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NERC Releases Interim Report on Aug 14th Blackout

Posted by michael on from the candlelight-vigil dept.

will writes "The North American Electric Reliability Council has released four documents concerning the August 14th power outage power outage in the North East. The blackout investigation homepage lists all NERC's documents relating to this event. Press coverage is at The Washington Post, CNN, and CBS News. The take home message: FirstEnergy did it. The are, of course, denying it." The report is also available at reports.energy.gov. Reader stinkydog writes "According to Yahoo News part of the blame for the big fizzle of 2003 lies with a failing SCADA system, GE's XA/21 power management system. 'Not only did the software that controls audible and visual alarms stop working at 2:14 p.m. EDT, but about a half hour later, two servers supporting the emergency system failed, too.' According to the product specs, it is a Unix system with X Windows."

2 of 426 comments (clear)

  1. First Energy is a horrible corporation by puppetluva · · Score: 4, Informative

    Here's a timely link. . .

    FirstEnergy used to be CEI. . . a horrible company in Cleveland that allowed a nuclear core failure through negligence and then tried to bully the government of Cleveland into selling its municipal power supply to it thereby granting it monopoly status in the region.

    Check out the story here:
    http://kucinich.us/powertothepeople.htm

    The presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich was Mayor of Cleveland at the time and endured a browbeating when he refused to sell the Municipal power company to these scoundrels.

    I'm not necessarily pro-Kucinich, but I am VERY anti-FirstEnergy. They have a track record of irresponsibility and dishonesty that should be enough to have the government dismantle them.

  2. Re:SCADA systems are *NOT ALWAYS* DCOM based by elbarsal · · Score: 4, Informative

    OK, before everybody gets carried away with what SCADA systems are based on, let me point out - SCADA stands for "Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition". No single company makes SCADA any more than any single company makes any other type of application software.

    SCADA systems exist that will run on QNX, Linux (See VSystem), Windows NT/2000, DOS (Yes, DOS - i.e. FactoryLink with DesqView) as well as other older platforms like VAX/VMS and PDP-11.

    So, SCADA systems do not necessarily rely on OPC or DCOM - some do, some don't. Some still use DDE (trust me, not the most reliable means of communication).

    Industry uses all sorts of SCADA systems, from several vendors - Rockwell Software makes RSView, Wonderware makes InTouch, Siemens makes WinCC, you get the picture. The GE package involved in the systems at First Energy is only one example of SCADA, in the same way that EMACS is only one example of a text editor.

    Sorry for the rant, but IAAAE (I am an automation engineer).