Blackout Week Continues 310
RedCard writes "Back in April of 1999, Wired magazine published an issue featuring a black-on-black cover with the title Lights Out. In it, they detailed what could've happened had the Y2K bug not fizzled. There's the cover story detailing the Y2K worries, a guide to the biggest blackouts of all time (before last week, that is), survival stories from New Zealand, and finally a look at the myth of order - how our power system is as chaotic as any complex software system. By the way, whatever happened to those backups put in place for Y2K that were supposed to prevent one grid from taking out a zillion others? Where'd my tax money go? Enjoy!" Dennis Kucinich has also written an informative piece about the energy utility that seems to have been responsible for the recent blackout.
Heh. (Score:5, Funny)
Maybe this was a Y2K bug. (If it blew up when it was supposed to it wouldn't be a bug, now would it.)
Re:Heh. (Score:4, Interesting)
PS: Everyone in the northwest who is giddy about not getting hit by the blackout shouldn't feel too smug. The same thing could happen here. In fact, the chances of it happening on the California ISO are high.
Re:Heh. (Score:2)
like, if the powerlines are antique, why can't they charge more for the power to do the necessary upgrades, that's what they're supposed to do anyways? because i would guess(based on logic) that regulation of the prices(at so low level the profits aren't big enough
Re:Heh. (Score:4, Insightful)
Regulation is not simply price, it also oversite to make sure they are maintaining their equipment properly, etc. Once the regulation is gone, profit becomes king. When profit is king, CEOs will use a company as a stepping stone. Kill long term viability in favor of short term profits. Get the profits. CEO uses the new profits to get a higher paying job elsewhere, leaving the new CEO with a mess on his hands...
When Americans quit believing rich people are smart and put in some caring people in office, America will be a better place. As it stands we like suits and ties over heart and substance.
All these blackout stories.. (Score:3, Funny)
Time to order a UPS...
Will this do? [bestbuy.com]
Re:All these blackout stories.. (Score:3, Funny)
How come they recommended me one for a grand? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:How come they recommended me one for a grand? (Score:2)
I'd still need batteries... (Score:2)
and there's no way they'd support the power guzzling A/C.
Wind power might be better. Hmm only in winter. I've heard of some sort of trick that uses th
Re:All these blackout stories.. (Score:4, Funny)
No, but this one [harborfreight.com] will do nicely.
Re:All these blackout stories.. (Score:4, Funny)
Fuel Cell [ballard.com]
Re: UPS (Score:2)
And btw it'd be for two computers both with 21" monitors, so probably 30 minutes at most.
The art of psychic maintenance (Score:5, Funny)
Wow. Were they all psychics? Did they, back in '99, see the end of the dotcoms too?
Two schools of thought about blackouts... (Score:5, Interesting)
b) Head over to the neighbour's house and rob them at gunpoint before they jump to conclusion (b) as well.
Happily most people tend to stay firmly in camp (a), even when blackouts are extensive and pervasive. I know this from much time spent in places like Luanda and Kinshasa, where blackouts are the norm and power & water is exceptional.
The default state of humanity in such circumstances, I'm glad to report, is generally "party on!!!"
Civilisation is not quite as fragile as we sometimes assume. Perhaps the US could use some more blackouts.
Re:Two schools of thought about blackouts... (Score:2)
Re:Two schools of thought about blackouts... (Score:5, Funny)
Head over to the neighbour's house and force them at gunpoint to sing for you before they jump to conclusion
Music (Score:2)
Re:Two schools of thought about blackouts... (Score:2)
Happily, automobiles tend to have batteries, a generator AND sound equipment! Some even hava a jacuzzi!
Re:Two schools of thought about blackouts... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Two schools of thought about blackouts... (Score:2)
Re:Two schools of thought about blackouts... (Score:2, Insightful)
Not to 50 million people, they haven't. An ice storm taking out power to even 500,000 people for 3 or 4 days is nothing compared to what happened last week. Yes, this was "The biggest blackout ever" in North America and I don't think it's at all melodramatic to say that. It will e
Re:Two schools of thought about blackouts... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Two schools of thought about blackouts... (Score:2)
Re:Two schools of thought about blackouts... (Score:2)
Re:Two schools of thought about blackouts... (Score:2)
Re:Two schools of thought about blackouts... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Two schools of thought about blackouts... (Score:2)
Re:Two schools of thought about blackouts... (Score:2)
Wow... you got a live acoustical band at your disposal?
