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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.
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.
SF carried an article a couple of months ago regarding software bug that contributed to the blackout.
Free XBox, PS2
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
"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
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Amadaeus
The last bastion of Mathie-ism
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?
What would the alternatives be? Household generated power? As long as your electricity is generated centrally (regardless of the source), you will always need powerlines. And as long as the population keeps growing, the demand for more power will require more powerlines.
No sig
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 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.
Households can purchase solar panels and more efficient appliances (dishwashers, clothes washer / drier, hot water heater, fridge, oven, air conditioning).
Both will help reduce the amount of new powerlines required.
In addition, laws can be passed requiring minimum efficiencies.
There could be tax breaks given to companies that reduce their peak use (telecommuting / opening at night).
None of these necessitate more powerlines.
In addition, the blackout didn't happen 10 years ago.
What has changed since then? Deregulation.