Power Outtages

Sionistic · Post by **Sionistic** » August 14, 2003, 5:28 pm

Apparantly there is a power outtage, city wide, in New york City, Detroit, Toronto and Ottowa(sp?). 4 power outtages in 4 big cities simutaneously. Strange?
Wait, now even more cities are having power outtages, didnt catch the names, its looking very suspicious

Sionistic · Post by **Sionistic** » August 14, 2003, 5:32 pm

add cleveland to the list, and toledo

Skogen · Post by **Skogen** » August 14, 2003, 5:36 pm

It sounds crazy! I wonder whats really going on.

Sionistic · Post by **Sionistic** » August 14, 2003, 5:50 pm

Apparantly a power grid got overloaded. This had a cascading effect on other power grids

Pherr the Dorf · Post by **Pherr the Dorf** » August 14, 2003, 5:58 pm

It's a conspiracy!

masteen · Post by **masteen** » August 14, 2003, 6:08 pm

CNN reports that one of the Con Ed transformers is on fire in Manhattan.

Fallanthas · Post by **Fallanthas** » August 14, 2003, 6:09 pm

Manhattan grid went boom and is taking a bunch of others along with it, apparently.

Duck and cover if you are in NY. Last time they lost a grid the looting and roiting got pretty bad.

Skogen · Post by **Skogen** » August 14, 2003, 6:11 pm

Fallanthas wrote:Manhattan grid went boom and is taking a bunch of others along with it, apparently.

Duck and cover if you are in NY. Last time they lost a grid the looting and roiting got pretty bad.

What year was that again? I heard it was chaos! People got stuck in the subway & elevators for like 12-24 hours, etc.

Cartalas · Post by **Cartalas** » August 14, 2003, 6:26 pm

OMG they are going to be without AC. I hope there are no French over here visiting.

Fallanthas · Post by **Fallanthas** » August 14, 2003, 6:43 pm

NY had two bad ones, in 1965 and 1977.

Both in the same area as the current one...

Kelshara · Post by **Kelshara** » August 14, 2003, 6:49 pm

I live about 50 minutes south of Cleveland and we had insane power flickers here, but kept electricity. Then backbone routers went BOOOM

The weird part is how it cascaded, I am far from an expert but that sounds unusual to me. I've had to deal with power grid failures back home before (my uncle's farm always lost power which was pretty critical for the animals), and it was always all at once.

And people are already complaining about the heat, Cart

Fallanthas · Post by **Fallanthas** » August 14, 2003, 6:53 pm

/shrug

From just a couple minutes of looking around the net, it seems like the cascading happens every time NY loses a major grid.

I bet Con Ed and whatever other providers are up there are doing some major power sharing to handle spikes. When sumpin goes boom, they all take a hit.

Adelrune Argenti · Post by **Adelrune Argenti** » August 14, 2003, 7:04 pm

Ripped from MSNBC

Mayor New York Michael Bloomberg said the blackout was related to a malfunction at Canada’s Niagara Mohawk power grid, which cascaded across the enormous interconnected power grid across eastern North America. He said that the cause of the malfunction was not yet known but that it was “probably a natural occurrence.”

Damn Canadians and their crappy systems.

Akaran_D · Post by **Akaran_D** » August 14, 2003, 7:06 pm

Ouch.
Best of luck to the poor blokes..

Winnow · Post by **Winnow** » August 14, 2003, 11:35 pm

Cartalas wrote:OMG they are going to be without AC. I hope there are no French over here visiting.

No shit Cart. What a bunch of pussies. Phoenix is sure death for any French that enter. Last month, one night we had a LOW of 96 F overnight. The French are dying in gaggles with the LOW overnight temps in the 80's.