Re:Two schools of thought about blackouts... (Score:2)
Yeah, sure, I thought everyone had this...?
once again... its the economy, stupid. (Score:4, Interesting)
I can tell you all about the ne're-do-wells that put out our lights tonight. I came up against these characters -- the Niagara Mohawk Power Company -- some years back. You see, before I was a journalist, I worked for a living, as an investigator of corporate racketeers. In the 1980s, "NiMo" built a nuclear plant, Nine Mile Point, a brutally costly piece of hot junk for which NiMo and its partner companies charged billions to New York State's electricity ratepayers.
To pull off this grand theft by kilowatt, the NiMo-led consortium fabricated cost and schedule reports, then performed a Harry Potter job on the account books. In 1988, I showed a jury a memo from an executive from one partner, Long Island Lighting, giving a lesson to a NiMo honcho on how to lie to government regulators. The jury ordered LILCO to pay $4.3 billion and, ultimately, put them out of business.
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. Notably, Enron rewarded Thatcher's Energy Minister, one Lord Wakeham, with a bushel of dollar bills for 'consulting' services and a seat on Enron's board of directors. The English experiment proved the viability of Enron's new industrial formula: that the enthusiasm of politicians for deregulation was in direct proportion to the payola provided by power companies.
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 el
Re:once again... its the economy, stupid. (Score:4, Insightful)
This article is a thinly disguised political rant. If deregulation is so bad, then why - more than a decade after it occurred in the UK - do my parents pay a fraction what they used to, and they can't remember when they last had a power outage? Their quarterly electricity bill is less than half my two monthly bill here in Toronto.
"California fell first."
Anybody who thinks power was deregulated in CA has been listening to too many politicians, and certainly doesn't understand what deregulation is about.
"San Diego, the 20% savings became a 300% jump in surcharges."
And now they're paying for it out of their taxes! I guess if you don't get a piece of paper saying how much it really cost, then it's okay. I find it offensive that my taxes are subsidising excessive users (and rich people are generally the most excessive users), especially considering how much effort I go to to conserve electricity both for my pocket book and the environment.
Re:once again... its the economy, stupid. (Score:2)
Possible because americans really have no self control? Bah you should be ashamed!
Re:once again... its the economy, stupid. (Score:4, Informative)
On the other hand, I am a resident of California and a customer of San Diego Gas and Electric and I can assure you that electric utilities have been deregulated and that our bills did, in many cases, triple.
When regulated, those utilities were guaranteed a profit of a few percent on their operations by the regulators. Operations meaning not just the generation and distribution of power, but also the expansion and maintenance of their systems. Whatever they spent, they were guranteed to make a profit. They spent money on maintenance and upgrades because those expenditures actually increased their profitability.
That gurantee of profitability gave utility companies stellar credit ratings which allowed them to borrow money for expansion at low rates.
The net result was excellent maintenance, aggressive upgrade programs, and plenty of employees to handle problems.
Free-market capitalists saw most of this benefit to consumers as irrelevant. What they saw was that a few percent of guaranteed profit wasn't enough. So they set out to increase that profit by freeing themselves of regulation. They promised that deregulation would cause companies to compete to sell me electricity and that competition would drive prices down and, by some never explained voodoo, to drive profits up.
It didn't work. Companies did not compete to sell me electricity cheaply. They conspired to withhold electricity in order to create the appearance of shortages and then sold power at extortionate rates. The problem for the utilities is that the deregulation wasn't complete. The State retained control over the maximum amount that could be charged for electricity. Who knew this would ever be a problem as we'd all been told that prices would only go down.
Utilities, which are now mainly distribution companies having sold their generators to outsiders, got stuck in the middle. Too bad for them. They all lobbied to get deregulated and they got screwed by their free-market buddies.
Re:once again... its the economy, stupid. (Score:4, Insightful)
You're correct - I didn't give you enough information. I was being comparative.
The situation here is that the idiot Premier of Ontario - Ernie Eves - capped electricity prices at the artificially low rate of CAD$0.043/KWHr last summer. Apparently this is what it cost in the early to mid nineties, although I doubt he took inflation in to consideration (it was running at 4.5% earlier this year). The province makes up the difference on the costs, hence it comes out of taxes AND people have no incentive to conserve. IIRC, the Californians are getting cheap electricity at the expense of their government coffers too.
