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Task Force Finds Blackout Was Preventable
Shakrai writes "In what will probably be the last we hear of this subject CNN is carrying a story that states what we already suspected: the August blackout was preventable. One of the more interesting observations from this article is that this task force will remain active for the next year to push for their changes and improvements to be adopted. Does anyone think any change will come of this? If you lived in the Northeast US or Canada what were your memories of the August Blackout?" The full report is available at reports.energy.gov.
Why is it that we have this never ending need for more powerlines and more electricity rather than looking for alternatives with any real conviction?
Slashdot had a great story on the blackout last year:
Guinnessy writes "The latest issues of the Industrial Physicist suggests that 'the vast system of electricity generation, transmission, and distribution that covers the United States and Canada is essentially a single machine -- by many measures, the world's biggest machine.' The article says that because deregulation ignored the physics of the machine, we have blackouts, a fact the industry warned regulators about in 1998. It has some nice hard science data for those interested in why we're going to get some more blackouts in the future unless Congress gets its act together." I work with power utilities -- this is the best single explanation I've seen of the underlying problems of transmission management and regulation in the U.S.
Al Bonnyman
Community Broadband Networks
Didn't they say the same thing about 9/11? The human need to blame stuff on other stuff is unstoppable isn't it.
You're right, I wouldn't steal a car. But if it were possible, I sure as hell would download one!
It was dark and there were no computers.
FLR
...if you have 20:20 hindsight.
What was it like? It was dark.
The Economist recently had a great article on this particular subject.
It was mainly in favor of decentralization and mimicking the internet in terms of distributing power to remote locations. Smaller more 'frequent' stations placed around the country would allow power to be routed 'around' a dead area should the surrounding stations lose contact with it-- I suppose that explaining that here was sort of moot:)
Anyway, I think that they've adopted this method in Denmark and it's been working excellently despite the initial skepticism of critics.
There would never have been a blackout if they hadn't built all those gosh darn power plants.
We should've never come down from the trees... No, wait. Even the trees were a bad idea.
-- I have monkeys in my pants.
And how much did we pay to learn the very profound, "it could have been prevented"?
"Everything is bigger in America"
:)
Even power outages
.sig: No such file or directory
Well, at least one good thing came out of the Blackout. CowboyNeal is no longer afraid of the dark!
SF carried an article a couple of months ago regarding software bug that contributed to the blackout.
Free XBox, PS2
The blackout was one of the best excuses to get away from my computer for a few days. A bunch of us gathered outdoors, barbequed, and played beerpong by car light. Sometimes I think this is exactly what we need to get us back into the "real world".
It was dark. Also, it really sucked being forced offline.
C|N>K
I was lucky -- I live in NYC and got off the subway 10 minutes before the blackout. If I had missed that train I probably would have ended up having to walk out from the middle of one of the east river tunnels. 350,000 people were on the NYC subway when the blackout hit. That had to -suck-....
I just wonder if the industries in general are self-regulating themselves as well as this when it comes to environmental issues and maintaining fair competition in the markets.
I fear not.
The owls are not what they seem
I was at work. All I remember was everyone coming out of the building and crowing around cars to listen to the radio. Everyone kept saying, "Terrorism. That's got to be it. What else could it be?" Sad world when that's the first thought that comes to mind.
It was preventable. In my town (near Niagara Falls, Canada) the power didn't go off since a tech at the power company saw it comming and threw the switch to pull the entire area off the power grid. didn't even have to reset the clocks
If you lived in Philly or the south the blackout propagation was prevented.
Yes, I remember it well.
I was in my parent's basement...it was dark. Very dark. and then the lights came on and my machine rebooted thank ghod and everything is OK now in the basement.
I need to take vitamin D pills though....
are mostly of pointing and laughing as i had just moved out of NYC. ;-)
it was pretty insane to see aerial pictures of NYC (no not the fake "satelite", gimped ones where they used a black smudge tool over the northeast.
change is hard to produce. it's co$$$t$$$
I was working at compusa, then we heard a weird noise and all the lights went out. I remember tring to get everyone out of the store, and waiting up front near the registers waiting for the lights to come back up. In the mean while we plugged a radio into the UPS that we had powering the registers. So we were still able to ring people out and buy water and candy. :) At the time I took the bus to work and they canceled all the buses, so I had to get a ride home from this hot girl that worked with me, we ended up getting married, because we bonded on that day. I would say it was a good day for me.
keanmarine.com
Things do go wrong, and when things go wrong, they normally are preventable. People accept this, and understand it might happen. This is, for example, why there is so much opposition to Nuclear Power.
However, according to the article, there were rules in place to stop this happened, which were not followed (Quote: "Many reliability rules were ignored during the outages, the task force said.").
Also, it says:
"As it did in its interim report, the task force largely blamed FirstEnergy Corp., [...] faulting the company's lack of communication, faulty equipment and inadequate training"
These two points draw the line on acceptable accidents. This not only should have been prevented, but also it is due to neglect of rules and short-sightedness which caused it to happen.
- Jax
I wasn't in the area during the blackouts, but I did see a history channel special on it a month or two ago. It claimed, for a fact, "nine months later, there was a surge in births recorded at area hospitals". I guess they were trying to aim for syndication from the get-go, but come on - please don't make up facts; either wait until May, or just report that doctors reported a surge in mothers-to-be.
HIV Crosses Species Barrier... into Muppets
Me thinks that this might be an overused and ill defined term that relies on psychic powers. Lots of things are preventable given the right circumstance. Pearl Harbor if we moved our ships to sea. 9/11 if the planes weren't allowed to take off. Air casualties if the right part was inspected before the ill fated flight.
So what does preventable mean?
Answer: Lawsuits
WhatMeWorry
"If you lived in the Northeast US or Canada what were your memories of the August Blackout?"
Well, a few days after the blackout I made a photo-documentary of the 'mayhem' that was downtown Toronto during the great blackout of '03.
The documentary is located here
------
Amadaeus
The last bastion of Mathie-ism
You insensitive clod! I live in Massachusetts.
... ... ... ... still waiting, but it's nice to see my tax dollars being drained by useless conjecture that will change nothing...nope, not caring yet.
Well, George Bush has just approved a Task Force to answer that very question. Preliminary reports say that we should be able to prevent blaming other stuff in the future.
Just gonna have to wait for the answer, aren't you?
If you lived in the Northeast US or Canada what were your memories of the August Blackout?
I was at Pennsic, a medieval camping event near Pittsburg. We were right near the boarder of the affected area; I don't know if we were hit or not--when you're trying to live in the 13th century, you don't notice when the power goes out.
I was at the Erie County Fair in Hamburg, NY, when I walked up to a vendor who sells Buffalo-style chicken fingers. "Sorry," he told me, "we just had to shut down, there's no power." I couldn't believe it. I just thought maybe a circuit had blown somewhere and a few of the food vendors had no electricity. Then I heard some guy nearby get off his cell phone and say to his wife, "Yeah, he said power's out all over the place, from New York City up into Canada." We were desperate for more news. My companions and I bopped around the fair trying to find out what happened, and finally we just gave up and decided to head home, since the fair was closing at sundown since there were not going to be lit up after dark. One of my companions wanted to know if the power was still on at home, and I just said to her, "Call home with your cell and see if the answering machine comes on," which she did. The power was indeed on at home. So, we all headed home and watched the TV news coverage of the massive blackout in disbelief.
You are in error. No-one is screaming. Thank you for your cooperation.
First they blamed CANADA then they reneged on that - then they said Ohio, and now the whole thing was 'preventable.'
No shit it was preventable, we've got a 50 year old electric grid in desperate need of repair. Maybe some of the $87 Billion that going to rebuild Iraq's infrastructure could rebuild our electrical grid. The sad reality is that by the end of 2004, Iraq will have a more modern Power Grid than NYC and the whole golden horseshoe
Cursing myself that I didn't fill up my car on the way home. Traffic was horrible and I just got home on fumes. However, for some reason, I remember waking up at 2AM, looking out my apartment window, and noticing my local McDonalds and Petro Canada gas station had power. So, I phoned them to find out they had power and were pumping gas (at regular prices, not the "99.9/l" price). So, my wife and I went and got gas at 2AM. Even though it was late, the lineup about 5 cars deep per lane. Sure beats waiting for hours for overpriced gas.
Of course, I do find it ironic that McDonalds had power before most of Northeast Canada or US.
It is not our abilities that show what we truly are... it is our choices.
is people who would normally be too busy to have social lives, using electrical gadgets, computers, televisions, etc. would suddenly engage in actually talking to strangers in groups in the street.
I thought it was an interesting phenomenon. We should have periodic, planned blackouts more often!
Not to mention the urban backyard astronomers, who would be very happy too.
or so the saying goes
I remember sitting in a corner, shaking violently, seeing visions of slashdot on blank monitors.
I was working in an MIT computer lab on my Ph.D thesis at the time, and had about a week to complete it, or 6 years work was down the pan. Imagine my surprise when the entire eastern seaboard blew a fuse. Luckily, Boston seemed to be spared most of the blackout. I remember half hoping it would give me an excuse to not have to finish it.
The world is everything that is the case
Claiming that the failure of a human endeavor was preventable? Unbelievable!
"If you lived in the Northeast US or Canada what were your memories of the August Blackout?""
smoking and drinking on dead streetcars while weird people mysteriously lurked in the shadows
good times!
The blackout, while annoying was made far worse by the media than it actually was. My power was out for more than 25 hours so I opted to read a book instead of bitch and complain. Perhaps others were affected in a manner worse than I, but I imagine there are others in this world that go through far worse every day.
I agree the system has problems that need to be addressed as I do not know how long hospitals/fire/police can last on battery power but this really seems like the media wanted to drag it out too long again until the next big story came along.
2 days off (building shut down), Barbecues with the neighbours in the yard, and watching DVDs in the van. :)
Again! Again!
I was in Algonquin Park, Ontario at the time. Everything to the east of the park had no power, and everything to the west had no power, but for some reason, we were entirely unaffected. This was quite strange because storms usually take out our power for days, not to mention that it's a wilderness areas...
I propose that once a year we shut of the power on a friday afternoon and head to the closest barbque equipped patio. I rather enjoyed the day, but a great realization accured, I am a geek. I was worried for my machine. Nuts. I thought the girls stayed away from me because I was too damn good looking!
My eyes, my eyes! These goggles do nothing!
Seriously, as a society we consume the amount of electricity we do because we demand the standard of living that we do. When you are ready to give up your computer / TV / radio / stereo / CD player / car / iPod (yes, your iPod will have to go!), then go ahead and harp all you want about energy consumption. Untill then...
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
I remember how we had power and never lost it during the whole time. It was weird. All around us no one had power but our small part of Ontario still had power.
We lost power for about six hours. I went golfing, came home shot some pool by candlelight with the Mrs. and then the power came back on. Makes me wonder why so many people lost power for days???
Heat related tragedies notwithstanding, I rather enjoyed the power outage.
Take your pills; you'll be OK.
One nice thing about the electrical grid in the state of Texas is that it is, pretty much, it's own selfcontained grid.
Rather nice considering the state of the other two main grids in the country.
Account of my experiences at:
http://andala.livejournal.com/2003/08/16/
I just pulled out my hardcopy p0rn.
