to close a vavle, or turn a dial to up reactor power, you can just click. But this isn't really widespread yet.
There is some windows software out there for this stuff, but it's not widely used, at least in the US. Some of the newer advanced control systems are focusing on windows, so it looks like in the future there might be more windows in the plants.
Actually, this is very unlikely. Systems like the American power grid are highly resilient.
Blow up a transformer? So what, there goes a neighborhood.
Blow up a substation? Big deal, so a town or small city is messed up for a little while.
Blow up a power plant? A shame, but other production facilities on the grid can pick up the slack for a while.
Catastrophic power failures are rare, because minor failures are common, expected, planned for, and almost always isolated to a small area. By definition, terrorist groups do not have the resources to do any more than minor damage. In attacking the airline system, "minor" damage can be effective, as September 11 showed, but the power system takes more damage from a little summer thunderstorm than al-Qaeda could ever do -- and for the most part life goes on unaffected.
This is why I find all the bleating on by the newscasters & politicians that "the power outage was not the result of terrorism." Well of course it wasn't, this isn't the sort of attack that a small malicious party can pull off. It just isn't. Power stations go out all the time, but normally nobody ever notices. Indeed, it is very, very hard to deliberately bring down a power system: NATO spent a month bombing the power grid & computer networks in Yugoslavia, but they never managed to do much more than bring a city like Belgrade down for a few hours before power was restored. If NATO couldn't do it, then I doubt terrorists could either.
If you want to bring down a whole grid, the best way to do it is by plain dumb luck (or an overwhelming lack of luck, depending on your point of view :-). It was a random fluke that caused yesterday's outage, just as it was random flukes that brought down the grid in the last two major outages, in 1977 & 1965. On the bright side, that suggests that the mean time between power grid failures may have doubled, and the next event like this may happen in 50 years... :-). (Incidently, the Presidential Report on the 1965 outage makes for fascinating -- and newly relevant -- reading material).
Resist the culture of fear! Most of the fears that the government and media have been pushing on us for the past couple of years are way overblown. The news this week wasn't that the power system is unstable, or that terrorists could have done this. No! The news is that the system is remarkably robust, and that our system is so good that we can go for decades at a time without glitches like this. That's a very good record, when you put things in perspective.
DO NOT LEAVE IT IS NOT REAL
" the after picture clearly shows that columbus was 'dark'."
If you look at both pictures, you'll see that Columbus is closer to the edge of the picture in the "dark" photo than in the "light." Which means that during the "dark" picture, the satellite saw Columbus almost eddge-on, reducing the amount of light the camera could see coming from Columbus as well as putting more atmosphere between the two. Columbus got "darker" because of the same reasons the sun gets "darker" near sunset.
I've got a composite of the difference that the blackout made areas that were darker during the blackout are in red. Areas that were bright at both times are white.
Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.