Re:once again... its the economy, stupid. (Score:4, Informative)
Re:once again... its the economy, stupid. (Score:5, Informative)
01) the UK deregulation was in favour of the consumer rather than the supplier
02) the generating companies have switched as much of the generation to natural gas 'stations as quickly as possible. This is much cheaper than our old coal fired stations, but will leave us increasingly dependent on Russian gas in the future.
03) UK electricity used to be really expensive.
As an aside, my electricity bills are now AMAZINGLY low - I pay less than 25 ($40) for 3 months of domestic power from British Gas, but getting my meter moved took me over a month of chasing people around on the 'phone. What does my power use consist of? 2 x Powermacs on 24/7 (a dual G4 and a 500 G3), a 28" widescreen Panasonic TV, around 20 x 60W lamps, an electric oven, a really nice Samsung washing machine with 1600rpm spin, 2 x power amps with 500W power supplies, an 850W microwave oven and a multitude of other low Wattage electronics like DVD players and whatnot.
In fact, power costs in the UK are SO low that they act as a positive disincentive to look into more environmentally sustainable alternatives.
Re:once again... its the economy, stupid. (Score:3, Insightful)
Please rip this to pieces logically... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:once again... its the economy, stupid. (Score:3, Insightful)
Better piece here (Score:3, Informative)
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/08/16/opinion / 16KUTT.h tml?pagewanted=print&position=
August 16, 2003
An Industry Trapped by a Theory
By ROBERT KUTTNER
n the search for the source of Thursday's blackout, the underlying cause has been all but ignored: deregulation. In principle, deregulation of the power industry was supposed to use the discipline of free markets to generate just the right amount of electricity at the right price. But electric power, it turns o
So where did those generators go? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: So where did those generators go? (Score:2, Funny)
> Hey wait a minute. I remember companies spending millions on backup generators and such. Even news bits about some companies finding it cheaper to generate their own power. Where exactly did they all that energy production capacity go?
Unfortunately they ordered all those generators from this guy [slashdot.org].
Re:So where did those generators go? (Score:2)
Alternatives? (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe the real key to energy conservation is not relying on it in the first place.
Re:Alternatives? (Score:5, Interesting)
Gas provides what you want from an oven: Instant heat, when you want it, and instant off, whenever necessary (for instance, if you are cooking milk
Yes, gas is poisonous, and it can create an explosive mixture, if not watched closely. But all gas ovens I used recently had a bi metal switch, which closed the camshaft from the incoming pipe whenever the oven was cool, e.g. whenever no flame was burning. So the only way to poison yourself with gas was blocking the camshaft.
There is still something to say: People not used to the instand heat of a gas oven often overestimate the time necessary for a pot to heat. If you are cooking with gas, always stay at the oven. Otherwise the food may burn during your absent
Re:Alternatives? (Score:2)
Re:Alternatives? (Score:3, Informative)
As an avid outdoorsmen and survivalist, I can say you're on the right track here but there are a few things neccesary to your survival that you're neglecting.
A non-electric cooking solution is probably something that most people should have anyway. As someone already mentioned, cooking with gas is a much better way to cook due to predictability and fast reaction to change. Gas service is available in most suburban and rural areas, however it may be impractical for those in the city. For those who are so
Accurate predictions last year (Score:5, Interesting)
Then there are people who are opposed to nuclear power plants, (although their views are a bit more extreme), the source at the bottom article [nonuclear.net] is quoted from NY Times and DOE.
Re:Accurate predictions last year (Score:3, Interesting)
I am, however, terrified at the idea of an extensive increase in the use of nuclear power in the US, in the current climate of unregulation (yes, I mean that: not deregulation). Nuclear power stations built with no effective oversight and the sole objective of making a quick buc
Re:Accurate predictions last year (Score:3, Informative)
"The" Ohio plant? Which one?
The article is talking about the Davis-Besse plant which was out of service before the blackout.
"Accurate" predictions? Davis-Besse was not involved in last week's blackout in any way, since it was off-line!
Milalwi
Depends what you mean by 'outage but......' (Score:3, Insightful)
True about New Zealand (Score:5, Insightful)
What was said about Auckland, New Zealand in the article was a pretty fair assesment.