Sionistic · Post by **Sionistic** » August 15, 2003, 12:17 am

As of 11:10pm est, they got 33% power restored in NYC, thats pretty damn good speed

Truant · Post by **Truant** » August 15, 2003, 12:36 am

Kelshara wrote:I live about 50 minutes south of Cleveland and we had insane power flickers here, but kept electricity. Then backbone routers went BOOOM

The weird part is how it cascaded, I am far from an expert but that sounds unusual to me. I've had to deal with power grid failures back home before (my uncle's farm always lost power which was pretty critical for the animals), and it was always all at once.

And people are already complaining about the heat, Cart

I thought you lived in Europe? Or do you do both? I can't remember if you said that or not.

Fesuni Chopsui · Post by **Fesuni Chopsui** » August 15, 2003, 12:45 am

There was no fire at any generator in Manhattan...when power stops flowing from outside of the city, Con Edison has to turn OFF it's generators and the black smoke people saw was a normal response to shutting off those generators..

The problem occured either in Ontario or Niagra, it isn't clear
The Canadian Prime Minister says it was all due to a lightning strike, but electrical companies are saying that isn't true

I've been without power in Jersey here for about 8 hours now...and the governor of Jersey announced a little while ago that if you have not received power by now it could be another 16 hours before you do

Blame Canada!

Anuin · Post by **Anuin** » August 15, 2003, 1:38 am

Winnow wrote:
Cartalas wrote:OMG they are going to be without AC. I hope there are no French over here visiting.
No shit Cart. What a bunch of pussies. Phoenix is sure death for any French that enter. Last month, one night we had a LOW of 96 F overnight. The French are dying in gaggles with the LOW overnight temps in the 80's.

Ok Winnow. You have AC, a majority of them dont. If you were to put a bunch of American senior citizens and children in a building with no AC in 100+ degree heat, how much you wanna bet they'll start dying off pretty quick?

Quit the America is better than France bullshit. I'd bet money that a lot of the people who bash the French have some French blood in them.

Then again, if you need a scapegoat to feel better about yourself, then by all means make fun of people.

Kelshara · Post by **Kelshara** » August 15, 2003, 2:15 am

I thought you lived in Europe? Or do you do both? I can't remember if you said that or not

Grew up in Norway, been lucky enough to have a family that traveled quite a bit around Europe and the USA. I moved to Texas and lived there for 2.5 years until I moved to Ohio where I live today. In addition to this I do of course go back and have spent every summer there. There you go

Since you asked

My gf works as a network admin for a fairly large company in Cleveland. She had to drive back up there to check things out tonight, and at 10pm EST power was still out. They did not have water, all security systems were knocked out, no electricity for traffic lights etc. And people were gathering at restaurants, gas stations and Wal Marts to stack up on stuff. Beats me why people shop like this will last a month.. Oh and cops everywhere! On every streetcorner you see them, which is probably a good thing.

Nilaman · Post by **Nilaman** » August 15, 2003, 2:24 am

Got power back at 8:30 PM EST. Got cable back at 1:10AM.

Revs · Post by **Revs** » August 15, 2003, 5:33 am

Teh power came back up about 3:50am est
Had fun drinking brews looking at the darkened NYC skyline

Legenae · Post by **Legenae** » August 15, 2003, 12:56 pm

Just got power back in parts of Sudbury, Ontario.

Lynks · Post by **Lynks** » August 15, 2003, 12:57 pm

Power just came on at 12:00 EST, 4 hours north of Toronto (Sudbury). Yay

Lynks · Post by **Lynks** » August 15, 2003, 1:01 pm

Adelrune Argenti wrote:Ripped from MSNBC

Mayor New York Michael Bloomberg said the blackout was related to a malfunction at Canada’s Niagara Mohawk power grid, which cascaded across the enormous interconnected power grid across eastern North America. He said that the cause of the malfunction was not yet known but that it was “probably a natural occurrence.”
Damn Canadians and their crappy systems.

Damn Americans taking all our power causing a system wide overload.

