Slashdot Mirror
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.
SF carried an article a couple of months ago regarding software bug that contributed to the blackout.
Free XBox, PS2
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
"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
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.
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.
Ok, I'm a dork.. Guess that's a danger of watching late night TV. It probably was the Nov '65 blackout, but I thought at the time it was last years; I wonder what I really saw. Thanks!
HIV Crosses Species Barrier... into Muppets
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.
"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.
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.
Check out Plug Power too
- Bill
Go for it. Be green and poor, all at the same time!
- Bill
Quebec did such a shitty job controlling their electric grid in the early 90s (remember those ice storms?) that the governments made them install Phase Angle Regulators and DC ties at the edges of their system, and forced them to be self-sufficient generation-wise. Just do a search on HVDC and you'll see how much they use it.
e rsey-PA-SouthernOhio... so all that energy routed itself right through eastern NY / north NJ, which immed. tripped New Jersey, islanding NY. NY can't support all that load by itself, so it dropped, followed by everything west in the loop. Oops.
What "DC ties" are is take the AC frequency/voltage and converts it to DC, and back to AC on the other side, which essentially isolates either side of the grid from frequency disturbances. It was we didn't want their problems affecting our frequency. Well, sure enough, when we had problems, they were isolated, and weren't dragged down by the surge. Once the middle of ohio dropped, it created a path that basically went Cleveland-Michigan-SouthCanada-Niagra-NYCity-NewJ