Being as I live in Auckland, I was there for the power crisis. Yes, businesses folded, yes, most CBD businesses lost money, but those that folded were most likely going to fold anyhow, and money can be made back.
It hurt the people the most though. Some were fortunate (like the BNZ bank staff), and their companies moved the staff arround to keep them working, but a lot of people couldn't work during those 5 weeks. And 1 month without a pay cheque hurts.
The same obviously applies to the States at the moment. Bussinesses aren't the one to be worring about, its the people.
The power company stiffed Auckland though. Mecury energy is still a force here, they do still run a lot of the power. But then again, lightning never strikes the same place twice... does it?
For the most part, the power grid in most countries performs amazingly well. You try designing a system that can handle an average 20 or 30 lightning strikes a day and still keep on pumping.
Jobs going... (Score:2)
Why is nobody totally up in arms about this ? (Score:5, Interesting)
What confuses me is how people are just taking this, from Bloomberg and the President down its "just one of those things" as if the rest of the first world has the same problems...
The other countries in the top 5 are Canada, Mexico and Malaysia. And in the US its always the North Eastern corner of the country. Doesn't this sort of indicate that this is NOT normal and that it is NOT reasonable ?
In the UK when there is a massive storm and some people are without power for a few days its a major issue, the idea of a major city being without power is unthinkable. Same across Europe and the rest of the first world. It isn't about area because down in the Southern US these things don't happen like they do in the NE. It is just plain incompetance and woeful bad practice.
If the French can run a decent power grid for 60 million people, why can't the US ? Why is America's most populus city part of a 3rd world power grid ? It can't be due to lack of consumpion, hence it can't be because the power companies aren't making money... so that leads us to power companies and goverment wilfully and knowingly allowing a sub-standard power grid to be in operation.
And just how much are people questioning the goverment about their over-sight right now ?
Summary: It is not normal in a 1st world country to have a grid failure, it is not normal for major cities to be without power. Some people some where are asleep on the job.
Re:Why is nobody totally up in arms about this ? (Score:2)
Now imagine a president w/ thousands and THOUSANDS [/sb] of problems thrown at him and he solves 'em all.
I love how bloomberg said, "All areas of NYC will get back power ASAP, with no preferences." Yes the poorest parts got electricity back last. Fuckin' liar.
Re:Why is nobody totally up in arms about this ? (Score:2)
You are exagerating. In some places like Cameroon they have power for a few hours every couple of days, on average.
NIMBY (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:NIMBY (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Why is nobody totally up in arms about this ? (Score:2, Interesting)
Where to begin .....
First let me start by saying that I live in Michigan and was without power for the weekend. Second, both of my parents work for the power company. No one is treating the blackout as "just one of those things" but there isn't a whole heck of a lot that anyone can do until there is a full investigastion.
Re:Why is nobody totally up in arms about this ? (Score:2)
Just like you seem to share the power grid with canada we share our powergrid over all the whole freaking continent. Yes that means from sweden down to italy. Some lines even go into russia. So who is more likely to get a failure?
European media have of course been discussing if this could happen in europe to. Conclusion, "of course not we are so much better it
Re:Why is nobody totally up in arms about this ? (Score:3, Insightful)
But the North East is where all the problems occur and the population there is similar to France, and the EU has a similar population to the US and manages NOT to have these issues.
Hell Italy, Spain and Greece have a better power network.
Re:Why is nobody totally up in arms about this ? (Score:2)
EU has managed NOT to have the issues, yes. Not YET. We didn't have this problem for 30 years either. Thursday morning we could have said "we don't have these problems" and we would be just as correct as you are.
Re:Why is nobody totally up in arms about this ? (Score:5, Interesting)
Then again, the 60 million figure is only for France. The UK is another 60 million people, for instance. The EU houses a lot more people than the US, both in absolute numbers and in terms of population density. The latter makes providing electricity both a harder problem (less space for power plant and lines, more consumption of electricity) and a easier problem (no remote rural areas, less dependance on overhead powerlines and no resistance to streets being dug up to supply low(220V)voltage to houses and businesses via subterranean cables).
The point about regulation is generally a good one, but a blanket "let's deregulate more!" response seems to me to be an overreaction. Let's face it electricity has always been and will always remain a public utility. You can see how much good comes of competition in a black-out like this; turns out there is nowhere else to turn for electricity than.. well, your existing power company. Trading electricity is all good and well, but there can only be one infrastructure.