*edit* typos suck

Legenae · Post by **Legenae** » August 15, 2003, 1:07 pm

Lynks wrote:
Adelrune Argenti wrote:Ripped from MSNBC

Mayor New York Michael Bloomberg said the blackout was related to a malfunction at Canada’s Niagara Mohawk power grid, which cascaded across the enormous interconnected power grid across eastern North America. He said that the cause of the malfunction was not yet known but that it was “probably a natural occurrence.”
Damn Canadians and their crappy systems.
Damn Americans taking all our power causing a system wide overload.

*edit* typos suck

Agreed!

Jaxomer · Post by **Jaxomer** » August 15, 2003, 1:27 pm

I was going to start a new thread on this, but what the hell:

Iraqis’ 10 tips to beat blackout heat

—2: USE FOUL LANGUAGE. “When the power goes out, I curse everybody,” said Emad Helawi, a 63-year-old accountant. “I curse God. I curse Saddam Hussein. And I curse the Americans.”

—And the No. 1 suggestion among Iraqis for Americans suffering without power: TAKE TO THE STREETS. Some said demonstrations can be effective in persuading authorities to turn on the switch. “We held protests. After that we had fewer blackouts,” Ahmed Abdul Hussein said without even a hint of sarcasm. “I’d suggest Americans go out and demonstrate.”

Adex_Xeda · Post by **Adex_Xeda** » August 15, 2003, 2:34 pm

I know a contractor up there in the power distribution business.

Here's his speculation as of yesterday:

Of course there will be many investigations of what caused the Northeast outage. I have gathered a lot of data from the NYISO website and based on that my observations are that:

Load, inter-regional flow, and interface flows (e.g. Central East, NYC cable interface) were not extraordinarily high for 4 PM on a hot summer day.

At 4:11PM a 345 Kv line through the Catskills (Delhi to Middletown) and a line from Utica to Albany to Eastern Mass. (part of the Central East interface) tripped. Why these widely separated lines tripped together is a question
.
A minute later several other lines tripped at Delhi. Another minute later a bunch of lines on Central East tripped. Within 4 minutes NE and PJM started separating from NY. Within 5 minutes 9 Mile and Fitz tripped, then IP3 and other plants 2 minutes later. No plants, no voltage support, no power.

Some of the mysteries are: Why multiple trips? Why did Ontario, Michigan, and Ohio get dragged down ?

Of course these are early conjectures based on a limited set of data. It all smells like a multiple high voltage line trip with insufficient voltage support. Here at my house we had several minutes of very low voltage.

The fix? Some more transmission lines across New York, as usual. We'll see if that happens.

I thought a little educated guessing would help you. We'll see how good my guessing is as the days and months go on.
Jim

Truant · Post by **Truant** » August 15, 2003, 3:21 pm

omfg it was terrorists, my psychic advisor told me.

Fairweather Pure · Post by **Fairweather Pure** » August 15, 2003, 3:33 pm

omfg it was terrorists, my psychic advisor told me.

No way dude. George Bush killed them all. Everyone loves America now.

Adelrune Argenti · Post by **Adelrune Argenti** » August 15, 2003, 8:03 pm

Ok, I take back my cursing towards Canada. It now seems it might have come out of Ohio.

Damn Buckeyes.

Ok, now back to the thread.

Kelgar · Post by **Kelgar** » August 16, 2003, 4:34 am

Canada isn't the problem. It's Bush's big energy cronies.

http://www.gregpalast.com/detail.cfm?artid=257&row=0

*snip*

And that's why, if you're in the Northeast, you're reading this by candlelight tonight. Here's what happened. After LILCO was hammered by the law, after government regulators slammed Niagara Mohawk and dozens of other book-cooking, document-doctoring utility companies all over America with fines and penalties totaling in the tens of billions of dollars, the industry leaders got together to swear never to break the regulations again. Their plan was not to follow the rules, but to ELIMINATE the rules. They called it "deregulation."

It was like a committee of bank robbers figuring out how to make safecracking legal.

