Of course we don't yet know what tripped the 500-kilovolt (kV) high-voltage line from Arizona to California to start the cascade of lost power to the entire San Diego metropolitan area, but it was certainly a wake-up call for what we would have expected if President Obama had not reined in the EPA.
His advisers suggested that allowing the EPA regulation to go through could result in blackouts.
Again, we don't know what tripped the high-voltage line (they say it wasn't terrorism) but it reminds us (at least it reminds me) how perilously close we are to meeting (or not meeting) peak energy demands. [Update: on the evening of September 8, 2011, it was being reported that it was human error; one man repairing a piece of equipment.]
Letting the EPA tail wag the dog is a recipe for disaster. (Is that mixing metaphors?)
The news reports say it was caused by the swap out of a piece of malfunctioning equipment. Probably true but on the Minnesota weather report last night they said that if we go out from the city light we might see some good "Northern Lights" for the next few days. Sattelites have detected high SOLAR FLARE activity.
ReplyDeleteI have no idea if this was part of this blackout but the so-called "smart grid" is more susceptible to disruptions than a regular grid.
With the "rise of the machines" scenario each sector tries to protect itself so you get a "snowball effect" of failure. The manual electric grid can usually take abuse by dropping the voltage from 120 to 110. If it drops to 100 volt you start "lugging" the generators and distribution system. My father was the watch engineer at a power plant so I grew up with these things.
The nuclear reactors did the right thing by shutting down with an anomaly but it takes the better part of a day to get them running again at full power.
Someone should check to see if this system had a "smart grid" upgrade.
Yes, that was being reported last night: a single worker repairing "something" set the whole thing off.
ReplyDeleteOkay.
Either the story is suspicious, or, if that's all it takes, one man making one mistake, sounds like the utility needs a new checklist and new operating procedure.