"We should be using wind power"
"We need more regulation to fix this"
"We're all dependant on each other"
"I am my brother's keeper"
"It was Bush's fault"
"It was Cheney's fault"
"I love my bicycle, I hear they use lots of them in France"
"I hate technology, I was glad"
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
i left work at 4:05, a few minutes before the blackout, and my coworkers had to walk down untold amounts of staircases as i would learn later.
walking home, i noticed people filing out of upscale shops with alarms going off on 57th st in midtown manhattan. it was kind of funny: the whole block is out of power, the snobs can't get their overpriced crap, haha.
but as i got closer home, and the streets filled with more and more and more people, and the gridlock and honking horns ensued since the traffic lights were out, and i watched people unable to operate their cell phones, and fighting over access to the public phones, i started to lose my sense of humor.
than a red-faced guy ran by: toronto is out! he was shouting.
i survived sept 11th (until that day i worked at 5 world trace center, which was reduced to a charred husk), so this was now very not funny.
when i got home, i speculated with my super that is was either the heat, the latest windows wonder worm making it's rounds, or al qaeda.
but the night was, with relief, uneventful. listening to the radio, i learned the last blackout in nyc decades ago was filled with looting. but the bars around times square were doing smashing business: they lost refirdgeration, so they had to get rid of their beer anyways, and no one could get home or do anything productive, so everyone was getting drunk.
so a night that i thought would be spent in paranoia and fear, was spent with happy drunks and a sort of casual immediate sense of community, what with thousands of people sleeping in the streets in tims square.
the morning was filled with satellite news crews from everywhere (so that's what bill hemmer looks like in real life) making grand standing journalism in times square, jockeying for good vantage points on every corner, so clearly, it was now a comic circus again.
everyone walked everywhere, which is good for your heart, and people were filled with drunken wonder, not terror, so the blackout in times square was, in recollection, not so awful.
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Here is a reader's digest version of the recommendations being presented to correct the outage (its 238 pages and I didn't find who was going to pay for the changes):
1. Correct the Direct Causes of the August 14, 2003 Blackout - don't let this happen again and how can we fix it.
2. Strengthen the NERC Compliance Enforcement Program - if you don't follow the rules and regulation your going to get fined with a heavier hand.
3. Initiate Control Area and Reliability Coordinator Reliability Readiness Audits - standardization.
4. Evaluate Vegetation Management Procedures and Results. - cut the stupid trees out of the power lines.
5. Establish a Program to Track Implementation of Recommendations - adopt changes consistently and measure your progress in regards to outages.
6. Improve Operator and Reliability Coordinator Training. - Homer Simpson really doesn't run a nuclear power plant
7. Evaluate Reactive Power and Voltage Control Practices - ensure that the power plant has reserve capacity to pickup it's load if something goes wrong instead of shutting down completely.
8. Improve System Protection to Slow or Limit the Spread of Future Cascading Outages - isolate the outages in a better fashion.
9. Clarify Reliability Coordinator and Control Area Functions, Responsibilities, Capabilities and Authorities - someone needs to run the show and have authority to delegate tasks.
10. Establish Guidelines for Real-Time Operating Tools - more network monitoring and voltage gauges.
11. Evaluate Lessons Learned During System Restoration - we paid a big price for this mistake, you better get something out of it.
12. Install Additional Time-Synchronized Recording Devices as Needed - to much data to evaluate in real-time.
13. Reevaluate System Design, Planning and Operating Criteria - the electrical network couldn't handle this outage so address the root cause.
14. Improve System Modeling Data and Data Exchange Practices - we didn't have a good simulator to forecast outages and handle it properly.
My experience: Absolutely fantastic. People who are normally spending all day watching TV or behind a computer (yes, I'm guilty too) sat outside reading books, playing games, enjoying the sunset or taking a stroll through the forest.
And the sight of an entire town lit by nothing but moonlight is not something I'll easily forget. I'm probably sounding like a whiny bastard, but that event made me seriously doubt whether all the technology we have today have actually made life better as we like to tell ourselves.
They turned off all the news stations because it was interrupting the table games...
Why wasn't Quebec affected by the blackout?
Quebec borders the blackout area and has it's electric grid integrated with the affected area, yet it was shielded from the failure. Ottawa, on the Ontario side, was in darkness while right beside it Hull, on the Quebec side, was unaffected.
So the question is what did Hydro Quebec do better than the others? Or maybe the more pointed question is why did they do better than the others? Maybe the answer is with Quebec's government run utility.
Bruce Schneier put forward the hypothesis that the problems at FirstEnergy were caused by the MSBlast virus. The company is generally considered the place where the problem could have been prevented, but their operational computers failed to sound the alarm at the critical moment. In fact, "for over an hour no one in FE's control room grasped that their computer systems were not operating properly, even though FE's Information Technology support staff knew of the problems and were working to solve them." What "problems" were these? Well, we don't know, but this happened at exactly the time that MSBlast was spreading...and isn't that just...interesting.
It's only a hypothesis, of course. His argument is basically, "Here's some really, really compelling circumstantial evidence; somebody should look in to this."
I wonder: Did anybody look into it? Has anybody heard any more about this intriguing theory? Do we know what the problem with the operational machines actually was from this new report? Just what problem was FirstEnergy's IT staff fixing?
If you lived in the Northeast US or Canada what were your memories of the August Blackout?
During peak use times, our electric company asks local businesses to switch to generator power. We didn't know for a while after the fact (i.e. - clients behind PBXs were unreachable, etc) that there was a blackout for a little while.
I was tempted to stay in my office overnight, but there were no comfortable places to sleep and I ran out of change for the snack machine. While most people sweltered, I had air conditioning, phones, internet, and all. In the end, hunger got the best of me and I went home.
Where does the school board find them and why do they keep sending them to ME?
"If you lived in the Northeast US or Canada what were your memories of the August Blackout?"
None -- That was the night of my bachelor party (Syracuse NY). We found a few bars with power but I had a blackout of my own.
A funny thing happens when the power goes out in a High Energy Physics lab:
;-)
That afternoon everyone came out of their labs, immediately saying "It wasn't *my* lab, we didn't even have anything plugged in! Who did it?! Who turned something on! 'Fess up now!"
Then everyone began to get worried when they noticed that the library across the street was also without power. "Ohhh no. What did we do? I thought the transformer was meant to shutdown if something happened!"
Of course someone had a dynamo radio on them, and we all breathed a sigh of relief when we found out that it was the entire Eastern US and Canada that was without power, not just the area around our lab...
I was in Toronto when the blackout first hit. It almost fun at first: beautiful thursday evening and the sidewalks and streets were filled with people. Lots of stores selling ice cream cheap, etc...
On friday morning I learned the office was closed (woo-hoo) and by 10am the power was back on. Unforunately at 10:30 the power was off again.
Turns out the the initial draw was too much for the local station and caused a fire. As most of rest of the city was lit up around me on Friday night, I was still in the dark.
Saturday was nice a humid and Saturday night, still no power and this time the radio was saying, "Everybody has their power back".
Anyway, finally on Sunday afternoon the power came back on. It was fun for the first night, but I can feel for those who lose power for days/weeks during other big disasters.
Curiously, I work at a research hospital with a large collection of refrigerated brains (no kidding, honestly), so we have our own power backup and probably would have stayed up anyway. (Of course we pump out juice to the local town when they're low, so it's possible we would have been dragged down with them.)
"If you lived in the US eastern states or Canada"
I can tell you without a doubt that all of Canada did not lose power in that Blackout. It was mainly only Ontario.
Without government regulation, and reliability standards set by the feds, it'll happen again.
Why would any corporation invest in equipment it might need, when it could just oversell what it has and pull a higher profit? Why would they run redundant transmission lines, or even retrofit the 50 year old ones if they aren't broken yet?
When a natural disaster hits, what comes back online first? Your landline phones. That's if they even go out. I can't remember the last time there was a phone outage - ie; the whole city/block without phone service.
The government, way back in the olden days, forced Ma Bell to meet a certain standard of reliability, and boo hoo if it means they spend more on infrastructure.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
With our current liberal government insisting on cutting short Ontario's hydro supply (both nuclear and coal) (and at the same time raising rates), we're going to be screwed awfully quickly.
Expect more. Much more from the next blackout.
Remember Ontario: You elected the government you deserve.
If you could be told what you can see or read, then it follows that you could be told what to say or think - BoC
Well, they were similar to many people's memories from that night. I've always dreamt of seeing Manhattan without lights, I just didn't think it would ever happen.
At about 4:30 (when the UPS's died) we left. At this point we knew a couple of things. The entire North East had lost power, up to Ohio and parts of Canada. We knew nothing else since we didn't have a radio with us, so I left to go home and was a bit worried about what actually happened. I found out on the streets while walking from Wall St. to the Brooklyn Bridge. On the way there, I decided to go to Heartland Brewery and have a few pints. After it got dark they kicked everyone out because we couldn't see anymore. They had also run out of all alcohol mixers, so it was beer only (until they ran out of that). Luckly beer was powered through with kegs and tanks, so beer flowed plenty. I was there with quite a few travellers and NYers alike. 8PM I decided to take the long walk home. Wow, so many people, and I got a great picture (mirror please...) of the NY skyline. Anyway, get across the bridge, and swarms of people are helping taffic - pretty cool, because otherwise it would be complete chaos. I was also greeted by the borough president - I guess he had nothing else to do.
Finally, walking down Atlantic Ave (quite busy avenue in Brooklyn) all the stores had set up on the street and so had the Deli's. Everything was cheap and everyone was drinking beer to keep cool. Who needs water? People were everywhere sitting on their roofs and stoops hanging out with friends and relaxing. People were running on the less crowded streets and playing games until it was too dark, and then the bars. My god, the bars were crowded that night. Every bar on Smith St (where a lot of bars and restaurants are in Brooklyn Heights/Cobble Hill area) was completely packed. It was a lot of fun. That was a great night to meet lots of random people and just laugh at the fact that no one has power.
I can't remember anything terrible that happened that night - except that I had to go to work the next morning and wait outside my building till 2pm (eventually went home because I wouldn't get in until after the market closed). Hey, if the blackout can happen again, so can all the fun. All in all, NYers pulled it together and helped each other out where needed, and managed to have fun at the same time. I'm just glad I lived in Brooklyn at the time and not upstate NY like some of my co-workers...
"Time is long and life is short, so begin to live while you still can." -EV
If you lived in the Northeast US or Canada what were your memories of the August Blackout?
We conceived.
My power was only out for 6-10 hours or so. My cell phone worked for a bit but then the network went down for whatever reason.
So, I walk down the street to a pay-phone to make a call, cus whadda ya know, I'm all stocked up on blackout quarters.
New electronic Bell phones will not accept a quarter for a call when there is no power. I couldn't make a call in any way, or even get to the operator to make a collect call.
Sad, really.
...that most people associate "Power Plant" with this huge generation facility- which is what typically is built because of the economies of scale, etc.
You can do the Denmark thing rather easily with much smaller power plants. Something on the order of 100kW to 10MW that would nearly be unobtrusive compared to the traditional 100+MW plants people see. The big reason why you don't see micro plants is that they're more expensive to operate and therefore cut into the power companies' margins.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
So what's significant about "Fresh blood through tired skin"? (Kethinov's decoded sig...)
A couple days, no power in August, boo friggin hoo. Those of us who remember living through the "Ice Storm" of 98 will remember 3 weeks (21 days exactly in my case) of no power in January. Believe me, January in Montreal is a matter of -10 to -20 degrees Celcius. What's a summer weekend without air conditioning. Wimps.
I was with some friends canoeing down Pine Creek in Northwest PA. We stopped in a very small town with a giftshop/cafe, and heard the shop owner say he had to plug the ice cream freezer into a generator. At the time we assumed that the distant thunderstorms we had heard the previous night were responsible for a localized power outage-- not till we arrived home did we hear how our whole state (NY) had been affected.
I was working graveyard shift at the time, so I was asleep when it hit. My UPS started squawking at me when the power failed. My cable modem showed no signal, and I decided not to bother. Power down on both (ext3 is nice!) and just went back to bed. When I woke up to start my day (night), everything was back.
I still would have had to go to work that night. The factory where I was working, had been deemed "critical" by the US gov't when it was built, so it has its very own power plant, which is always warmed up and ready. And they found out that day that it was still in working order.
... listening to the news and how the US blamed Canada for the blackout stating that everything was Canada's fault when in fact the problem originated from the United States.