But they dare not launch the scheme in the USA. Rather, in 1990, one devious little bunch of operators out of Texas, Houston Natural Gas, operating under the alias "Enron," talked an over-the-edge free-market fanatic, Britain's Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, into licensing the first completely deregulated power plant in the hemisphere.

And so began an economic disease called "regulatory reform" that spread faster than SARS.

*snip snip*

The power elite first moved on England because they knew Americans wouldn't swallow the deregulation snake oil easily. The USA had gotten used to cheap power available at the flick of switch. This was the legacy of Franklin Roosevelt who, in 1933, caged the man he thought to be the last of the power pirates, Samuel Insull. Wall Street wheeler-dealer Insull created the Power Trust, and six decades before Ken Lay, faked account books and ripped off consumers. To frustrate Insull and his ilk, FDR gave us the Federal Power Commission and the Public Utilities Holding Company Act which told electricity companies where to stand and salute. Detailed regulations limited charges to real expenditures plus a government-set profit. The laws banned power "trading" and required companies to keep the lights on under threat of arrest -- no blackout blackmail to hike rates.

Of particular significance as I write here in the dark, regulators told utilities exactly how much they had to spend to insure the system stayed in repair and the lights stayed on. Bureaucrats crawled along the wire and, like me, crawled through the account books, to make sure the power execs spent customers' money on parts and labor. If they didn't, we'd whack'm over the head with our thick rule books. Did we get in the way of these businessmen's entrepreneurial spirit? Damn right we did.

Most important, FDR banned political contributions from utility companies -- no 'soft' money, no 'hard' money, no money PERIOD.

But then came George the First. In 1992, just prior to his departure from the White House, President Bush Senior gave the power industry one long deep-through-the-teeth kiss good-bye: federal deregulation of electricity. It was a legacy he wanted to leave for his son, the gratitude of power companies which ponied up $16 million for the Republican campaign of 2000, seven times the sum they gave Democrats.

But Poppy Bush's gift of deregulating of wholesale prices set by the feds only got the power pirates halfway to the plunder of Joe Ratepayer. For the big payday they needed deregulation at the state level. There were only two states, California and Texas, big enough and Republican enough to put the electricity market con into operation.

California fell first. The power companies spent $39 million to defeat a 1998 referendum pushed by Ralph Nadar which would have blocked the de-reg scam. Another $37 million was spent on lobbying and lubricating the campaign coffers of the state's politicians to write a lie into law: in the deregulation act's preamble, the Legislature promised that deregulation would reduce electricity bills by 20%. In fact, when in the first California city to go "lawless," San Diego, the 20% savings became a 300% jump in surcharges.

Enron circled California and licked its lips. As the number one contributor to the George W. Bush campaigns, it was confident about the future. With just a half dozen other companies it controlled at times 100% of the available power capacity needed to keep the Golden State lit. Their motto, "your money or your lights."

Enron and its comrades played the system like a broken ATM machine, yanking out the bills. For example, in the shamelessly fixed "auctions" for electricity held by the state, Enron bid, in one instance, to supply 500 megawatts of electricity over a 15 megawatt line. That's like pouring a gallon of gasoline into a thimble -- the lines would burn up if they attempted it. Faced with blackout because of Enron's destructive bid, the state was willing to pay anything to keep the lights on.

And the state did. According to Dr. Anjali Sheffrin, economist with the California state Independent System Operator which directs power deliveries, between May and November 2000, three power giants physically or "economically" withheld power from the state and concocted enough false bids to cost the California customers over $6.2 billion in excess charges.

It took until December 20, 2000, with the lights going out on the Golden Gate, for President Bill Clinton, once a deregulation booster, to find his lost Democratic soul and impose price caps in California and ban Enron from the market.

But the light-bulb buccaneers didn't have to wait long to put their hooks back into the treasure chest. Within seventy-two hours of moving into the White House, while he was still sweeping out the inaugural champagne bottles, George Bush the Second reversed Clinton's executive order and put the power pirates back in business in California. Enron, Reliant (aka Houston Industries), TXU (aka Texas Utilities) and the others who had economically snipped California's wires knew they could count on Dubya, who as governor of the Lone Star state cut them the richest deregulation deal in America.

