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.
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
It was dark and there were no computers.
FLR
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.
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".
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 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
"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
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
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.
I remember sitting in a corner, shaking violently, seeing visions of slashdot on blank monitors.
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.
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
Heat related tragedies notwithstanding, I rather enjoyed the power outage.
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.
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
Yeah I realised that in hindsight.
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.
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?
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.)
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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
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.
Check out Plug Power too
- Bill
Certainly. But I think what people really mean by "preventable" is that *reasonable foresight* would have precluded the incident.
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 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.
I'm up in Sault Ste. Marie ON. We went accross the river to SSM Michigan where they had power! Bought ice, wind-up clock, beer, batteries for the radio, and went to Pizza Hut. Came home and listened to the CBC while we drank out on the front steps.
That was a wicked cool night. So quiet and calm.
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.