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big blackout

S

Spehro Pefhany

Jan 1, 1970
0
On Mon, 6 Nov 2006 02:00:16 +0000 (UTC), the renowned
but ... but ... none of the power for europe goes through Canada so they
couldn't, could they?

Anyway, the problems that caused the blackout (equipment failures and
computer and operator control system problems) were not in Canada,
they were in Ohio.

There were six distinct violations of NERC policy by FirstEnergy which
were the direct cause of the massive blackout (see pdf page 33 of the
full report). The initial trigger was failure (due to inadequate
maintenance) of the Harding-Chamberlin 345kV line in Ohio.

Ontario was actually importing small amounts of power (compared to the
24,000 MW total consumption) from Manitoba, Quebec, New York state to
the East and Michigan to the West. The Ontario grid got pulled down
along with the rest of the Northeastern power grid.

See pdf page 70 on the full report for the power surges over the few
minutes before all the lights went off.

full report from the task force:
http://www.nrcan-rncan.gc.ca/media/docs/814BlackoutReport.pdf

Hydro One's interim report:
http://www.energy.gov.on.ca/english/pdf/electricity/August 14 2003 Incident Report.pdf

There are a lot of logistics associated with startup and shutdown of
nuclear plants (where a lot of Ontario's electricity comes from) and
that didn't help. Bringing the grid back up had to proceed from
isolated islands of remaining power. Most of the system worked as
designed. All the nuclear reactors shut down safely. An oil refinery
complex about 15 miles from me had to go into emergency shutown,
causing an explosion that I could hear easily. Took about a week to
bring it back up again.


Best regards,
Spehro Pefhany
 
B

Brian

Jan 1, 1970
0
That has nothing to do with their comments about our "Out of date and
poorly maintained grids", does it?

You must understand that the Third World, like the EU, doesn't understand
the difference in magnitude. After all, their whole country is the size of
my backyard, covering it with a power grid and maintaining it isn't nearly
as hard to accomplish.
 
H

Hal Murray

Jan 1, 1970
0
Anybody have any guesses as to how much they save by
linking say France and Germany? What is the cost of an
event like compared to a day of electricity?

I'm slightly surprised that Spain and Italy were tangled
up. I thought there were mountains in the way which would
make it hard to install big transmission lines.
 
E

Eeyore

Jan 1, 1970
0
Hal said:
Anybody have any guesses as to how much they save by
linking say France and Germany? What is the cost of an
event like compared to a day of electricity?

I'm slightly surprised that Spain and Italy were tangled
up. I thought there were mountains in the way which would
make it hard to install big transmission lines.

Hmm.....

Britain and France share power too and there's at least 21 miles of sea in the
way !

There's even an electricity link ( being laid now ? ) between Norway and Britain.
It's about 500 miles under the North Sea.

Graham
 
J

John Larkin

Jan 1, 1970
0
Hmm.....

Britain and France share power too and there's at least 21 miles of sea in the
way !

There's even an electricity link ( being laid now ? ) between Norway and Britain.
It's about 500 miles under the North Sea.

Graham

Long-range interconnects improve system efficiency, maximize capital
usage, allow all the connected systems to be run closer to 100% of
capacity, and make huge areas crash all together.

John
 
E

Eeyore

Jan 1, 1970
0
Gareth said:
Interesting, but when you look at electricity consumption your average
Brit. actually uses less energy than you average German.

Perhaps British people are just more honest when filling in surveys?

Country kWh per person per year

Iceland ISL 26,947.4
Norway NOR 25,594.9
Sweden SWE 16,021.0
Finland FIN 15,686.8
Luxembourg LUX 15,192.3
Belgium BEL 8,271.7
Switzerland CHE 8,025.6
Austria AUT 7,418.9
France FRA 7,401.4
Germany DEU 6,852.4
Netherlands NLD 6,658.9
Denmark DNK 6,492.3
United Kingdom GBR 6,171.3

These numbers show the total consumption in each country divided by the
number of inhabitants so in case of Iceland and Norway where both
countries have a low number of inhabitants and a lot of heavy industry
that consumes vast quantities of energy (aluminium smelters etc) it
appears that the people in these countries are using a lot of energy
where indeed they might really be much lower on the scale if the
industries are not figured in.
 