Meanwhile, the deregulation bug made it to New York where Republican Governor George Pataki and his industry-picked utility commissioners ripped the lid off electric bills and relieved my old friends at Niagara Mohawk of the expensive obligation to properly fund the maintenance of the grid system.

And the Pataki-Bush Axis of Weasels permitted something that must have former New York governor Roosevelt spinning in his wheelchair in Heaven: They allowed a foreign company, the notoriously incompetent National Grid of England, to buy up NiMo, get rid of 800 workers and pocket most of their wages - producing a bonus for NiMo stockholders approaching $90 million.

etc, etc

edits: keypoints

Cartalas · Post by **Cartalas** » August 16, 2003, 8:59 am

Why did I know you were going to say that you fucking puppet! I love your source though.

I see California and Texas were included in the Blackout!

Legenae · Post by **Legenae** » August 16, 2003, 11:26 am

Cartalas wrote:Why did I know you were going to say that you fucking puppet! I love your source though.

I see California and Texas were included in the Blackout!

Gee, why did I know you would respond to this?

Who's the puppet now?

Post by **Sylvus** » August 16, 2003, 1:42 pm

The power outtage really sucked my ass. No electricity or running water for 24+ hours, I now know the meaning of boredom.

Kelgar · Post by **Kelgar** » August 16, 2003, 2:06 pm

Why did I know you were going to say that you fucking puppet! I love your source though.

I see California and Texas were included in the Blackout!

Greg Palast is a Brit you fucktard. His columns are newsworthy due to the fact that he is consistantly ranked as one of the most censored journalists in the US. That sort of recognition isn't awarded to mindless fucks like Limbaugh or Coulter for a reason.

I know I'm wasting my time with the fucking black hole which is your brain, but I'll go ahead and simplify it so that any fool can plainly understand.

(1)Deregulating a fucking monopoly is retarded because it basically gives the green light to rip people off and (2)allows these companies to cut corners(these blackouts were at least partially due to skimming on maintenence).

Only a fucktard like yourself will refuse to acknowledge that Bush and big energy robber barons are like peas and carrots and,like bosom buddies, they rotate sucking each other off (sorry to go there, I know you're still emotionally dejected due to Voronwe's refusal to join you and Metanis' circle jerk).

Cartalas · Post by **Cartalas** » August 16, 2003, 4:48 pm

Kelgar wrote:

Why did I know you were going to say that you fucking puppet! I love your source though.

I see California and Texas were included in the Blackout!

Greg Palast is a Brit you fucktard. His columns are newsworthy due to the fact that he is consistantly ranked as one of the most censored journalists in the US. That sort of recognition isn't awarded to mindless fucks like Limbaugh or Coulter for a reason.

I know I'm wasting my time with the fucking black hole which is your brain, but I'll go ahead and simplify it so that any fool can plainly understand.

(1)Deregulating a fucking monopoly is retarded because it basically gives the green light to rip people off and (2)allows these companies to cut corners(these blackouts were at least partially due to skimming on maintenence).

Only a fucktard like yourself will refuse to acknowledge that Bush and big energy robber barons are like peas and carrots and,like bosom buddies, they rotate sucking each other off (sorry to go there, I know you're still emotionally dejected due to Voronwe's refusal to join you and Metanis' circle jerk).

I know he is a Brit dumb ass and deregulation is not the reason we have this problem dunder head. Why dont you wait till they announce why we had the failure before you take the cock out of your mouth and speak.

Baaaaa Baaaaaa Baaaaaa

Kelgar · Post by **Kelgar** » August 16, 2003, 11:30 pm

I know he is a Brit dumb ass and deregulation is not the reason we have this problem dunder head.