Its good thing the committee is staying around though to push for new changes to the power grid as it is no so old that it is having trouble supplying us with power now. Think 10 years in the future and it may start going down daily. They need to seriously revamp the grid or find ways for us to use less power.
Memories... Blackout 2003 - Detroit, Michigan.
It was dark, but only when I turned my G2 Nitrolon off.
Seriously though...
I enjoyed the time away from the computer as we visited with neighbors and enjoyed the cool-ness of the basement (finished) when in the house.
Interesting to hear about how people starting panicking after only 12 hours of being without power. Looting was minimal though, which was pleasantly surprising for the area we live in.
I think if the blackout had lasted much longer it would have gotten worse... since the average person does not keep enough food/supplies in their house to survive for more then a few days.
It was really a non-event for my family and me.
Actually, it was one of the most beautiful nights I've seen in Toronto, ON, Canada. :) I could actually see the stars, and it happened to be around the time when mars was nice and visible to the naked eye.
In fact, I wish we didn't have so many lights on at night. I don't think we need all the lights that we do have on after the sun sets. I'd say we could do with half, it'll save a lot of energy and it'd be a lot more pleasant. Of course the flip side of this is safety. Would people feel as safe walking around downtown anymore? Probably not. Oh well. It was fun while it lasted.
PS I live in downtown Toronto, and it's generally quite bright even at 3am.
AirSpeak - http://itunes.com/apps/AirSpeak
because in a short while, all the kids will start poppin' out...as scheduled, 9 months after august :)
A morning without coffee is like something without something else.
I remember walking around and enjoying seeing everyone hanging out on their front steps, and sharing food.
I also remember imagining a refrigerator-sized fuel-cell generator on every block, so this wouldn't happen (until the hydrogen supply ran out). Then I mentally added various redundancies, like rooftop solar and a windmill. Then I read the paper about the oil wars that continue to broil.
Damn those pesky terrorists
My memory of the blackout: There I was, computer went down. I didn't Seemed an awful long time till the power came back on and I could log back in.
Alot of people were worried about me when I check back on the forums. Some peeps on IRC were like "where were you?!?". Gave em a real scare that time!
There's nothing Intelligent about Intelligent Design.
I was at work, at a large nuclear power facility just east of Toronto. Everything went black in the office. I heard some noise out in the switchyard. I stepped outside and watched in disbelief as three reactors tripped off-line within a matter of seconds. I had absolutely no idea what was going on, but being the nuclear professional that I am, I turned and ran calmly to my car while the boilers vented steam into the air...
> If you lived in the Northeast US or Canada what were your memories of the August Blackout?"
My memory of the blackout was first: 'darn, my power went out. I wonder if someone hit a pole'.
With by the realization that power was out as far as I could see I switched to mild panic wondering if this was the beginning of a massive terrorist attack (I'm in New York). The phones were out, cell phones were out as well, I had no battery powered radios so there was no way of getting information. I was wondering how in the hell I would get my family off of an island with millions of people. I can't get off this island in any reasonable time under normal conditions.
So I filled up as many bottles as I could find with water and put them all in the basement. I figured if the infrastructure went to hell I would need water for my family. I figured I'd hear about any contamination in the water within a few days and we'd drink juice and soda until then.
Then I found out it was a blackout and we had a barbecue with the neighbors and the kids had a great time playing with their dad who for once wasn't working all day.
It's nice to remember once in a while that it doesn't take much to be happy.
- For the complete works of Shakespeare: cat
Without the electricity, I had no choice but to get a life. Just as I was on the brink of learning about meaningful interaction with people, the blackout ended, and I was instantly back to my old ways again.
I also remember that the Daily Show played a lousy clip show that night. I was upset... I had hoped they would have battery-backup or something, and was looking forward to the Hillary Clinton interview (that was done later and turned out to be as boring as everyone else expected).
Er - that's about it, though.
I think some parts of MA were hit, but I live in the north-east section of MA, so the lights stayed on. Still plenty of people managed to panic anyway, thinking that the lights were going to go out "any minute now" but they never did. Apparently we just got lucky, though. Although I'm curious if our town would have lost power, since its public power system has proven to be very reliable and gets power from many sources. It's always fun when a snow-storm knocks out the surrounding towns power and our lights stay on. :)
You are in a maze of twisty little relative jumps, all alike.
had better power grid before the last war. It didn't collapsed completely even with more than 1/2 of power stations bombed. I am sure they will use the occasion only to improve it.
Check out Plug Power too
- Bill
Ah, I remember the good old Balck Out like it was yesterday, or last yeah. I was at a friends house and suddenly the cable went out. Her house still had power, since they were on a new substation, but my house was fresh out. At the time, I was still working at McD's and they had power from Kent and were one of the only buisness's with power. they were swamped. Luckily, all the phones at my house were cordless, so no power, no phone calls. It was a fun day!
my memory of the blackout was i had a huge data conversion that weekend for my job that couldn't fail - or most likely i'd be out of a job. i'm i'm in connecticut and only saw the powew flicker a few times. on top of the blakcout, there was some virus/worm released that weekend which had me sweating as well. fortunately, after 30 straight hours of work, the conversion was successful and our crm upgrade wnet off without a hitch.
I was on a cross-country trip from Calgary to Toronto to visit my family. I had only been in Ontario for under 24 hours when, click, all the lights go off. We're out in the boonies, everyone assumes someone has just had an accident and knocked out a transmission line. An hour later, everything is still out. Gas is getting low. We're approaching North Bay, tank almost empty, and everything is still completely out. We decide, at this point, we'd better not go any further, so we stop at a gas station to wait for the power to come back so we can get gas.
So, we end up stuck at a gas station overnight with no gas (the irony). Oh, don't worry, they had a generator, but it was "only for the diner" *cough*bullshit*cough* so people could get some food. Yes, of course they charged money. Hey look, a captive audience who can't go anywhere else! It's either eat here or starve!
What, bitter? Me? Nahh.
Random and weird software I've written.
Skipping work to go to Six Flags Great Adventure, not knowing why some of the rides stopped in mid-air until about 8PM. Driving towards NYC to see only car headlights and when in NYC some people with flashlights. Driving through one opened lane of the Holland Tunnel, lit only by my car's headlights. Nearly running someone over because he thinks I can see him in the pitch black, wearing dark clothing and not carrying a headlight. Most important of all, taxi drivers actually let others go first instead of cutting in and out like they own the road.
We're coming up to the nine month anniversary of the blackout, so we'll see if there's a corresponding spike in birthrates. Of course, not from this crowd - this is Slashdot...
I live across the Detroit River in Windsor, ON, Canada. My memories of the blackout? :)
- lining up with a dozen other people at the nearest convenience store with a stack of ice bags
- damnably hot inside and out
- convenient time for a barbecue
- drained both batteries of my laptop playing HOMM4 because it was the only game on there
- hoping my Axim's battery didn't run out, so I could read in the dark
For us in Windsor the blackout lasted only about 20-23 hours, so we were not as bad off as some.
What event, short of a natural catastrophe such as a hurricane or earthquake is *not* preventable, given the knowledge that it might happen?
Am I missing something, or is this fairly unique? Most if not all such ad hoc fact finding groups at this level end up getting disbanded immediately after their report is finished. In fact, there is often great political pressure (in the form of initial budget or time constraints) to wind these up. Any follow-through is left to politicians or the subject organization, often without further review. Here, the group apparently has the charter to continue, to pursue its recommendations.
Of course, this group has international scope. I don't think the two are a coincidence.
And, being on the other coast, I remain amused at how our power problems were largely ignored on the national level, despite covering many western states, until yet another failure closer to eastern leaders reminded them, at least for a few days, that the entire system needs review. I'm not holding my breath, though. (In fact, I recently upgraded my home UPS).
"One of the more interesting observations from this article is that this task force will remain active for the next year to push for their changes and improvements to be adopted."
:-)
Great. What that really means is that some government spud will get involved, force changes, then my bill will go up with a new line item for "recovery costs". Looks like electric will have something in common with broadband [DSL] after all.
... listening to the CBC talking about the t-dot being without power ... premenition of their impending loss to Ottawa? Only time will tell.
I was in Toronto and the blackout occured about 30 hours before I was scheduled to leave for Europe to meet up with my parents. I was going to do laundry that night so I could get it all out of the way before the trip.
I was sitting at my desk when it hit; the folks with desktops lost power long enough before the auxilary started that their machines rebooted. I was on a laptop so i just lost connections to test servers that were not on UPS's. I went home shortly after that.
I was pleasantly surprised that my apartment building had generators too. They packed enough punch to power one of the elevators, emergency hallway lights, and give lukewarm water to the apartments. No Laundry tho'.
That night my roomies and I went out to Baldwin Street to a nice patio and had a cold dinner. Everything was chaotic but calm as we strolled up the street. The dinner was - of course - simple but nice. Of course, at that time all lights were still out and no planes were flying at the airport.
At home we made do with candles and flashlights. I had a little waterproof light. That was useful the next morning. I had an old, black, bell phone that we plugged in to phone jack so that we could call people - none of our cordless phones would work. I was then able to call my parents in Europe and tell them of my situation
In the middle of the night I went for a stroll; I couldn't sleep without the air conditioning. I noticed that the power had come back on the other side of University Avenue - less than 100 meters away from my apartment building. I remember standing on one side of the street under the working street lights willing the electricity to move just a little bit West.
The next morning I woke up on my own (no alarm clock), had a luke warm shower (from the auxilary power), put on shorts and a t-shirt (still no laundry done) and went into work. Took the one working elevator at work to my floor (on auxilary power) and plugged in to check to see that there were no problems with the production servers (there were none). I wasn't so thrilled to be on the same elevator as the EVP looking unshaven with shorts and t-shirt. But on that day allowances could be made.
All throughout that Friday I had heard about flight cancellations. My flight was at about 8 PM. That morning I had heard that all flights were cancelled until 10 AM. At around 9 that cutoff was moved to noon. At around 10 AM all flights were cancelled to 4 PM. And the cutoff stayed at 4 PM. I did laundry like a madman, packed clothing - some of it semi-dry - and hopped a cab to the airport to the longest line I have ever seen.
I was flying out of Terminal 1. I had an electronic ticket that allowed me to bypass most of the line (thankfully). Once I got checked in I found out my flight had been delayed; first until 10 PM and then until about midnight. But I got on the plane and off I went. Smooth sailing from there.
J
Oh well, no point in steering now.
Hmm...let's see. I was sitting in our server room when 15 different alarms went off - at the same time that all the lights went out.
What was I thinking? At first, "oh, crap, it's loud in here..."
After preliminary radio reports came in saying that most of the midwest and new england area have lost power...terrorist attack.
Oh, I fail to mention that I live within 20 miles of a Nuclear Power Plant - makes one feel REAL safe - esspecially when this happens.
My family and I went to New York for a few days in the summer for a break between college semesters. It was a fun 3 days.
My mom and I were sitting in the airport about 1 hour before our plane was to take off when the power went out. Being from Florida, we didn't think much of it (lightning knocks out power all the time). However, the other people seemed nervous. My dad and brother were waiting for a different flight that was to take off one hour after hours. We had different flights because my dad came directly from a business trip and my brother was out of state before the trip also.
Well, after about 10 minutes of no power, they announced all flights would be cancelled. Our flight still took off, but we weren't allowed to board it because we had electronic tickets and only paper tickets were allowed for boarding.
My dad and brothers' flight also ended up taking off.. But they hadn't passed the security checkpoint before the blackout and no one was allowed to after the blackout.
My brother and I had Tmobile cell phones with plenty of battery. My dad had already used most of his battery power to reschedule appointments for work. My mom used her cell phone for the same thing. Tmobile worked for about 1 hour after the blackout. Then, it went dead for the next two days - wasn't able to use it until I got out of New York.
