ERMUSR MISC. ISSUES 01-13-2004 - Laserfiche WebLink

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I response to imbalances of sup- overflow from lines that are down. nowhere else to send its power, ply and demand on the grid. Early reports of the events of started exporting to New York, Essentially the grid must always August 14 cite ar least one line that another neighboring state similarly remain in balance — supply of was so overloaded it overheated unprepared to accept incoming electricity must equal demand, and and sagged into a nearby tree, thus power flows. New York's system when a line or power plant loses knocking it out and passing its may or may not have tried to shut load or faces a power surge, it dis- overload to the next line. Before itself off from Ontario - investiga- connects from the grid so as not to long, this type of cascading effect tors are still debating this - but ioverheat or overload. knocked out lines throughout what is known is that by just after "The fail-safes are like circuit northeastern Ohio. 4:00 pm,a mere hour or more after breakers in your house," explains the first signs of trouble Philip Mihlmester, a consultant appeared in Ohio, New l' with ICF Consulting, a firm that Exne'-ts who .t;lil speak on the York power plants started I. has studied the nation's electrical sav One :s snould lde going dark. Within seconds, transmiss:o_; systems :, r years. c blackout. the New York ISO lost some "It's like if you plug 1 t appliances and more sonead and 80 percent of its load as its into one circuit and try to run them all. Either the circuit is going to eventual scope. plants began shutting down. Thus within a hour- accord- blow or your house is going to • ing to the earliest published I burn down, because that one cir- Once enough lines are down, reports - line failures in Ohio had cuit cannot handle all that power moreover, power flows may start rippled through the grid to knock demand." to reverse on the system. Thus as out more than 100 power plants in The national electric grid, northern Ohio lost power, the nor- at least four states and the province though, is not quite the same as mat Ohio-to-Michigan-to-Ontario of Ontario. household wiring. Once a 'circuit" flow was reversed, with electrons - a transmission line or power charging down from Ontario into ...Alarming Trends plant - goes off-line, power that Michigan in an attempt to fill the A perplexing and still-unresolved 1 formerly rode that corridor now vacuum left by lack of outgoing question is whether the blackout tries to find the path of least resis- tance power from Ohio. This unexpect- could have been contained to Ohio, to get to where it needs to go. ed power surge (reversal) into particularly if the right alarms This boosts current on neighboring Michigan knocked out several would have been sounded on lines, which must not only carry Michigan plants and lines, and FirstEnergy's system. At least one their native load, but accept the soon Ontario's system, with class-action lawsuit has already — been filed claiming that it was the ■ — e r= s -rm lack of functioning alarms that �-..aT L1/- yf• turned a what should have been + ,s � contained spot outages into the . biggest electrical outage in North ( American history. FirstEnergy offi- " f cials won't comment, citing the r ongoing investigation into what went wrong. Other utilities or inde- pendent systems operators (ISOs) ` that were part of the event are sim- ilarly mum - no one wants to say _ what went wrong until the facts have been reviewed. Experts who will speak on the a 4'7-- subject, though, say the focus wr should be less on the origin of the 1 ' blackout and more on its spread and eventual scope. "Everyone should be more con- The New York State Power Authority's Robert Moses Niagra Power Plant, left, cerned with why a series of events and Ontario Hydro Energy's Sir Adam Beck Power Plant, right, are shown along that should have been contained the Niagra River. A sudden blackout robbed electricity from millions of people cascaded in this way," says Hoff across a vast swath of the Northern United States and Southern Canada on Thursday, Aug 14, 2003, exposing them to stifling heat and jammed rush hour Stauffer, a a senior cons Resc.t at streets then darkness. (AP Photo/David Duprey) _ Cambridge Energy esesrtreh 24 I 4th Quarter 2003