When someone says, "According to documented exchange rate reports, the value of the US dollar vs the Euro has gone from 0.94 in early 2001 to 1.17 since recently", responding with something like, "No it didn't" doesn't (as much as your retarded fucking self wants it to) build a case for your point (other than reinforce the view that you are a complete waste of molecules).

Why dont you wait till they announce why we had the failure before you take the cock out of your mouth and speak.

Lol. You and your fascination with cocks. Has anyone aside from your fucking retarded ass self noticed something yet? Everytime I call you either a cockknobber, retard, or a deadend on the evolution ladder, your pathetic response is always some lame twist of my flame redirected back at me. You by far are the most unoriginal, unclefucking, GOP rimjobbing, sheepfucking, cumguzzling, 47 chromosomed, pedophile(hurr hurr, me so funny!, durrr) imaginable.

One can only hope that somehow your children might be exposed to some benign chemical or radioactive agent which would somehow repress the dominant retard genes and activate the extremely recessive smart genes (if there are any, no one is holding their collective breaths). Unless your wife is significantly smarter than you (again, more doubt here because retarded fucks like you rarely marry outside the family), I don't see this ever happening even in the most far fetched "what if" type of sci-fi scenarios.

Kelshara · Post by **Kelshara** » August 17, 2003, 2:18 am

Holy fuck, you mean Cartalas is allowed to breed?

Cartalas · Post by **Cartalas** » August 17, 2003, 11:00 pm

Kelgar wrote:
I know he is a Brit dumb ass and deregulation is not the reason we have this problem dunder head.
When someone says, "According to documented exchange rate reports, the value of the US dollar vs the Euro has gone from 0.94 in early 2001 to 1.17 since recently", responding with something like, "No it didn't" doesn't (as much as your retarded fucking self wants it to) build a case for your point (other than reinforce the view that you are a complete waste of molecules).

Why dont you wait till they announce why we had the failure before you take the cock out of your mouth and speak.
Lol. You and your fascination with cocks. Has anyone aside from your fucking retarded ass self noticed something yet? Everytime I call you either a cockknobber, retard, or a deadend on the evolution ladder, your pathetic response is always some lame twist of my flame redirected back at me. You by far are the most unoriginal, unclefucking, GOP rimjobbing, sheepfucking, cumguzzling, 47 chromosomed, pedophile(hurr hurr, me so funny!, durrr) imaginable.

One can only hope that somehow your children might be exposed to some benign chemical or radioactive agent which would somehow repress the dominant retard genes and activate the extremely recessive smart genes (if there are any, no one is holding their collective breaths). Unless your wife is significantly smarter than you (again, more doubt here because retarded fucks like you rarely marry outside the family), I don't see this ever happening even in the most far fetched "what if" type of sci-fi scenarios.

Im sorry your what?

Revs · Post by **Revs** » August 17, 2003, 11:00 pm

Truant wrote:omfg it was terrorists, my psychic advisor told me.

I wasn't thinking about terrorists behind the blackout, I was thinking about what they could've done in that time period

Kelgar · Post by **Kelgar** » August 18, 2003, 3:08 am

Inbred Hick wrote:Im sorry your what?

Your momma. That's what.

Reality sucks doesn’t it? Please do the world a favor and just get on back to your trailer and take your skank mother/sister/wife + lame fucking one-liners with you.

Saerilyah · Post by **Saerilyah** » August 18, 2003, 6:22 am

A few things many people don't realise about power grids and electricty supply in general.

Power is generated on a supply = demand system. To store the amount of power needed at anytime is too great.

The US power grid operates on a very knife edge setup, some other grids aren't as bad, but nearly all are like that.

Turning off a power line is called "trip" and power lines are called feeders.
When a trip happens accidently (like what happened on 3 Ohio feeders) it sends ripples through the grid. These ripples are essentially spikes on a large scale. When the protection systems see this ripple it can look look like a trip signal and they trip off. This loads down the other feeders (or you can say the other feeders take up the customer load) this causes more current to flow through the feeder creating more heat in the line, this makes the lines sag. When lines sag low enough they come into contact with trees and in some cases other lines. These create earth faults and trip the line off. That adds another lost feeder to the list.
The ripple generated by the load shifting around so much also effects the generators and in many cases they will also trip off.
Most of this can happen in a short time frame of 1 min or less from the first feeder tripping.