So, since my mom and I had no way to contact my brother and dad, and all hotels were instantly booked, we just sat around in LaGuardia (a totally crappy airport) all night. She slept; I didn't. We were next to a typical Mexican family of 47 that were being unnecessarily loud. I decided to use my abundant battery power in my cell phone to try to force it onto another cellular network (Tmobiles are supposed to be able to roam). I saw AT&T available and selected it, but when I did, it said emergency calls only. Fuck Tmobile.
My bro and dad got on a bus headed back towards Manhattan and went back to our former hotel room. Since power went out, no new rooms were able to be booked so they were able to have the same room again. The hotel (New York Hilton Towers) was very well prepared for the whole incident. They laid out a buffet (since their food was gonna go bad anyway) and let anyone at it - even people not staying at the hotel. They also gave out a bunch of glowsticks to anyone that wanted one.
The next morning, my mom and I decided to carpool with a business man who was taking a rental car to Washington DC to get a flight out from there. The cab ride at 4am through Manhattan to the rental dealer was scary. Everything was pitch black. Every few blocks there was a police car with police lights running. Other than that, there was very little light. My mom and I booked flights. We drove the 3 hours without a hitch. Our plane was 1 hour late, but we made it home fine. It felt so good to be home and finally be able to take a shower.
My dad and brother, however, were still stuck in New York. My brother's cell phone would still not work. When my dad walked by a news crew, they asked him his opinion. Being an electrical engineer, he explained fairly accurately why the power in such a large area went out. He said he didn't know if he made it onto the TV, but he thought it was funny that the news crewman was saying exactly what he said right after the 'interview'. My dad used this opportunity to charge his cell phone by plugging it into the news crew van. He said they didn't mind as long as he didn't tell other people about it.
After a half hour or so of charging, my dad was finally able to book a flight out of LaGuardia, but it was soon cancelled. My bro and dad went out and bought some new clothes since they were sick of smelling. They ended up staying in New York for another night. They did eventually make it back, though.
Airport computers really oughta be on backup power. LaGaurdia's weren't. Though, the lights and televisions in the airport stayed on for about 10 hours after the initial blackout.
--- We need more Ron Paul!
North-eastern U.S. and Canada... We're more than one province...
Subsequently, true facts were reveiled and everyone turned back to their original generalities for hating us.
ya, I'm generalizing and I suck at spelling so target me, not my country. Oh, I'm anonymous :)
'task force Find Blackouts were Preventable. past tense
My story?
When the blackout hit, I was working as a chef at a summer camp serving 380 people 3 meals daily. Without power we were still supposed to wash thousands of dishes and prepare several meals. The kitchen staff of seven ended up having to work two consecutive 11 hour work days.
The backup generators for the two walk-in fridges were unable to generate enough current to save all of the food, and not all of our 6 freezers received backup power. So, I tried to eat as many frozen deserts as possible before they melted. I think I probably hold a record for eating the most popsicles in 30 minutes.
On the day of the blackout, we were driving from Chicago to Detroit to see Iggy and the Stooges play their first hometown show in a couple of decades. The show was at the DTE Energy center (which was called Pine Knob until the power company bought it's sponsorship). Anyhow, we didn't really know anything was up - we stopped at a McDonalds for a bio break, but unbeknowst to us, they were running their own generator (not rare in rural Michigan, even my parents are set up with generators since they are low on the totem pole when the power does go out). Scanning the news stations we learned that there was a power outage in the center of the universe (New York) but there was no mention that this phenomenon spread all the way to Detroit - so we didn't worry much. As we arrived, noticed a lot of traffic at our exit (everyone was going to the show it seemed), but upon getting the the venue were turned away and learned that the power outage was far bigger than the radio led us to believe.
No power at the DTE "Energy Center." Which Iggy acknowledged was too "Stoogey" to be believed.
Which left us with nothing to do but go back home. Only problem was we were low on gas - so we drove the freeway looking for a gas station that had lines (no power makes it hard to buy gas). Finally found one and make it back to Chicago 5 or 6 hours later. The oddest thing was how calm and polite everyone was (as they filled up their gas cans so they could power their home generators).
I would second the motion and add a few US voters and states into the discussion. (Mod this guy up!)
It is impossible to fix problems that people want to keep. They will simply fix your fix and like a dog or cat that has been "fixed".
The Energy situation in North America is that we have lived for about 60 years with a massive surplus of electricity generation capacity as a result of much regulation with careful managment and some Cold War supplies that came open as a result of the Nuclear builddowns of the 1980's. Well we are OUT of reserve. The Population growth has eaten it up. The Deregulation and Environmental Forces have conspired to see no new facilities of consequence. Population is rising at 3.5% per year due to unbridled Immigration
You go figure out a solution but remember! You can't build more or you would be against the Capitalists and the Eco Types. The Eco Types think that they can just stop and the Capitalists want a shortage to make money from. You can't Stop Immigration or you would be a "Racist" or a "Bigot" or something like that.... and so on. Well if anyone has a solution speak up and you will be shot by those who don't want one.
Just a final note: When the blackout happened the thing I noted was the sulfur stench in the air and smarting my eyes with SO2. You see I live in Alabama with the US TVA. For about a month after the blackout until the Nuke Stations got fully up in the North East, the US TVA carried the load. The had no more reserve using normal operations capacity so they kicked off the scrubbers and smoked the air but good! Burning about 300,000 kg of coal/min tends to make a lot of smoke!
Never Politically Correct ~ I prefer the facts If you don't like what I say, get a life, or comment yourself.
I mean, no matter what goes wrong, when we all stop and think about it... There will always be something we "could" have done differently.... maybe "should" have done differently.
This is basically a cheap, let's point the finger at someone as long as it's not me, strategy.
My Car accident "could" have been prevented if the damn fool in front of me didn't slam on his brakes. But the Cop ticketed me.... Maybe we should look at "HOW this could have been prevented?"
Or maybe I'll just slow down in the future and not follow so close.
You either point fingers (and get no-where), or you learn from it and move onward with your life and don't have it happen again.
Linuxrunner
www.slightlycrewed.com - Because aren't we all?
The blackout was a great event in Toronto - in fact, I jest not when I say I hope we have more. Here's my "blackbout" story.
;p So I started to play them as I walked. Walked over to a buddy's place, who practices the martial art of capoera. He grabbed his capoera bow, a musical instrument, and we set out together.
When the blackout hit, first had to take care of the practical. Filled my tub full of water, along with a few empty 2L bottles, just in case the powerout was a long one. Got out the candles and flashlights.
Next step - find out wtf is going on. Sat on my porch and listened to my radio while drinking Corona. As the news came in, an odd sort of peace settled in. The beer tasted better, and somehow, things were fresher. BBQed some schnitzel, had another beer. Actually saw my neighbors outside for once.
Last step - Adventure Time(TM). Decided this was the perfect time for an "adventure." I live in Toronto itself, and a walk downtown would take only two hours, so I decided to do it. Packed some essentials - put on my top-hat, packed a chess board, bottle of water, and cards in my backpack. Grabbed a few candles for my pockets.
Fate was kind, and in the mood for having a good time, too, it seems. Of all things to find on the roadside - found a pair of bongo drums
Was very eerie to walk the streets, devoid of cars or streetlights. However, we were not the only ones undaunted by the darkness. The closer to downtown we got, the more people were there in the streets. Stopped by one group, and played music for them while they danced. Then we set out again.
Reaching the restaurant district, we found it even more lively than on a normal summer's night. Stereos were playing, and almost ever restaurant was still open, albeit lit by candle light. There was a festive spirit in the air, and people - strangers - were actually talking to each other.
There was almost the feel of a marketplace of old. Traded a candle for a glow-necklace. Played music for some popcorn elsewhere. Got a bottle of water and a chocolate bar for a candle at another place.
Checked out some clubs. Of these, most were closed, but some weren't. Zen Lounge had a battery powered stereo playing, and a huge crowd of people. Played chess with one fellow. Had some free beer.
By the time we made it back home, at around 4 am, lights were starting to come on in limited areas.
It was one of the best summer nights in my experience. The darkness forced people outside, and forced people to interact. I think there should be mandatory blackouts once a month in the summer, and maybe more, once people get used to it. We have something to gain from them, something to learn, and something to remember.
Here's a good quote I found on darkness:
"We are spoiled in how much light we have. No longer do we remember the true darkness that came with night, with winter - the smell of tallow burning, or of lit marsh reeds - saving candles for the arrival of guests. Darkness humbled man, made light precious, and the stars holy.
Now, the stars are hardly seen anymore, on those rare occasions when the proud figure that is man chooses to look up at the heavens."
I was at home playing DNF on my quantum computer powered by a hydrogen fuel cell generator.
Sure, there'll fix the problem.
I was at that large amusement park in Ohio, right on Lake Erie. I forget the name, famous place... Sandusky something, I forget. I am from the tri-state area, no where near ohio. Anyway, I was waiting on line for a coaster as the power went out. One person ahead of me for the car. The other poor saps go stuck at the top of the coaster. Oddest thing, after about 30 minutes, no one had a clue what was going on. They were escorting people down the coasters who got stuck up top then they just dropped the coasters. They just let gravity do it's job... crazy... Cell phones wouldn't work either, which reminded me of another day I tried calling people... So it was starting to get a little creepy. After figuring out that the power wasn't going to be coming back on we starte to leave, the line for a refund was longer than most of the lines for the coasters, so we didn't bother. It wasn't untill we got into the car to fire up the good ol' AM Radio did we find out what the hell was going on.
I've spent a great deal of time engaged in this area. The problem is that the old power companies won't change unless they have to (direct from the mouths of their CEO's). Why? They're a regulated entity and 80 year old Mrs. Smith expects her power to be there. If a manual switch works, they aren't changing it due to the risk of interrupting Mrs. Smith's power and her calling the state PUC to complain. Stupid, but it's the fact. Small-scale, renewable power is a reality. In fact, individual homes can even put power back on to the grid. The problem is that it will involve upgrades by the power companies. Right now, you can buy a fuel cell for your home, but it won't play with your local provider. 99% of power facilities still use manual switches, when automated ones are available. They use the phone to resolve transimission issues or e-mail. In the case of the NE power outage, they were working to resolve a power issue that happend 3 hours ago, meanwhile the entire grid was starting to cascade. I have a lengthy paper on what caused the blackouts. The bottom line is that the grid and individual power operators need to upgrade their systems dramatically, but won't do it unless someone puts a gun to their head. The cause of the power outages (past and future) is bureaucracy, pure and simple.
He's what happen for my group.
We were camping for a big medieval event and of course, when you're out in the woods, outer space or a spiritual trip, some guy always says "what if we came back to civilisation and it was gone, or something really big happened?" "What if we came back and they changed the color of oreo cookies?"
Of course, none of these things happend, but it was pretty freaky to see that power was out for a few days.
(based on a true story)
Nouvelles de jeux et technologies en français. TC
I remember clearly where I was when it happened. We were hanging out in the computer science club room at the local university, discussing some meaningless thing or another. Suddenly the room goes black. I can remember looking out into the hallway and seeing nothing. I've heard that panic had broken out in some places, but we knew that it would be a minute or so before the emergency lights kicked in, so we just kicked back and made jokes about civilization coming to an end. At this point I didn't know that it was so widespread, I thought that it was maybe a local outage. So we waited until the emergency lights kicked in, and then we vacated the premises. Half an hour later I was on a bus back home, and it wasn't until I had hit the bus terminal that I learned of the scope of things. God was my mother in a panic! :) She was worried about looters and rioters, but we were tucked away in the suburbs and besides, our town was too small to have riots!
Anyways, that's my version of events, and I'm sticking to it.
I'll be honest, we're throwing science against the wall to see what sticks. -Cave Johnson
My take has always been that creaking, barely-functioning infrastructure is cost-effective. That the risk of blackouts is a cost that utility companies would prefer to shift to their customers because getting robust systems with built-in redundancy is expensive.
It's kind of like my other favorite "cost of insurance" born by the public example. Up until September 11, 2001, US domestic airlines consistently opposed more stringent security screening procedures because they felt the added inconvenience to their customers would be bad for them. Of course, all opposition ceased once the insurers (general public) had to pony up on a claim.