On a related note, due to the high temperatures, the electricity companies in The Netherlands had sounded the alarm a week before the US blackout. They asked their customers to use less electricity. That's because they're acting responsibly, and not just thinking; high demand, higher prices, sure, we'll sell everything we've got. There's actual concern about the grid's capacity, reserves, and possible failures.. Note that they've only asked their customers nicely (as have the water utilities) there's no government ban on specific uses of electricity (or a hose ban to save water, like the UK has had a few summer in a row - apparently the water infrastructure there has a lot of 'transport losses' - leaks).
Deregulation is almost never the answer to make privatization work. If you spin off government companies, you actually need more rules to make sure they don't turn around and act against the public interest - after all, when they were government-run this could be affected by means of policy in stead of laws and regulations..
With the power grid it's especially true since each state can regulate it's own power companies. You've got 50 different sets of rules in place and people are sitting around scratching their heads trying to figure out what the problem is. We need a more unified set of rules that allows the power companies to charge more (and perhaps make a little more profit) if they upgrade their infrastructe.
We, in whacky Europe, don't seem to have these problems; even though each EU memberstate has their own laws, and even 'harmonized' rules sometimes only bear a passing resemblance to a community directive (which is kinda like federal law, but it's up to member states how to implement it in local law so it works alongside existing national laws).
Re:Why is nobody totally up in arms about this ? (Score:2)
The power grid is France is part of a European wide power grid. I doubt that the USA one is much bigger, it may even be smaller.
Other countries, plus Internet-like routing (Score:3, Insightful)
Other countries use 3- or 5-phase 3-wire delta-delta based electricity with floating ground, meaning that even if lightning strikes a cable, or it falls down, there's still electricity.
Add to this the aging power grid facilities and cables in th
Re:Why is nobody totally up in arms about this ? (Score:2)
--Because they throw even more money and resources in to it than the US does?
Let's get real here: Deregulation, in and of itself, is not the issue. The issue is HOW it was deregulated: It was done in ignorance of the infrastructure, it was done with no understanding of how the niggling details in the system work. It was done, not by engineers, but by lawyers, and accountants.
Don't get me wrong, we need the lawyers
Re:Why is nobody totally up in arms about this ? (Score:2)
No I don't believe you. As far as I know, France has one of the lowest electricity prices in Europe [newsbatch.com], and moreover exports quite a large size of it to neighbouring country. About 80% of it is made by nuclear central stations.
Re:Why is nobody totally up in arms about this ? (Score:2)
Re:Why is nobody totally up in arms about this ? (Score:2)
The US doesn't have 3000+ dead from a heat wave... don't they have A/C there? Or maybe that's why their grid works so well... no power.
And the Iraqi people are thrilled (Score:4, Interesting)
Consider yourselves lucky. Iraq and Afghanistan have crap power, and major cities in places you wouldn't expect have power failures too. Like NZ, Australia, UK and that strange country to your South West (California). And even a local blackout can cause much wider problems. Eg the bush fire problem in the Australian Capital Territory was rendered unmanageable when they lost power to the water supply and the emergency services building which meant that the water stopped in the suburbs affected by fire, and the fire control HQ went incommunicado!
Today's stories implicate computer systems... (Score:2, Informative)
Check out, with Onkel Babelfish [av.com] if your Deutsch is as bad as mine....
http://www.heise.de/newsticker/data/ju-15.08.03
Enron (Score:5, Funny)
I think enron was supposed to install them.
Blackout web log (Score:5, Interesting)
the great blackout of aught-three (Score:4, Insightful)
The only people who would want to know technical details like that would be the terrorists.
Re:the great blackout of aught-three (Score:2)
What really needs to be done is for Congress to get off their butts (more specifically, the democrats in the Senate) and get the energy bill passed...the one they've been sitting on for two years [go.com]
top priorities of our goverment (Score:3, Funny)
2) satisfy MPAA
3)
4) electricity
Re:top priorities of our goverment (Score:2)
Get off the grid (Score:4, Interesting)
Idaho is a water rich state, and I was able to use some of the waterfalls on my property to supply some hydroelectric power. I also have a couple of fuel cells to power some smaller items in my home. Luckily, I don't need too much power (since I maintain a minimialist lifestyle for environmental reasons), although living nowadays does require some electricity. At least this way, I am not contributing to the pollution caused by conventional coal-fired or nuclear power plants!