Possible causes of the first feeder tripping is noise through the communications path and interupting the communication between the protection systems, lightening strikes onto the line iteself, incorrectly isolating a feeder for testing (during testing you send false trips to time the path speed, many are set as fast as 20 ms to as long as 70ms), another cause is someone hitting (plane, car, truck, shooting and insulator out and shorting 2 wires) a major tower structure and shorting one or more phases. There are many more ways of disconnecting a feeder by cause or accident.

Although there were some feeders and generators offline for routine maintenace in the affected grid, most of those are planned well in advance.

It will be interesting to see what comes out of the investigation into the outage. A nice sequence of events from cnn's site is at http://www.cnn.com/2003/US/08/17/blacko ... index.html

Atokal · Post by **Atokal** » August 18, 2003, 10:59 am

The most unsettling thing about this "natural phenomenon" is the weakness or frailty of our power grid. In Canada we have nuke plants that are a decade behind in upgrades and maintenance. We are also getting a slight surcharge on Hydro bills for a "debt retirement" allocation to help with the astounding debt our provider has accumulated.

I see some tough times ahead for Hydro and some tough questions that need to be answered. For instance how the hell did a problem in Ohio become such a wide-spread failure of the grid?
All sources are stating that this should never have happened.

Cartalas · Post by **Cartalas** » August 18, 2003, 11:08 am

Kelgar wrote:
Inbred Hick wrote:Im sorry your what?
Your momma. That's what.

Reality sucks doesn’t it? Please do the world a favor and just get on back to your trailer and take your skank mother/sister/wife + lame fucking one-liners with you.

Poor guy life must suck on your end.

Adex_Xeda · Post by **Adex_Xeda** » August 18, 2003, 2:30 pm

Imagine this.

You have 4 guys on stationary bicycles. Each bicycle has a chain connected to the same axel. On this master axel you have a flywheel you need to keep spinning at exactly 60 RPM.

If you get tired and allow the flywheel to dip down to 59RPM you cause millions of dollars of damage.

If the four guys speed up too much and get the flywheel going at 61RPM you cause millions of dollars worth of damage.

The Flywheel is like load on the electrical grid. The 4 guys pedaling are like power plants.

The electrical grid resonates at 60Hz. That means all the power plants must work to keep electricity jiggling back and forth at exactly 60Hz or electrical stuff attached to the grid (such as your TV) will get damaged.

Every time you attach a hair dryer or VCR to an outlet you make it harder for the power plants to spin their generators.

Consider what happens if one of the four guys pedaling to keep the flywheel spinning suddenly has his chain break. At that instant the 3 remaining pedalers have to make up the slack and pedal harder to compensate for the 4 guy's broken chain.

Likewise if a transmission line has too much current moving back and forth on it, it will melt. What the power companies do to prevent this is to "trip" the transmission line if the current gets going too fast. This protects the line and it protects the electrical stuff attached to it like your TV. If the wrong transmission line trips at the wrong time, all of the electrical devices that were serviced by that line start drawing power from other lines. Well those other transmission lines get taxed even more and if they're not rated to take the sudden load, they'll trip off the system as well.

Imagine if enough of these transmission lines trip to isolate a power plant from the grid. All of a sudden all the other power plants must make up the slack and work harder to hold up the 60Hz electrical jiggle.

Next thing you know more and more stuff starts tripping. The premise again is if you can't maintain the proper voltage, current and frequency it is better to disconnet to protect all of those microwaves and TV sets out there from damage.

Well as power plants drop off the grid and tranmissions lines get too hot and drop off as well, you get a nice wave effect as things start tripping off and blacking out.