Now we're in the opposite end of the field in terms of risks and rewards. Given existing terrorist activities, people have such an enhanced perception of the threat and value so little the cost of their existing civil liberties that they've traded some essential liberties for temporary security. Not having had a bona fide authoritarian government abuse power makes people lazy.
"Provided by the management for your protection."
I remember most how dark the sky was. Of course I took full advantage of that by sitting outside coding on my ibook.
Your ad here ask me how!
I don't know about long-lasting changes, but one direct consequence of the blackout is that First Energy (the electric utility that was largely blamed for causing the blackout) has begun an aggressive tree trimming program.
A 69kv line runs on the north end of our property. It has not been visited by the cost-(not tree)-cutters at First Energy in 10 years. Now (miracle of miracles), they have practically clear-cut the easement! This rather frenetic activity seems to be happening throughout the First Energy service area.
They haven't yet cleaned up the mess that they made, though they have promised to do so. We'll see.
Given the demonization that First Energy suffered for failing to do basic transmission line maintenance, it isn't surprising that they are beating (down) the bushes to make sure that they don't have any more issues with sagging power lines.
While this doesn't address the systemic problems that were the real root causes of the blackout (ancient infrastructure, no central control of the grid, etc.), it is an indication that someone in Akron (home of First Energy) is paying some (little bit) of attention to the powerlines. (It is remarkable what getting your butt hauled in front of Congress and being paraded across the front page of every paper in the world will do to your priorities).
Or.. Well.. At least one of them.
I work for a Cleveland area ISP. If you can call us that. I remember the blackout vividly. Sitting in the basement of an industrial type building Downtown.. Watching three (half empty, all lame) racks of servers go down.. Listening to each UPS chirp its final chirp.. Staying up all night long, just to make sure I got back in time to see them up before anyone else noticed we were out.
All that work to find out two days later, we were the only game in town to go down. Cheap boss STILL wont buy a generator.
Oh well. Weaving my car through the streets in total blackness made up for it.
(Anonymous for the sake of the paycheck)
I loved the blackout. I drove from Calgary to Ontario last summer with a friend and his brother, in two cars. I was destined for Ottawa, and my friend for Kirkland Lake in Northen Ontario. About 8 hours after we seperated to head different directions, I arrived in my hotel in Ottawa. I didn't have anything left to do, so I sat down and watched TV for the afternoon.
The TV shut off. But a few minutes later, it was back on. I started seeing news reports of a major blackout affecting a huge area, and realized that ... hey, that includes me. My hotel had generators running the entire time, though. After a few hours, when it was apparent that the blackout was here to stay, the hotel turned off the air conditioning. That was the worst the blackout did to me.
My friend... he was stuck in northern Ontario, out of gas, at a gas station with no power. Oh, they had a generator... but they didn't use it to power the gas pumps, just the resturant.
It was a fun vacation for me. I'd have been more upset if I had no power, I suppoe.
There was some explosion at the nearby ConEdison building and a bunch of smoke was rising from it. That's when we decided it was time to walk down the 45 flights of stairs. I'm in relatively decent shape but the monotonous pattern of steps was starting to make me dizzy and my legs floppy. I'd feel that more the next day in my knees. After that is was either a 3 hour walk to brooklyn or a much shorter 40 block walk to my girlfriends place. Not even sure how to get to brooklyn on foot, being new to the city, i opted for a walk uptown. It was uneventfull, for the most part. Citizens directing traffic at intersections and some dumbasses in cars ignoring all of them. Once uptown, it was obvious that people were either at bars or trying to find food and supplies. Bars mostly. The crowds at bars were overflowing into the street. Everyone was trying to use their cellphones yet nobody was talking into them, just waiting and hoping a signal would go through.
Some time later, i met up with my girlfriend, thankfull she wasn't stuck in the subway. She was leaving a training seminar at work just as it happened, but the subway was already not working by the time she got down to it. So we looked for candles and flashlights at her place and found only 1 of each. We went out looking for more and found a french bakery selling all their refridgerated goods for super cheap. We bought some frozen icey things and they were delicious. At the grocery store, we waiting in line for about a half hour atleast just to get into the store. the store was nearly pitch black inside and they were only letting a handfull of people in at a time. Blindly, we looked for the candles and some other food that we could make for later. Thats about it, just tons of people out walking the sidewalks, hundreds of people sitting on walls on the edge of central park resting or listening to news on someones car radio, a haldfull of inconsiderate asses driving way too fast, ignoring pedestrians and people trying to help direct traffic.
No I didn't, you insensitive...
Damn those pesky terrorists
I just finished my non-paid internship at MTV's IS&T department in Times Square and they hired me for some freelance. That was my first paid week so I was looking for some nice overtime, but of course it did not happen. After trying for the Ferry to get back in Jersey, it was pointless so my boss and his wife took the ferry bus to Weehawken, and my firend and I tried the PA again. Finally they opened it up and my friend saw his Bus leaving right when we got there so we jumped on as it was entering the tunnel. I did not want to wait in the PA for my bus and finally at about 7:00 pm i made a sign stating the higways that are near my town (rt 80, 23, 46, 287) and fianlly a guy from 2 towns over picked me up (along with other strangers) and drove us to Montclair State University in Montclair, NJ. It was the easiest ride through the Lincoln Tunnel and Rt 3 I have ever experienced. And when we crossed over the Parkway inotcied lights. Go dropped off in Montclair, called my parents and they picked me up and drove me home. Then stupid me wtried to back to work the next day, but could only get back via the PATH so was stuck in Hoboken for a bit, but that was another story - I wanted the money so I figured I would try and go to work...
hahaha
Stating the obvious here, but pretty much an incident is preventable given circumstances X, Y and Z. But in the real world we have to make decisions based on things like economic factors.
.. to 'WorstEnergy'.
While the plant was hemorrhaging and was unstable, did anyone else see what the PR rep from the Utility that ran the plant said? (very roughly) "Why should we explain (or tell) anything to you", referring to the public or the media present; this got people very upset and is very telling of the attitudes; is it still the same?
So the companies have found out what they can do to fix it, etc. But what are the people going to learn? I remember seeing this happen (from afar) and watching some people panic, a run on a few stores and so on. A buddy of mine told me that people were at a complete loss for what to do for food and water and someplaces were just nuts (not riots, but near mob-like).
What bothers me the most is that these people got their power back 12-24 hours later, then settled into their lives again.
I live out in the boondocks in a itty bitty town in the middle of no where. Last year a major windstorm went through here and took out power for 10s of thousands of people, including every home and business in my town. At my house I have a water pump so no electricity = no water, air conditioning/heating, lights, etc. Didn't bother me...I'd had power outages in the winter, so I made sure to learn my lesson.
I had a mini propane grill (and fortnatly a propane stove) that I could cook the small stash of soup I had put aside for this purpose. I had 8 gallons of water and a cooler to keep my perishables in, plus a propane latern for when it got dark.
It took seven days before the power came back on at my house, but other then the lack of internet/computing power, I don't think I suffered much. Heck, it was a great week, very relaxing and it let me do a lot of things I don't normally do (work outside, excersise, read, etc).
I was greatly amused to see the people 'suffering' from this short outage, because when it happens again, they're probably going to repeat their actions rather then learn from them.
Not hanged up. Hung up! You hung up your phone, not hanged it up!
Damn this lack of grammar upon the Internet which I otherwise love! That we should suffer such baboons to bash on their keyboards pains me so!
We spent the next morning trying to get ice, and listening to the reports that we would be without power for at least another day. When we finally gave up on trying to get ice, we went home. That evening, we had a few people over, sat on our porch, and talked. I broke out the guitar, and played a bit of music. The next day we rounded up a few friends to come over and cook off our thawing meat. We had a big BBQ, and had a blast. The power ended up being restored that evening. All in all it was not that bad.
-- Charles A. Plater
My Coworker was talking ala tech support to a guy in New york (State). All of a sudden our product stopped working, then he said his lights went out and everyones in town. He blamed our hardware. I just laughed at him in the background as my coworker tried explaining that it was all of the eastern seaboard.
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
"All right
// "Can't clowns and pirates just -try- to get along?"
I lived in an area where First Energy controlled the power. The substation feeding us was so dreadfully bad, that any time we had a severe thunderstorm, we'd just get the candles out. More than four out of five times, something would hit the station and blow it out, and it would be hours before First Energy would get the power back up. Clockwork.
I've since moved from Akron to one of its city suburbs, who generates its own power from the nearby waterfalls. During the blackout, all of Akron was out (controlled by First Energy), yet I never noticed until I saw it on the news. My city, which was on its own grid and had its own power, was running fine.
The local authorities told everyone to stay at home because people would be arrested going into areas of Akron during the blackout. Yet people were driving into my city, in order to eat at a restaurant, go to a bar, go shopping, etc.
It was pretty hilarious in hindsight, that First Energy was inept in my neighborhood, and I moved away a few months before the big one hit. I'll never again think city-generated power is less stable than a big corporation's massive grid.
Human nature is the same everywhere; the modes only are different. -- Earl of Chesterfield
i found the best thing was the purely guerilla organization that sprung up. Construction-workers or stock-traders both on the same level, helping direct traffic since most of the police were dealing with more important matters. Watching the hordes of business people having to walk instead of take the subway, enjoying the hot afternoon sun.
Paul K.
If it wasn't for the spoiled food and the danger to the young and elderly, I'd say we should have a weekend long blackout every year.
Sure it was hot, no hot water, not much in the way of food, but for the first time in my life I was able to walk to the park, lie down, and look at the stars.
Toronto was never so beautiful as when the lights were out.
This photo pretty much sums up the experience of walking from Greenwich Village to 103rd and Amsterday (basically, the Columbia University Campus) through New York City at night.
I bet there still on reserve power since the person that made the page doesn't know how to spell.
Table of Contents
Introduction
Overview of the North American Eleictric Power System and Its Reliability Organizations
Causes of the Blackout and Violations of NERC Standards
Eleictric Power!! wow that sounds like something that I want!
If you lived in the Northeast US or Canada what were your memories of the August Blackout?
I seem to remember a bottle of J.D. and a tall glass, but then it all goes black...
+1 Insightful, -1 Troll. What can I say, I'm an Insightful Troll.
Yes it is sad that these things are luxuries in many parts of the world. But that is no reason for me (or anyone) to feel guilty for having these luxuries. People talk like since some people have to live in mud huts, everyone should live in mud huts untill everyone can live in 9000 sq foot condos. If the poverty lifestyle suits you, please do not let me stop you from enjoying your mud hut.
And again, if I didn't say it too clearly last time, most of the people yapping about the excess of Western Civilization are prime consumers of the benefits of Western Civilization.
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
We already have most of that in place, and still we require electric power. Most of the savings you're talking about occured over a decade ago.
You're avoiding the core issue... we need more electricity, we need more capacity, and we need less vulnerability.
We're becoming more electrified, not less; hell, you can't even listen to music without your computer these days.
It took me two hours to get to my apartment, as EVERYONE was leaving early. I found my wife was already at our new house working, and our apartment's alarm system was going off constantly. After cutting the wires to the horn, I went over to work on our newly purchased house.
Being an estate sale, it came with refridgerator. Which was full. And had been for months, but the fridge was kept on. Now it didn't have any power. It was pretty awful. I traced the horrendous stench to a fish that had fallen underneath the produce shelves and was rapidly decaying. After three days of scouring down the insides alternatly with bleach and baking powder/hot water, the smell was gone and we got our fridge! Thanks, blackout!
My Other Computer Is A Data General Nova III.
... I wasn't on a coaster when the power went out... but a few of my friends were.
I was standing in the arcade... when the power flicked off the first time (and ate everyones money) it came back on for about 3 minutes... just enough time for everyone to pump another few bucks into their machines... then it all went dead for good. haha.