Re:Get off the grid (Score:2, Funny)
;)
Is the grid worth fixing (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Is the grid worth fixing (Score:2)
Of course you could pump the fuel via pipes but that would just be another type of grid. Hell the trucks would form a grid. Ever notice how during say very heavy winters trucks have difficulty moving? So one heavy snowstorm, like the ones NY has been having, and everyone would b
Wait a sec... (Score:5, Informative)
I know my karma will get a beating, but.... (Score:2, Insightful)
Most of the more technical people in the Slashdot crowd are aware that Wired is like the Sun, but about tech. It's not a real news source, and it's articles are written 90% for entertainment, 10% information. It's done that way to attract the largest crowd it can while still being a 'technical' source. Wired also has very fishy reviews. The bottom line appears to be, if you have ad space
They have a long list of other problems... (Score:5, Informative)
FirstEnergy was also recently found guilty of breaking pollution laws when they rebuilt a power plant and did not install modernized scrubbers. No ruling on what they will be fined has come out yet.
Here is an AP article [ap.org] with a bit more info, and an article [ucsusa.org] detailing the hole in the reactor vessel. TONS more info available via 'davis besse' on google.
Re:They have a long list of other problems... (Score:4, Interesting)
Expect environmental regs to be cited as an obstacle to new expansion of generation and transmission capabilities as this issue goes forward.
Big respect for power engineers / fixes (Score:3, Interesting)
Now politicians are visiting power stations and saying what terrific hardworking guys they are. Of course, they are.
Makes me a bit sad the Y2k bugs didn't fully
bring everything down. Instead most everything worked and everyone got made at the programmers.
Ideas for the blackout problem:
- Tax subsidies / no interest loans for businesses
to get off the grid and build their own small scale power plants.
- Require gas stations of have a manual way of
pumping gas.
- Some electronic ignition gas ranges didn't work!
There should be an override for this.
- In fact no energy source should require another
and make it law
- I understand nuclear plants need the grid to
start up! This is too circular for words.
Require them to have a clear generator to
bootstrap.
- Everyone home should have a reverse plug
Where you can safely plugin a solar panel
etc. It should be easy to buy and install
them.
Management issues, methinks... (Score:2)
The article claims that, "as other high-voltage lines succumbed in northern Ohio, an alarm that was supposed to warn an Ohio utility of the line failures -- and perhaps
a few facts (Score:3, Insightful)
As to the former Cleveland Mayor's article: Nice write-up, but those issues have nothing to do with the cause of this blackout. It's a technical, not political thing. And if you think Gov't workers would do it better, go visit your local Bureau of Motor. Side note: You seem to be implying organized crime ties to power. Power used to be tied in with big labor unions. No shit there were mob ties. Those same ties with labor barely exist today. Unions are limited to lineworkers, on of the smallest departments of a power company.
Deregulation: As others have pointed out, this applies only to Generation. It was a transmission problem. Not related.
The cause: No one knows yet. Including the power companies. But thanks to the 24news cycle, people think they have an idea.
Something to consider: In the 'new structure of power companies', a lot of transmission is controlled by power pools, like PJM and MISO. They are like an electrical version of the stock market. This system is new and carries risks. The effect of these pools on the blackout has yet to be investigated.
Keep an open mind about these things...
-t
Elevators (Score:5, Interesting)
Sure, such a thing would cost money, but so does the time of firemen and the legal costs of suits bought be people who have been trapped in your elevator. Perhaps any building needing a licence from the fire department should also need power-cut proof elevators!
What I wanna see... (Score:2)
Surely someone has interviewed them?
Not Deregulation (Score:4, Insightful)
Electric deregulation is relatively new in the US, its been in effect for less than a decade, yet, as you can see these mass power outages have been happening long before then. The current outage was similar in many ways to the 1965 blackout, which occured well before the era of Deregulation.
The real problem is the condition of the power grid is invisible to most people, company execs and politicians. As long as the power flows, they don't see a problem, not until things go terribly wrong, like this, do they wake up and say, "Gee, I guess we need to fix this". But unless these outages become more frequent, the fixes probably won't go far enough.