How do you avoid this senario? Redundancy and reserve. To fix this you need to have many powerplants hooked up and running with plenty of power in reserve. You don't want some pip squeak pedaling one of the four bicycles. You want Lance Armstrong!

Better yet you want 6 guys hooked up and pedaling just in case one guy's chain breaks.

Also you want redundant chains going to that axel and flywheel.

Likewise you want redundant transmission lines going all over the place so that if any of those lines are grounded or tripped off the grid there is plenty of alternate paths for the electricity to reach it's demand.

The main problem is no one wants a new transmission line in their back yard and construction of power plants is so mired in red tape that few feel it profitable to try and build one.

Aabidano · Post by **Aabidano** » August 18, 2003, 3:06 pm

*Edit - removed quote
Statistically they've done extemely well, and building more capacity isn't really going to do much besides raise your utility costs. All the common reasons the grid may trip are covered by redundant systems already. The costs to make it even more reliable go up drastically, and who's going to pay for it? The overhead to prevent this from happening again isn't worth the costs to implement it.

People monitoring the system probably could have begun shedding load to prevent it and didn't for whatever reason. The entire incident took 9 seconds, there was a 3Gw surge.

People and businesses that have to have power 24x7, have battery backup and\or a generator.

*Edit 2 - That phones went out in areas of NYC is a cause for concern. I'll put money that it was due to privately (non-telco) owned PBXs and such that didn't have acceptable power backups. You should never lose phone service due to a power outage.

Adex_Xeda · Post by **Adex_Xeda** » August 19, 2003, 9:56 am

As transmission lines drop off the grid there is suddenly a reduction in the system load. This causes the turning resistance on power generators to suddenly lighten up. When the load lightens up the hard pushing generators speed up faster than the targeted spin rate that creates 60Hz electrical jiggles.

Other parts of the system may get a sudden increase in load on the system as a neighboring power plant gets cut off from the grid. This causes the power plants remaining on the grid to suddenly need to work harder to as there are fewer power plants helping to maintain the load on the grid.

If you get off the 60Hz target just a little fast or slow you easily damage most things plugged into an outlet.

Take a look at what happened to grid in Canada as power plants and transmission lines dropped off, and the system tried to compensate for the drastically changing load.

Anything faster than 60.05Hz or slower than 59.95Hz is really bad.

Kylere · Post by **Kylere** » August 19, 2003, 1:28 pm

New York Times: Power Failure Reveals a Creaky System, Energy Experts Believe. "We are a major superpower with a third-world electrical grid,'' said Gov. Bill Richardson of New Mexico, an energy secretary during the Clinton administration. "Our grid is antiquated. It needs serious modernization.''

Well, no kidding. And the administration Richardson served did almost nothing in its eight years in power to make things better.

Deregulation of electricity in California and other states took place on Clinton's watch. The idea was to let the market come up with a better way to allocate production and distribution than the heavily regulated system of yore. Interesting idea. lousy execution.

Now we're in the worst of both worlds, because what deregulation did occur had the effect -- intended or not -- of enriching a few manipulators and making the overall problem worse.

The real answer, of course, is in making energy a vastly more decentralized affair than it's been for the past 50 years. The vulnerability of our grid to stress and human error -- never mind the potential for terrorist strikes -- is growing in part because of the way it's designed.

Read this analysis by Amory Lovins' Rocky Mountain Institute for a solid explanation -- and a way we could fix our energy problems. Of course, in a nation so thoroughly in hock to oil interests (politically and financially) this won't happen soon, if ever.

But we'll have more blackouts before the situation improves. Count on it.
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vn_Tanc · Post by **vn_Tanc** » August 19, 2003, 1:42 pm

Deregulation of electricity in California and other states took place on Clinton's watch. The idea was to let the market come up with a better way to allocate production and distribution than the heavily regulated system of yore. Interesting idea. lousy execution

WTF is this? Are you trying to tell me that unrestrained market forces are NOT a panacea for all the world's ills???

Frikkin commie. Go back to commieland!