Find Escorts, Strippers, Massage Parlours, Swingers
Most of Canada still had power. My personal memory was that of Ontario folk whining and watching the US blame Canada on CNN.
I got a day off work, I got to play games outside with my kids (2 and 4) and got to see a beautiful starry sky that night, which isn't easy to do, even in Ottawa.
The next morning we "camped" in the backyard and made our breakfast and morning coffee on the BBQ. Man that old percaltor we use when were camping makes the best coffee...even better than Tim Hortons.
I gotta say, I haven't been that relaxed in ages. I can hardly wait to do it again sometime.
What say we all plug in our toasters at the same time next August too. I'm willing to bet my next paycheck whatever problems led to this aren't fixed by then....
Isn't it funny how this "disaster" was the most peaceful, enjoyable, friendliest time most of the posters here have had in years...
Never by hatred has hatred been appeased, only by kindness - the Buddha
In other news, CNN discovers that hindsight is 20/20
-=sig=-
Blistering hot (No fan or A/C)
Hungry (resturants closed, stove don't work, only corner stores open, and only non-parishables available - chips do not a meal make)
Poor (Lost many hours of work - cost me about $365 canadian)
Bored (Tv, Computer, internet.. ect.)
Eyes hurt (reading by candle light is quite hard on the eyes)
Scared (within minutes of the blackout, I heard about 15 car alarms, and started hearing on my wind-up radio that ppl were rioting in some cities)
REALLY ANNOYED (I could see the lights at my office come on from my home.. whent in to get news via internet and do some work, then the lights when on across the street, and off on my side, then on, then off, then on.....)
Reality is in the mind of the beholder - me 1996
US Immigration wouldn't let us get off the plane with the ladder trucks so they flew us across to Minneapolis a few hours later. After another few hours I finally got through immigration only to find that my luggage had been lost!
Not the best day ever, and the airline refused to either put us up or refund the $120 it cost me to grab one of the last hotel rooms in a local Holiday Inn.
Finally got to Dallas the next morning, got my luggage delivered to Oklahoma the next day (on a Sunday too - woo yay!), and received a nice "thank god you got here ok" present from my fiance which more than made up for the previous day ;-)
I live and work in the Detroit area, at the time for a small computer service company. I had been out on calls that afternoon and having just finished my last call for the day at about 3:45pm in Southfield, I was headed home, but avoiding the traffic on the freeways and especially trying to avoid Woodward Avenue, since that weekend was going to be the Woodward Dream Cruise and already people were out to drive their classic cars and camp along the avenue to watch.
I made most of the trip back eastbound along 13 Mile Road and by about 4:15 or so I had made it as far as John R Road when I was stopped by a traffic light in light to medium traffic conditions. As I sat waiting for the light to change, suddenly it dimmed, brightened, dimmed yet again, started to flash, then went out. I thought maybe it was a local power failure, and proceeded forward, waiting to cross the intersection, four-way-stop style.
Once I made it through that light, I continued onward to Dequindre Rd, which is another mile east. It, too, was dark and traffic was crawling through the intersection. Since the area was probably served by the same circuits as the previous intersection, I didn't think much of it, but picked up my cell phone to dial up the Madison Heights police to report what I'd seen.
The phone wouldn't dial, all I could get was a busy signal and service unavailable message. By this time, I was hitting Ryan Road -- dark! What da f... I continued to Mound Road, where the lights *were* functional. Odd that, I thought, and turned southbound and took that down to 8 Mile Rd.
All the way across, I found the intersection at 12 Mile Rd lit and traffic crossing normally. I continued further south, though, and the lights were *out*. No further lit intersections along the rest of the route. I had tuned to the local news station and was hearing reports about power out in the downtown area of Detroit, elevators stuck in some of the larger buildings, all the stuff that would be expected with a widespread outage but no real news as no one knew anything yet.
Made it home and thought, water -- get water because we don't know how long this will last and what effect it will have on the supply. I found several containers and filled them up. My son walked in at about that time and helped finish filling up. I found my emergency radio and flashlights, got the candles out and basically prepared for a dark night.
By this time, reports on the radio indicated that the power outage was more severe than I thought, reports were coming in from New York City, Cleveland, Ontario that there were outages there. I killed the breakers leading into the house and al the individual circuits, powered off my UPS's on the computer equipment in the bedroom, then went outside to sit on the porch and keep cool.
Thankfully, I had a good stock of beer in the fridge that was still cold. As the evening passed, I watched as neighbors came home and secured their own property, then went to sit with the guy across the street. Another neighbor joined us, and we drank and joked and listened to the radio for more information.
Darkness fell and the stars came out. It was a clear night and I decided to go in after the telescope. Usually the city lights are too much for the 'scope, and I'll usually on use it at one of the local parks up well up north of the city away from the light pollution. Not that night, though. Mars was high in the sky and provided some cheap entertainment.
We migrated over to the other neighbor's front yard. He pulled out a small grill, set it up on the lawn, and we got nicely drunk while roasting hotdogs and marshmallows around the fire, while providing our neighbors with a sort of drunken neighborhood watch. We stayed up until nearly 1:30 am.
I got up for work the following morning, went in and helped answer phones. Most everyone else was told to stay home until the power came on except for a small skeleton crew that came in anyway. We amused ourselves with movies played o
The only thing we could do really is go find something to cool us down. Luckily, Ottawa is right across the river from Quebec, so we went to Dairy Queen. :)I don't think Gatineau has ever seen that much business all at once. There were a few hundred cars parked on the bridge, slowly edging forward into Quebec; people seeking dinner, cold drinks, family, etc. The city of Gatineau being on a separate power grid, we didn't notice the blackout really. There were streetlights, gas stations, businesses were open, we didn't think anything of it.
After Dairy Queen we drove from Gatineau to Buckingham, which is about 45 minutes from downtown Ottawa, to get some Tim Horton's coffee. Now, if you ever visit the Ottawa area, or live here, the Tim Horton's in Buckingham makes the best Timmy's coffee I've ever had. :)
So those purchases all taken care of, we drove from Buckingham back into the city after nightfall and beheld a wonder. The clocktower on Parliament was the only thing in the city that was light, besides generator powered floodlights in stairwells throughout the office buildings in the downtown core. The whole city was sleeping, and it was as eerie as I could imagine eerie being.
We didn't have much trouble getting back into the city, and drove down the parkway very slowly to get back to my home. Emperor Ave. was black. Flashlights shone from verandas here and there. We parked, went inside and then realized just how festive this had all been. Aside from losing a freezer full of food, it was a beautiful night. We wandered down to Fisher Ave. which is usually well lit, and watched the cars like ghosts making their way back home.
We topped the evening off by smoking a joint on the back porch, then I fell asleep not hearing anything but my own breathing.
"It's here, but no one wants it." - The Sugar Speaker
I live in a rural community near Bay City, MI, which was not effected by the blackout. However, my mother was out in Minnesota and insisted that I spend that two weeks with my grandmother. And that was the day Gramma decided to take us down to Flint.
For those who don't know, Flint, Michigan is somewhere between Saginaw and Detroit, and is one of the slummiest, most awful cities in Michigan.
And yet, Flint had power.
We were in transit when the blackout occurred, and were oblivious. We arrived at my grandma's old house, and I got myself a glass of water becuase it was such a hot day and plopped down in front of the TV--Flint has more cable channels than my rural home.
I saw on the news stuff about the blackout, and my thought involved some expletives. When we finally got to Local news time, I heard about the boil alert on Flint water, becuase Flint gets its water from Detroit.
-_-
So, I went two days without a shower becuase I didn't want to get the water in the numerous little cuts in my skin (I'm a pathophobe). I spent two days drinking pop becuase it was all we could find. On day three or so, Gramma and I spent a few hours on a wild goose chase to find drinking water becuase I was getting dehydrated. It's kinda funny, actually--it was the 16-year-old girl getting dehydrated, and not the 66 year old woman.
And of course, Gramma refused to go back to my home up north, where we had full power and well water.
I would later remember that one of my friends lived in New York, and later discover that one of my Canadian friends was going to attend some kind of conference in the states that weekend, but didn't becuase it was in Pennsylvania. But aside from reeking for a few days, I was prettymuch uneffected
So, I didn't get to see any city skylines in the dark. Wouldn't be a big deal to me. I'm a country geek, and where I live you only have to be maybe a quarter mile outside city limits to have a perfect view of the sky.
At the time I was working at a Network Operations Center in central Jersey. Minutes before close of business, I was on the phone debugging a performance issue with a provider in Manhattan. Both of us simultaneously said "Oh crap" when our lights respectively dimmed.
At that moment we didn't know that our power issues were one in the same, but it should have been a sign of things to come. While all of our important devices are on UPS, we had probably 800 or so switches reboot at the same time. Even given a 99% survival rating thats 8 switches spread out across the state that needed in-person care. Not a fun day.
The outdated notion that conservationism means shivering in the dark is pure FUD. I was born in an earth-sheltered, passive solar home. We had electric heat and hot water, and our yearly energy bills (in the 80s) was around $300. Instead of building a house that presented four big sides to the cold of winter and heat of summer, three sides of the house were buried in the ground, meaning it stayed 50 degrees in most of the rooms without heat or A/C!
The pipe to our hot water heater ran through a large barrel that was painted black. When the sun hit this, it preheated the water on sunny days. Sure we still needed electricity when it was cloudy, but it worked well and cost about $50 to build.
I'm saddened to see that slashdotters are so closed minded when it comes to hacking their homes to save themselves money. Why should we, the independent minded subculture, live in tract homes and eat at fast food restaurants like everyone else.
Why not drive a hybrid, or a TDI burning veggie? Why not live in a house built to save money and conserve natural resources? Why not switch to TFTs and turn your damn computer off at night? These things, while they cost a lot in the beginning, save money in the long run, or cost the same as shelling out $40K for an SUV and then whining when gas goes up to $3/gallon.
If more people bought environmentally responsible products, the cost would go down. This is what you capitalists are always harping about! Now you say being environmentally responsible is too expensive? Not if enough people do it.
Thinking different isn't just for Mac users, everyone can benefit by questioning tradition.
I'm in the hole of the broadband donut.
I'll bite. Your attitude betrays your own ignorance and prejudiced sterotypes about the United States. Many Americans are concerned about energy, energy policy, and conservation.
The screed on driving everywhere is easy to understand if you've never been the U.S. Lots of Americans live in cities and can commute on foot in places like Manhattan. That is simply not practical in a state like Kansas or Iowa. The countryside is vast. Hell we have a state the size of the entire European continent. Texas is the same size as France. We're working on a different scale which isn't easy to appreciate without having seen the rolling plains of the Midwest first hand.
nt
Quite frankly, I had no troubles handling the blackout despite getting back from vacation with my family a half-hour after it started. In fact, I'm glad the power went out because a water line of my water softener had burst a week before and had sprayed water all over my basement (and electrical junction box) for a week. Good thing I have sump pumps. (Yes, I should have turned the water off. My bad)
Besides, after surviving the great Ice Storm in 1998 (with a 6-week old baby) I was much better prepared.
I was working as a poster salesman, in East Stroudsburg PA. We still had power, but the NYC colo facility that the company used for ftping stuff to, was down.
My house in the center of the state was also unaffected.
The underlying cause of the blackout was speculation by energy pirates.
What happened is that in order to "wheel" power for speculation, reliability standards were ignored. The wires got hot and sagged too much.
Beyond that, the cause is ideological, with the especially Republican worship of the Free-Trade God and in particularly the dismantling of the FDR-era regulatory environment.
This report is as a result a simple white-wash. We need regulation of essential services. We need more power plants. But when your "friend" tells you to pay for new transmission facilities, they are in the pocket of energy pirates. A better solution is get rid of Cheney, put his friends in jail, and dump free-trade ideologies.
