TELEPOLIS: Why Was the Blackout So Widespread? (fwd)

[Dave Farber <dave () farber net>]

> Date: Mon, 18 Aug 2003 21:50:43 -0400 (EDT)
> From: Ronda Hauben <ronda () panix com>
> Subject: TELEPOLIS: Why Was the Blackout So Widespread? (fwd)
> To: dave () farber net
> Cc: Ronda Hauben <ronda () panix com>
>
>
>
> Dave
>
> It was interesting to see the quotes from you and your son about
> the importance of the energy policy in today's New York Times story
> "The Bits Are Willing But the Batteries are Week"
>
> It is important that there be serious public discussion and debate about
> what happened that allowed there to be such a massive blackout and what to
> do to deal with the problem.
>
> An article I wrote on the blackout is in Telepolis.
>
> The url is
>
> http://www.heise.de/tp/english/inhalt/co/15464/1.html
>
> The article follows.
>
> Why Was the Blackout So Widespread?
> Some Technical and Policy Questions to be Answered
>     by Ronda Hauben   19.08.2003
>
> The most recent North American energy blackout spread widely, affecting
> an estimated 50 million people in two countries. This is a larger
> geographic and population area than any previous energy blackout in the
> history of North America.
>
> Investigations are being initiated at the state, provincial, national
> and North American levels to determine the sequence of events that
> created the blackout. These will try to identify what events may have
> started the blackout1
>
> The more important question raised for these inquiries, however, is why
> and how the blackout spread so massively. Supposedly, the transmission
> grid was designed to prevent the massive spread of a problem to others
> on the grid.
>
> "If we designed this system for this not to happen, how did it happen?"
> asks Michehl R. Gent, the CEO of the North American Energy Reliability
> Council (NERC).
>
>  NERC [1] was created after the 1965 energy blackout. It's mission was
> to prevent such a blackout from ever happening again. Yet in 1977, and
> then again in 2003, such blackouts occurred. The NERC is a private,
> non-profit industry self regulatory organization. Can a private
> organization be entrusted with the regulation of an industry? Can
> voluntary compliance to standards and rules be relied on to provide
> electric power to a nation's population?
>
> One report of last Thursday's events describes how Roger Harszy, an
> operations director for Midwest Independent System Operator, in Carmel,
> Indiana, was watching a computer screen on Thursday, August 14. It had
> just revealed to him that 1,000 megawatts of wayward electrical power
> were surging around the top of the Lake Erie loop from the Toronto area
> into Detroit, MI2
>
> He observed that the "oscillating power phenomenon" occurred along four
> transmission lines, which he monitored from the control room at Midwest
> ISO, which oversees the movement of electricity in a 15-state region of
> the Midwest.
>
> Describing the event, Gent explains that "300 to 500 megawatts...were
> moving west to east from Michigan to New York through Ontario, when the
> problem struck - either the failure of some power plants or of some
> transmission lines." He noted that suddenly there was a change in the
> flow of electric power and it reversed direction, "pulling 500
> megawatts from east to west, out of New York -- a swing, in the space
> of a few seconds of as much as 1,000 megawatts, the output of a large
> power plant."3
>
> Gent says he is at a loss to explain why this more widespread effect on
> the transmission system occurred.
>
> In response to a question to the NERC about whether this sudden change
> of direction of electric power was a common occurrence on a smaller
> scale, David W. Hilt, the NERC Director of Compliance wrote:
>
> "Power moves on the grid on a moment-by-moment basis. This is based on
> transmission lines and generators in service. Changes on a given line
> or a given interface on a smaller scale are somewhat common." David W.
> Hilt, Email, August 16, 2003
>
> But such a change in the direction of such a massive amount of electric
> power is not common. Then why did it happen on August 14, 2003?4
>
> The transmission grid system breakdown is a mystery that has to be
> understood in order to prevent such future breakdowns. Yet there are
> obstacles to identifying and understanding the nature of the problem.
>
> One such obstacle, according to Gent, is the change in the politics of
> energy creation and transmission in the U.S. Under the current forms of
> 'deregulation' various owners of the different power entities are not
> likely to want to share information which might give up their own
> competitive advantage.
>
> Elaborating on this problem, Jennifer Granholm, Governor of Michigan,
> describes the changes in the regulatory structure of the energy system.
> When Michigan began to deregulate its electricity market, the Michigan
> electric utility, Detroit Edison, became DTE and sold its transmission
> lines. She notes that the transmission system hadn't been upgraded in
> 20 years. She explains, "The people who own the transmission system are
> out of state and are not necessarily...accountable. The issue of who
> owns the transmission, who owns the generation, who owns the
> distribution, all of those are areas we're going to have to look at."5
>
> While some of the media reports are looking for the technical cause of
> the breakdown, there are others emphasizing the political nature of
> energy regulation in the U.S. Gent comments that, "The grid is now
> being used in ways for which it was not designed."
>
> The grid was designed as part of an electric power utility. This
> utility had its origins in the 1930s, when the U.S. Congress broke up
