Dexx, somehow I don't think your testiomy as to how easy it should have been to keep things going really compares against that of the experts who run these things. There was no way things could have been kpet running after the power surge that caused the problem. In the end, most of the system was shut down by safety systems designed to prevent permanent damage. But it is NOT easy to fully restart an entire grid when it has gone down!
Originally posted by Ushgarak
Dexx, somehow I don't think your testiomy as to how easy it should have been to keep things going really compares against that of the experts who run these things. There was no way things could have been kpet running after the power surge that caused the problem. In the end, most of the system was shut down by safety systems designed to prevent permanent damage. But it is NOT easy to fully restart an entire grid when it has gone down!
From what I have seen it was indeed a surge in demand that caused the failure. However it should not have been able to shut down the entire grid. The safety systems should have shut down the overloaded sections before it pulled the rest of the system with it.
As to the availability of backup power, what backup power? Most buildings will have limited or no self-sufficiencty simply because it is expensive and; to be honest major power cuts are rare. Being in the business i am suprised to hear that the cellular phone sites have no backup. in the UK someting in the order of 4 hours supply is common and 8 hours not unknown.
See CNN at http://edition.cnn.com/2003/US/08/15/power.outage/index.html
for their latest report.
I would doubt that anyone knew this was going to happen. It seems that no one has any real idea about what kicked it off. The comments I have seen do admit that the US grid system has suffered huge underinvestment compared to the huge increase in demand over the last few years. Although that might explain why the system collapsed in such a drastic way it does not explain what started the whole thing off.
I think part of the problem with getting the system back-up was that some of the transformers probably blew when power was returned. I heard one blow somewhere in our area last night. When I shared a house with my sister our transformer blew out all the time because they put all the new houses in the neighborhood on the same line as our house instead of spreading it about the other lines in the neighborhood. Man, we got so good at the no power thing, even when it went during the winter when we got a butt-load of snow and it stayed on the ground for a week. We didn't have any heat for five days that time.
Well, of course it SHOULDN'T have happened, Dexx! But when the crisis hit, something went wrong! Statistically speaking it was bound to happen sometime.
However, it does seem all affected areas were affected because of deliberate shut-downs of 21 stations for safety. It wasn't actually the entire grid that was down (else we would have had NO-ONE in the affacted areas on the board yesterday)
I would not be suprised to find that the 21 stations shut down automatically simple due to each one attempting to take more load as other parts of the system shut down. This would be done to stop damage to the generation equipment and is quite normal.
The latest I have seen suggests that althought no one knows exactly what happened and the Americans and Canadians are pointing fingers at each other, it appears tha a 34.5KV line in Ohio on the "Lake Erie Loop" may have come down. I would susspect that this connection was allowing two major parts of the grid to share power.