I'm not associating it with commie-hippies, I'm associate it with people that do a lot of talking, yelling, stomping, and yapping, as well as a bit of frothing, while living in the city, driving cars, toting around iPods, listening to CD's, eating at Burger King, and just consuming in general.
In other words, Hypocrites.
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
Being unemployed at the time I was sitting at home on my computer reading slashdo^D^D^D^D^D^D^D employment postings. When the blackout initially hit I chuckled as my UPS started to beep that it lost power.
After 10mins I decided to safely shutdown as this didn't look like it was going to be resolved soon (I keep my router and DSL modem going though and sync lasted until my UPS ran out of juice Good SBC). I went and got a battery powered radio and hit the news stations to see if I could get any information on what happened. There is where the confusion and hysteria started where nobody really knew what happened.
I received a phone call from my sister as she was at work sitting in the dark (cell phones can bite my landline ^_^).
As time passed by and everyone came home we went and fired up our gas barbaque (outside the house connected to the houses gas line). We went it the freezer and pulled out some steaks and ribs (no sense letting them goto waste). For desert we worked on the cartons of ice cream.
As night started to come a new problem arose, Detroit (yes in Michigan) getting the great city that is was failed to provide proper maintainance on their water pumps generators, and so the suburbs stopped getting water (that was fun). Luckly I heard on the radio that there would be problems so I grabbed some 5gal buckets and filled them with water before hand so we could at least flush the toliets.
We finally brought out the generator and ran the fridge and freezer to try to not let everything goto waste.
Walking outside was interesting, it was nice and dark like up north, but there was the destintive hum of generators of the people who were prepared. The sky was also pretty clear and we cracked out the telescope to have a look at Mars.
I went to sleep in the basement since it was hot and sticky to try to keep cool. After waking up I heard reports of people lining up for hours to get gas from the few gas stations that were starting to get power back. We waited until the afternoon when power was pretty much fully restored (surprising if you know Detroit Edision's excellent track record of keeping power going on perfectly clear days) we went down the street and got gas, round trip about 10 minutes.
Later in the evening we finally got water back, we had to boil it for a few days, but it wasn't bad.
The only major repercussion was in October or so where a 1.5ft water main cracked and flooded a section of I-96 and closed an area of the service drive for about a month or so.
Overall it was hot and muggy, a major inconvience, and a good time to laugh at stupid people who can't cook for themselves, don't have any emergency rations, and rely on Cell Phones, or just have cordless phones in their homes. The barbaque was good though. ^_^
Well I remember when the power went out, I had thought it was our buildings bi-anual powerloss. We were due for one.
Our Internet connection/switches/servers are all on UPS's so the laptops could still get on the net, as well as the server console.
Now what was weird was I started getting alerts from our monitoring system about customer servers/routers and sites that were down... and they were all accross southern ontario.
I had no idea what to make of it, at the time I still assumed it was a local problem. Eventually it all made sense, right after listening to the on hold radio that was plugged into a UPS.
What was cool was our co-located servers (in Downtown Toronto), were still humming away and our clients from Newfoundland were still running their business from those servers. 100% guarentee is sweet.
An hour or two after the power went out Aug 14, I was walking around my home city in lower NY state. I ran into a two-person TV crew. They were from some independent, possibly foreign station (I never found out which it was). The woman did an MOS interview with me, and she kept harping on the terrorism thing. I had to keep insisting that a terror attack was the last thing on my mind, and poor power grid management was the first thing on my mind. Sheesh!
Strengthening the institutional framework...
Addressing deficiencies at FirstEnergy..
Improving training and certification requirements..
Increasing the network's physical and cyber security.
Does anyone feel the task force is attempting the wrong solution? They seem to feel only they know what all the players need to do to make the system more robust. To that end, they are recommending new regulations. The are not, of course, recommending how to go about enforcing thoes regulations, nor are they recommending how to prevent companies from getting around them. Chances are, those very same players already know what needs to be done, but until now it wasn't finnancially worth making those changes.
Perhaps the task force only needs to give companies the finnancial incentive they need to fix the problem? Something simple, like making the company have to award every affected customer with X dollars if a power outage lasts for more than Y hours when more than Z customers are affected at once. I'm thinking X=$1000 longer than Y=12 hours, and more than X=10,000 customers, but perhaps there is a better set of numbers.
This would be easily enforced (if even needed) with the given legal infrastructure, puts the money in the hands of those directly affected, and simultaneously gives the power companies the finnancial incentive they need to justify the upgrades (not only having to award their customers, but having to pay the costs associated with seeing all those customers get awarded). It also allows the power companies to decide what methods works best for them to avoid having it happen -- some might go for the expense of a fully automated system while others opt for a more human-involved aproach.. which system works best in the majority of cases is a competitive advantage between infrastructures.
On second thought, never mind.. the task force members, being politicians and industry experts, clearly know more about how to fix the problem than the hordes of people making sure we have electricity all day, every day.
Welcome to the net of 1000 lies. Upgrades are scheduled soon that should bring us to the 10,000 lies mark.
In hindsight, everything is preventable and clear. ....pause....
Why, even this comment could be prevented.
(clicks submit, instead of preview)
Whoops.
Have you read the moderator guidelines? Well, have you, PUNK? (and I want a Karma: Gnarly option)
Ba-doom. Thank you. I'll be here all week.
duh?
ascii art
I cringe when I hear people suggest that the electric grid should operate more like the internet, or that we have the infrastructure of a "third-world country". They just don't know what they're talking about.
Managing the electric grid is unbelievably complicated. It's frankly a wonder events like this don't happen more often. That they don't is a testament to the careful planning, training, and strict operating practices employed by those charged with its operation.
It's overly simplistic to suggest that de-regulation is the root cause of the blackout. The authors of the report clearly identify the primary cause as failure to maintain situational awareness by First Energy. The fact that it took hours for the system to collapse shows how relatively robust it is. If the operators had known the state of the system as they should have, they could easily have taken steps to restore stability long before things got out of control.
I think this report does a lot to cut through the sensational and misinformed foolishness we read and hear. I just hope that the report's bottom line filters through to the public.
All I remember was at 3:57 I was operating normally, and then it was suddenly 4:45. I wasn't aware of any "blackout".
New York one blackout every 30 years. New Yorkers were without power for a low total of 18 hours, but for some reason you think the rest of the country intimately cares what your memories of this "horrible incident" are? NO ONE DIED, get a clue!
Quite frankly, the rest of America doesn't care. We have blackouts in California all the time. We have a powerful earthquake every 10 years or so. We yawn, rebuild, and move on. Quit shouting "Look at me!" East Coasters. We'll pay attention when it's important (like 9/11) but otherwise, quit acting like a precocious child.
"Curiosity killed the cat, but for a while I was a suspect."- Steven Wright
"Blackout survivors share stories of harrowing inconvenience."
> The outdated notion that conservationism means shivering in the dark is pure FUD.
Of course it is. But then, so is the idea that the changes that you describe are both simple and cheaper in all things. See below.
> I was born in an earth-sheltered, passive solar home. We had electric heat and hot water, and our yearly energy bills (in the 80s) was around $300. Instead of building a house that presented four big sides to the cold of winter and heat of summer, three sides of the house were buried in the ground, meaning it stayed 50 degrees in most of the rooms without heat or A/C!
You decribe a very interesting house. There's one part you left out, though. Such a house has to be custom designed, doesn't work if you don't have a hill to set it into, and is only available to folks who are willing and able to build their own houses. This makes it a limited-use design, so suggesting that it's "the thing to do" can be woefully inaccurate (for example, if you built such a house in Arizona or Florida, you might just as well make your base floor a swimming pool). For most people, it's simply not feasible to consider such a design, notwithstanding the aesthetic considerations.
> Why not drive a hybrid, or a TDI burning veggie?
You'll notice that the Prius and other hybrids are rather small cars. I have a very fuel-efficient minivan, because I need the room to move stuff around, and there's not a single hybrid on the market that has the space and sufficient power to do that. And veggie burners? How many people do you think will go for that? Stopping to collect and process fuel in the middle of your trip is a curious thought.
> Why not switch to TFTs and turn your damn computer off at night?
Because the amount of electricity I'd save by using a TFT over my CRT for the span of time I use it would be so little that I'd never make up the cost of the TFT screen, and to add to that my old CRT would then be heading for a landfill or at best be partly recycled, and the bulk of it still cast off. I fail to see how that would be efficient. And I set my computer to hibernate at night, so I might just as well be turning it off already.
> These things, while they cost a lot in the beginning, save money in the long run, or cost the same as shelling out $40K for an SUV and then whining when gas goes up to $3/gallon.
The idea that people who don't drive hybrids or veggiediesels are all driving $40k SUVs is pure FUD. See how easy it is to fall into that trap?
> If more people bought environmentally responsible products, the cost would go down.
You say this, but I have trouble seeing the logic in it. The only way I can see this being true is if economies of scale kicked in due to widespread acceptance, but considering that the options you presented are cost-intensive, it'd have to be a long time done before it'd really be competitive. Besides, nobody yet knows how well hybrids will hold up in the long run, and custom houses will always be more expensive than tract houses.
Virg
The report singles out First Energy with 3 out of the four 'groups' of blackout causes on p18 and lists MISO (NERC Midwest System Operator) for one 'group' of causes but the 46 recommendations in Chapter 10 only address the First Energy problems. First Energy certainly deserves a lot of blame but MISO (the "reliability coordinator") deserves much more because it was their specific function manage the operations of the multi-state system to prevent exactly what happened from ocurring.
The failure of MISO to keep their 'state estimator' computer analysis planning tool in operation for a critical 4-hour period was the single biggest cause of the failure but is somewhat glossed over in the report which tends to focus more on the failures of the heavily-loaded distribution lines on a hot August day than it does on just *why* those distribution lines were loaded so heavily to start with. The report does have recommendation No. 22 which is "Evaluate and adopt better real-time tools..." but the quality of the MISO tools was not the problem but rather 1) the lack of supervisory oversight that allowed the tool operator to switch it off while troubleshooting and then go out to lunch without switching it back on and 2) the poor quality of the data being fed into the models. The report has a lot of nonsense requirements about 'cybersecurity' and such but it needs to add a couple of more requirements that will at least fix the immediate problem that made the lights go out. Here are three suggestions for additions:
47) Adopt procedures that require the presence of two or more analysts and a supervisory analyst for the use of all real-time planning tools at MISO and other reliability coordinators.
48) Immediately notify all system operators when a real-time operational planning tool is not in operation and switch to a fall-back emergency system operational mode until the system operational planning tool is back online.
49) Implement the planning tools with real-time status of *every* major transmission line and power generator source.
Does anyone on /. think that adding a few more Facilitators, Coordinators, Regulators, and Lawyers are going to keep the lights on more reliably?
Centralized control IMHO was the leading cause of the economic failure of the Soviet Union.
- High Tech workers, please say NO to Union Carpenters, their Union sees fit to control our compensation.
It will happen more often, and it will eventually become permanent, unless we get a renewable resource to replace fossil fuels.
Important info:
http://www.lifeaftertheoilcrash.net
http://dieoff.org/synopsis.htm
http://www.peakoil.net
Well, living in a suburb of Detroit, I quickly found out how bad people are at driving. I had gone to a 7-11 to get a slurpee, and sat outside drinking it for a while. I then went to cross the busy intersection that the 7-11 was on. Remember how you're supposed to treat power-outage-traffic-lights like 4 way stops? Because the people driving sure as hell didn't. I can't beleive there were no accidents. Took me 20 minutes of waiting to cross the street, and even then I had to run as fast as I could and pray that no maniac flying down the street at 70 would hit me. My friend was at the mall at the time, he said that all the lights went off, and everyone started grabbing clothes and other objects, and running.
...not much more to say, really. An Unforgettable Experience...
SDMI: Finally! Music that won't rip or burn! Brought to you by the fine folks at RIAA.
I loved the blackout. Between that and the Ice Storm, the greatest of all WCC slogans actually came true!