J

John Fields

Jan 1, 1970
0
There's even an electricity link ( being laid now ? ) between Norway and Britain.
It's about 500 miles under the North Sea.
 
R

Rich Grise

Jan 1, 1970
0
On Mon, 06 Nov 2006 05:36:26 +0000, Eeyore


That's just silly; the North Sea's nowhere near that deep.

Heck, 500 miles is nothin'! Capt. Nemo went to 20,000 leagues! ;-)
<rimshot>

Cheers!
Rich
 
R

Rich Grise, Plainclothes Hippie

Jan 1, 1970
0
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/6117880.stm

" E.ON said the power failures may have been linked to a line across a river
being switched off to allow a ship to pass through safely, Reuters reported.

The Italian regions of Piedmont, Liguria and Puglia lost energy overnight
between 2100 and 2200 GMT "

Good Lord. No electricity for a whole HOUR !


Well, yeah, that's a disaster - just look at how long it will take to
reset all those digital clocks! ;-)

Cheers!
Rich
 
R

Rich Grise, Plainclothes Hippie

Jan 1, 1970
0
E

Eeyore

Jan 1, 1970
0
Rich Grise said:
Well, yeah, that's a disaster - just look at how long it will take to
reset all those digital clocks! ;-)

They'll need a 'recovery plan' to deal with that one !

Graham
 
P

Paul Hovnanian P.E.

Jan 1, 1970
0
Spehro said:
On Mon, 6 Nov 2006 02:00:16 +0000 (UTC), the renowned


Anyway, the problems that caused the blackout (equipment failures and
computer and operator control system problems) were not in Canada,
they were in Ohio.

There were six distinct violations of NERC policy by FirstEnergy which
were the direct cause of the massive blackout (see pdf page 33 of the
full report). The initial trigger was failure (due to inadequate
maintenance) of the Harding-Chamberlin 345kV line in Ohio.

But what made it bad was that FE's system monitoring s/w was
inoperative. They didn't perform the appropriate steps to mitigate the
original problem because they didn't understand the scope of the
problem.

The original line trip may or may not have been due to poor maintenance,
but one can't operate a system based on the assumption that a line won't
fault. Some clown will manage to run his pickup truck into the best
maintained transmission line structure and you're in just as much
trouble.

I've worked in a number of industries (including electric utilities) and
I'm amazed at the lack of technical discipline applied to their IT
architecture. I suppose it makes it easier for vendors to sell crap that
looks good when the sysops are using the workstations to download porn,
but it isn't worth crap in the face of failures.
 
K

Ken Smith

Jan 1, 1970
0
That has nothing to do with their comments about our "Out of date and
poorly maintained grids", does it?

Of course not, or well sort of. I was making fun of their position,
actually. They were silly enough to say something like that couldn't
happen in europe. If the "like that" refers to the power going down
because of some line in Canada, they are right. Otherwise, they are
wrong.
 
K

Ken Smith

Jan 1, 1970
0
Anyway, the problems that caused the blackout (equipment failures and
computer and operator control system problems) were not in Canada,
they were in Ohio.

Well then I guess we can still say it can't happen in Europe since they
don't run power through Ohio either.

There were six distinct violations of NERC policy by FirstEnergy which
were the direct cause of the massive blackout (see pdf page 33 of the
full report).

It is likely it was corner cutting. You can increase your short term
profits by not maintain equipment. For some reason, investors don't seem
to unload the stock when they see someone doing that. It usually is a
good indication of poor performance in the future.

[...]
There are a lot of logistics associated with startup and shutdown of
nuclear plants (where a lot of Ontario's electricity comes from) and
that didn't help.

In the big blackout back in the 1970s IIRC, they had to use power from
Gatineau Power to get stuff back up and running. It seems that it was
about the only thing that could start its self up.
All the nuclear reactors shut down safely.

I'd expect someone to be shot if the design didn't provide for that
problem.
 
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