> large interstate holding companies, passing the Public Utility Holding
> Company Act (PUHCA). This law gave federal government sanction to
> monopoly operation of electric power companies over limited areas. In
> return for their regulated monopoly position, these companies agreed to
> provide reliable electric service to their customers at regulated
> rates6 .
>
> The corporate deregulation ferment in the U.S., in the 1980s and 1990s,
> however, required that utilities give access to the transmission lines
> to their competitors. Not only are the transmission lines being used by
> others than those who formerly built and maintained them as part of a
> state government regulated power entity, but also the transmission
> lines have become part of a system for selling and buying power. The
> lines are not now for transporting electricity so that it will be low
> priced and reliable. The transmission lines are instead seen as a
> market mechanism "to send power in different directions to different
> customers at different times at different prices in response to
> different demands."7
>
> Will the blackout be used as a political excuse to provide for federal
> subsidies for private corporations to increase their ownership and
> control of the U.S. energy system, like the corrupt model of Enron? Or
> will there be a public debate of how to make the U.S. energy system
> into a reliable public service?
>
> The current U.S. corporate model of private control of all public
> services has been called into question by the blackout. People around
> the world, and their governments, can see the consequences of adopting
> the U.S. 'deregulation' model for the management of public services. As
> Michigan's Governor Granholm explained, "the utility industry needs to
> become more heaviliy regulated to ensure accountability. As a result of
> deregulation, Michigan has become dependant on utilities across many
> states to feed its power needs - 'which makes it more difficult to hold
> people accountable'." She recognizes the problem of "reliability
> standards for utilities which are voluntary", and she observes, "And
> that just doesn't cut it."8
>
> Literaturangaben
>
> 1) The owner of the transmission lines that serve the Ohio area is
> FirstEnergy Corporation. The recent spotlight has beeen focused on
> problems this company had on August 14, and how they may have helped to
> set off the series of events. But why some energy organizations were
> able to isolate themselves from the problems, and others, couldn't,
> will also be a source of questions. For example, New York State didn't
> isolate itself from the problems, while Vermont was able to.
>
> 2) New York Times, Matthew L. Wald, Richard Perez-Pena, and Neela
> Banerjee, "Experts Asking Why Problems Spread So Far",  August 16,
> 2003 [2] The New York Times article describes the importance of
> maintaining the 60 cycles per second rate. "If power plants in an area
> are producing less electricity than consumers are demanding, the system
> falls below 60 cycles per second (the frequency at which electrons in
> the wires reverse directions) and damage can be done to the equipment.
> When that happens, the plants are quick to shut down." This happens
> unless the plants are able to pump slightly more electrical power than
> needed. In this case they can stabilize the rate.
>
> 3) Times Wire, "Rogue Power Burst Crippled System", St. Petersburg
> Times,  August 16, 2003 [3]
>
> 4) Describing his experience on August 14, the manager of the New York
> Port Authority's Niagara hydroelectric plant, Ronald W. Ciamaga,
> observed that the delicate balance between consumption and generation
> was not being maintained. He was watching a meter to monitor that the
> electric power generation was at its normal frequency for North
> America, which is 60-cycles/second. "I was up there in the control
> room," he explains, "seeing frequency variations I've never seen." The
> rate dropped to 57 cycles/second, when fluctuations are usually
> measured in the hundreds or tenths of cycles/second. Ciamaga had worked
> at the plant for 30 years and this was the first time he had seen such
> a drop in frequency. (See Matthew L. Wald, Richard Perez-Pena, Neela
> Banerjee, "Electricity returning to East, but big power gaps still
> remain. WHAT WENT WRONG: Huge power reversal overloaded system", The
> New York Times,  August 15, 2003 [4]
>
> 5) Lorraine Mirabella, "Power loop probed as blackout's cause remains a
> mystery, Experts zero in on ring surrounding Lake Erie; answer could
> take weeks", Baltimore Sun,  August 16, 2003 [5]
>
> 6) See  Electricity Deregulation: What's the Issue [6].
>
> 7) Daniel Yergin and Lawrence Makovich, "The System Did Not Fail. Yet
> the System Failed." New York Times, August 17, 2003
>
> 8) David Zeman, Nancy A. Youssef, and Kathleen Gray, "Analysts Say
> Blackout Began With a Zap, and Then Got Weird", Detroit Free Press,
>  August 17, 2003 [7]
>
> Links
>
> [1] http://www.nerc.com
> [2]
> http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=68&ncid=68&e=5&u=/nyt/20
> 030816/ts_nyt/expertsaskingwhyproblemsspreadsofar
> [3] http://www.sptimes.com...nation/Rogue_power_burst_cri.shtml
> [4]
> http://www.theledger.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20030816/NEWS/308160
> 343/0/FRONTPAGE
> [5]
> http://www.sunspot.net/business/bal-te.bz.why16aug16,0,2463869.story?col
> l=bal-business-headlines
> [6] http://www.opensecrets.org/news/electricity.htm
> [7] http://www.centredaily.com/mld/centredaily/news/6556536.htm
>
> Telepolis Artikel-URL:
> http://www.telepolis.de/english/inhalt/co/15464/1.html
>
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> Heise Zeitschriften Verlag, Hannover

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