Let's see... Hot days, no air nor fans, no showers, laptop went, but only managed to charge in the car...
:P
All in all, I'd say it's very much like being amish(with a laptop). I didn't like it. Damn yanks, why did you have to go and break the power grid?!
It's been a long time.
You know what bothers me about these kinds of things? Just about ANYTHING is preventable.
If there was gross misconduct or neglect involved, then sure it is something to be concerned about. However, mistakes will always be made. It happens. Get over it. Try to prevent it from happening again.
No, I wasn't a part of the blackout... and I know it affected a lot of people adversly. But to think that something like this will not happen once in awhile is naive at best.
Just my 2 cents.
I recall, from a cloudy memory that never serves me well, of that faithful day.......... There I was sitting at my admin desk of Thirst Energy when over a one hour period, I started to notice the network traffic starting to spike. It first started coming in from outside but then the inside systems just about all started flooding the network. There was this guy in the closet with a GE Repair patch on his uniform and I heard him screaming at the system he just couldn't get going again. I could not get network access to the firewalls any longer and because they were in the other building, I just figured it would all fix itself eventually. Or there would be a patch from Microsoft or something like that so me the the GE guy decided to go to lunch. When we got back, it was still messed up so we just shot the breeze for a few minutes longer. Until... BANG. There were these very loud bangs, or clangs, like some huge relays were getting tripped. And then the lights went out. Me and the GE guy decided it would be best if we just got out of there til things settled down.
;-)
What was really interesting was when three weeks later, this guy from the front office and anther guy in an expensive suit walks up to me and asks about the network during the "event". I told him I could pull the security logs and firewall longs since I saved those when the systems came back up 3 days later. They didn't want the logs or anything but were very interested in the fact that the network traffic spiked and we found the MSBlaster worm all over the place. The notebook the spiffy looking guy was using had what looked like the word "MICROSOFT" embossed on it's cover but it was hard to see.
That's the last I heard from them and I heard that the guy from the front office was suddenly retiring off some inheritance or something.
So that's what I remember... or was it a dream???
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
"If you lived in the Northeast US or Canada what were your memories of the August Blackout?"
:D The worst we got was a brief encounter with two fairly drunk gentlemen who demanded to shake our hands before they would remove themselves from our path. With all of us ready to lay the proverbial "smackdown" on these drunks if they got any funny ideas about letting a fist fly, I decided to try the peaceful solution first and shook one of their hands, at which point they thanked us and left.
That was quite the night for me, I'd been working at a childrens camp as a counsellor and was just getting ready to leave that night for my hard earned day off when all the lights went out. I didn't notice they went out at first because it was daytime and there arn't that many electrical things in a camp. But news eventually drifted through over the radio that it was out all over the place, even in Ottawa, my destination that night. (I was staying at the Ottawa youth hostel as I had every previous day off, it's a really great place.) From the sound of things on the radio, it was pretty chaotic in the city. There was talk of possible riots when the sun went down and the usual media fear mongering, and my boss suggested I skip the day off and take it another time, but there was no way I was going to miss a blackout in downtown Ottawa! My two friends and coworkers coming with me that night were also not too keen on the idea, but I conned them into it. I wasn't sure if the greyhounds were running, so I tried to call them to find out, but it just kept ringing. Creepy. I decided to risk it, figuring the busses wouldn't stop just for a power outage. We hitchhiked up to the nearby rural town, Smith Falls and waited at the gas station there for the bus. The pierced guy working in the station had no idea if it was running or not, but we still decided to stick it out. Now Smith Falls isn't a very nice place. In fact, it's a downright terrible place. Previous teen murder capitol of Ontario and current teen pregnacy capitol. So as the sun was starting to set, and the local sheriff came driving by booming the news of a curfew at 9 that night, and an hour after the bus was supposed to arrive, we began to get worried. It wasn't a place a geek wanted to get stuck in at night. Just as we were discussing just how to get the hell out of there, up pulled the greyhound! Home free!
The 1:30 busride into Ottawa was surreal. Darkness from every little town, broken only by police lights and sirens. We slipped through one intersection with two manged and burning cars in its center, surrounded by flares. The approach to Ottawa was just weird. No streetlights on the highway, and the only lights from the skyscrapers were emergency stairwells and exit signs. We arrived to the darkened bus terminal and were greeted by two police officers armed with flashlights and automatic weapons who promptly told us to leave the building. The streets were like nothing I'd ever seen before.
Darkness, and people. There were people all over the streets, everyone was out. But it was oddly quiet, the police had ordered all cars off the streets that didn't have a reason to be there. The first light I saw was a police car, it had these two big lights in that light box ontp of it, they created a little island of light in a circle all around the car. It slid slowly past and around a corner. I didn't see another cop all night. The walk from the terminal to the hostel is about 40 minutes, and goes right through the downtown core. I was about to get a foot tour of a blackout in a city. Surreal and tension filled as the walk was, nothing bad happened. I was expecting looting, gunfights and all that, but everybody was clean as a whistle.
We arrived at the hostel worried there would be no vacancy in the situation, but all was well and after depositing our valubles in our room there, (our primary concern was getting jumped of course), we got ready to head back out onto the streets and see what there wa
Fascinating -- a good falsification for a good theory! (Popper would be proud.) I'm glad that the investigation addressed the issue. And I'm also glad that the systems weren't so vulnerable as to be taken under by the worm.
Thanks for digging that out of the report. I looked briefly, but hardly knew where to start!
I live 20 minutes from Niagara Falls, Ontario. Somehow my city was one of the only cities that wasn't affected.
Oh, well, one computer rebooted as the power flicked a bit, but other than that nothing happened. It was fun being online while everyone was saying that my region had no power.
-If God wanted people to be better than me, he would have made them that way.
Is that all the many companies that make up the power grid dont want to share critical information on their bit of the grid (for example, how much power is being fed along which lines)
In Ontario, the first week we were told to conserve as much power as possible because some of our generating stations had been knocked out badly and would take a long time to get back online. This meant no air conditioners -- in 40 degree (celcius) heat. Of course, when you watched the politicians give the daily updates of the situation on TV, they even commented once or twice on having the air conditioning going in the building where they were.
There was also one TV station (Global TV) that went around knocking on doors of houses where they saw the air conditioner was running. After they finished embarrasing the house owner by throwing a camera in his/her face demanding to know why the air conditioner was on in this time of crisis, they would cut back to the studio where the news anchor would be sitting in his suit and tie. He was undoubtedly under a set of blaring hot studio lights, the weather was in the high 30's outside, and there wasn't a single drop of sweat to be seen on his face. Of course, with their righteous attitude about power conservation, I'm sure they didn't have the air conditioning going in the studio. Yeah. Right, my ass.
So what do I remember about the blackout? The hypocrisy.
A friend and I rigged up a gasoline generator, a ton of UPSes, and a power inverter from his car to run two notebooks, a 100W light, and the DSL connection (that was still alive because the phone companies have insane backups). We were chatting on IRC for hours and no-one believed we were in the middle of the blackout until they did a whois on our netblock.
Being a fat guy that spends days and nights in front of a PC has its down side (ha!). I was working from home the day the power went out. After 3 trips up and down 20 flights of steps, I was beat. Also, I learned that after the power goes out, I have water for a few hours at best. I also had no batteries so I had no radio and no lights. After almost 2 days I was tired from steps, completely out of water (no toilet flushing!), sitting in the dark and ready for it to be over. Luckily a friend in Brooklyn got power a half-day before me so I descended one more time and took about 6 different buses to get from midtown to Brooklyn so I could get a shower and all that.
I've since stocked up on a few gallons of water and fresh batteries so I'll be in better shape for this year's outage (yes, I'm assuming we'll have another).
I haven't lost any weight though - maybe this time I'll pay a few of the neighbors to haul my ass up those steps.
what he said... I think.....
... but then, when you (generically speaking)get a response from people who ARE doing it, who aren't hypocrites,it mostly gets ignored, then a month or so later, yet again another article about alternatives comes out, the same old FUD gets spewed about how it "won't work" a few people reply "but, I"M DOING IT RIGHT NOW AND IT ROX!" , they get mostly ignored,and the cycle continues. I have seen this so much on many many forums when this gets discussed. already there's at least one guy here who's posted of being on solar, and I know I posted on it a lot last year.
The deal is, and the *real* main deal is, it doesn't have to be either grid OR alternative home produced power. You CAN have both. I keep reading over and over and over again "wah, it won't run my home bacvkyard neutron smelter and..." Well, you can have BOTH. Both. You don't give up anything, you GAIN. You get MO POWAH! This is slick. You can make a decent dent in your overall useage, have a _jam-up_ home UPS system for your boxes, have a guaranteed source of SOME power for lights,TV, radio, etc, even when all your neighbors are borked and sitting in the dark from a storm or some drunk fool taking out a transformer by smacking into a pole, etc, for just not that much money, especially when you figure that many lenders now will amortize the installation right into your 20 year home note right from the git-go..
This is slick!
Until last year, I lived the previous (almost) 4 at a place that was 80% or so all solar powered. I was a caretaker on an estate, the main house was three stories, had every gadget you can imagine, these folks were electronic gadget freaks. Almost everything in the house ran just fine off the solar except the heatpumps. Those were pure grid, but in a pinch, for the winter, there was a whopper centralised woodstove, and in the summer, well, fans and window screens. Mostly though they used grid for the heatpumps, and solar for everdang thing else, which was a lot. The owners (pretty upper middle class to be fair) popped about what -say- someone might pay for a slightly better than average new vehicle, or a ski boat that got used 6 times a year, along those lines cost wise. That could have been reduced considerably if they had done their own install, but they hired it out.
The system worked well, and I ran it, which was basically checking some levels on the trace boxes, and topping off batts once in awhile with distilled water, in other words, not much maintenance. I lived on the property in an RV, I still have it, I had/still-have actually my own smallish solar rig, ran my computer, fans, tv, etc off of it. I ran an underground line to their house for my own circuit from their larger solar, and that ran my electric heater in the winter (very small but it worked). I used propane for my cooking. Their house had all the normal things, washing machine, many tv's, several computers, faxes, lights,stereos, fridge, freezer, you name it, a normal home, actually borderline mansion. We ran the deep well off of grid 220 most of the time, but in a pinch, we could flick two levers and keep water during a blackout from the solar. For backup to that was a 12 KW diesel genny we never had to use, but I ran it once a month anyway, mostly to keep the starter batts charged. The stuff WORKS man, don't believe the FUD. It's clean, too, real clean power. If you (anyone you's) locale has good solar potential, it's a great adjunct, and it's infinetly scaleable, you can start at under one grand for useful power and storage,(a good panel-medium sized, a couple storage batts, inverter, charge controller)(my rig would be around 1500 clams today, basically what I outlined except three panels and 4 batts) then scale to whatever you want. Other locations, wind might be a better option, etc, it's a big variable. Some places, solar is good in the summer, wind in the winter, so a hybrid system using both is used. That's quite a common rig across the US, BTW. It just depends, all you need is what is called a "site survey" to determine what might
What if they let another blackout happen as we reach peak energy towards the end of Summer, August/September, and then let another terrorist attack happen while the lights are out? They'd declare martial law, and postpone the election. Got your go bag together?
--
make install -not war
How about living in Saskatchewan?
:D
It's so flat, empty and vast here you can watch your dog run away for three days.
ASP
My User Agent: "Where is the pr0n?"
ruby -e 'require "base64";puts decode64("S2V0aGlub3YgU3Vja3M=")'
My User Agent: "Where is the pr0n?"
..deregulation?
SURELY NOT!!!!!
see the 10:40 entry
"You get all the fun of sitting still, being quiet, writing down numbers, paying attention...science has it all."
Note that the panel mentioned security. That is this administration's chief pet toy. So they'll beef up security (for thus far non-existent attacks)...and neglect the problem. Any bets?
oregonnerd...a nerd in Oregon, of course
...I was sweating my a$$ off!