The theory that deregulation is the culprit goes something like this: Companies neglect infrastructure investments and instead pad their bottom line. Well the electrical transmission system in the US is not truly deregulated. Do you get to choose who DELIVERS (as opposed to generates) your electricity? No? Didn't think so.
Look at the cell phone situation (which is not regulated), Verizon has seemingly invested more in its coverage than the other companies, which seems echoed in customer surveys, (and personally have never experienced signal loss with Verizon, unlike other big carriers). Verizon uses this for competative advantage (all those commercials with the "Can you hear me now, good" guy). Under the "deregulation" theory, Verizon would sell off that excess capacity, and use the money saved to boost earnings.
Contrast that to the US highway infrastructure, which is controlled the various governments. Because the government is behind it, the highways should be well designed and maintained, and not neglected, right? No, it's all politics. Highway funds aren't distributed based on need, but based on what Senators and Congresspeople have the most clout. Where I currently live, we have two very powerful Senators, Kennedy and Kerry. Massachusetts got billions for the Big Dig, a short highway segment through Boston.
Where I used to live, in PA, much needed road projects didn't get funded, or took many years, 30 years in one case, to get a four-mile extension to a highway built. But we didn't have very powerful politicians fighting for us there, either.
Blackout was terrorist "proof of concept"? (Score:4, Interesting)
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/07/09
may have been used to examine the system and test out a weak spot?
You might call me out for wearing my tin foil hat on this one, but consider the scenario - Student compiles national infrastructure map from public information showing that the national fibreoptic grid (and perhaps electricity?) is routed through several choke points. Student gets told his thesis may be classified due to sensitive information.
Meanwhile, "insert terrorist-du-jour here" decides to compile the same information, getting the same analysis of the US infrastructure. He decides to test the theory out - bang, the lights go out over half the US. Proof of concept is a stunning success, better than he had hoped for (like the Sept 11 attacks). Now he has the knowledge that his attack worked, plus the knowledge that next time he wants to attack in a major way, all he has to do is follow standard military doctrine of cutting the enemy's power before launching his attack.
Result - major chaos and no response infrastructure because the power's out as well.
Now, imagine for a moment that the blackout WAS caused by nefarious people. Do you think the government is going to admit they got hit and were vulnerable? HELL NO!! They will feed a nice cover story which will result in plausible deniability, so that the public does not get alarmed. Media stations bite, hook, line and sinker. Investigative committees are launched. The REAL cause is already known, but kept classified to prevent loss of faith in the government (after all, elections are coming up and people have a nasty habit of REMEMBERING such lapses in security).
Paranoid scenario? Possibly. But equally possible is the likelihood of the above being factual.
Food for thought.
Quizo69
Electric Power is Very Reliable (Score:3, Informative)
The North American Energy Reliability Council which tracks such things has determined that, including last week, there have been seven grid failures since the big one on November 9, 1965. None lasted for more than a day.
Let's go to the blackboard...
The number of days between November 8, 1965 and August 14, 2003 is 13,793.
The number of days in which some portion of the national power grid failed during that period is 7.
Dividing 13,793 by 7 we get 0.000507504
Moving the decimal two places to the right (and rounding up) we get a failure rate of 51 THOUSANTHS of one percent.
Stating it the other way, the power grid (which was described by former Secretary of Energy Bill Richardson as being like one in a "third world country") has been up 99.949 percent of the time over the past 37 years.
Re:Hello (Score:2, Interesting)
I worry the least about getting the old bait-and-switch routine from him than I do from the ones that try to be all things to all people. Additionally, he seems to be reasonably clued AND inclined to fix things, which would be nice for a change.
Re:black on black cover? (Score:2)
Re:RPC based software ? (Score:5, Informative)
Conspiracy theories are only good when they are believable. Do some more research next time.
Re:RPC based software ? (Score:2, Informative)
You better read this (in German) [heise.de] or the (automatic) translation [216.239.39.104].
Why couldn't the SCADA systems been affected by some RPC blocking firewall ?
Of course no one will ever admit that such a thing has happened. Otherwise she/he will end up in Guatanamo. It's your turn now to do some research.
Re:RPC based software ? (Score:2)
True.
Also, the Transmission Reservation (E-Tag) system is not directly involved with the actual control of the power system anyway.
Milalwi
Re:RPC based software ? (Score:2)
Re:Blackout week? (Score:2)