08-16-2003, 12:35 PM
From what I understand, the problem started in Lansing, MI at a little after 3:00 pm EST. The problem rippled down to Cincinatti, OH. The power level were gyrating and the system failed to compenstate for that. (insert dirty joke about gyrating power)
At about 4:10 PM EST, somewhere along Lake Erie something tripped and isolated the power plant. Without any load, the power plant were shut down. Because the power grid were already near maximum capacity (mostly due to all those A/C running to beat the heat), and with one power plant isolated the grid couldn't handle the demand and started tripping more safeties. More tripped safeties meant more power plants were offlined but the demand didn't change and the power grid tried to draw power from elsewhere.
Now had Ohio power plant isolated the power grid from the nation, the blackout would have been confined to Michigan and Ohio but that didn't happen.
In the span of just a few minutes from the initial trip, nearly 30 more power plants throughout the New England region were shut down before the power companies finally isolated the grids to protect the rest of the nation from blackout.
Exactly what started the cascade failure is unclear but too many power companies didn't isolate their grids quickly enough to contain the spread of the blackout.
Michigan power company should be comended because they did isolate quickly enough, and that prevented the failure from reaching Illinois, Wisconsion, even as far as Montana. And since other states shut down quickly enough to keep the failure from reaching as far south as Florida.
The way the grid was set up, had nothing been done, we're looking at blackout from the entire Eastern seaboard all the way to Rockies and more than half of Canada. Texas has its own power grid and the remaining Western states were also on separate grids and neither would be affected by this worse case scenario. (Akaska and Hawaii are separate and uses different system)
Had the worse case scenario happened, it'd be weeks and not days before it's fully restored. Water shortage was already bad as it is right now, and would have been a lot worse along with fuel shortage (no electric to run pumps) and food shortage. Basically USA would have been reduced to 3rd world quality of living.
Although I live in Michigan, I was sparred the worse. I did suffer sudden brownout and noticeably flickering lights for a minute before the upper portion of Michigan was isolated from the failing grid. The only casuality is one of my PC needs a complete reinstall of Winblows because it was on when the power failure hit and the hard drive's trashed so badly I can't recover anything and had to reformat. Thankfully I just made backups of everything important on my new DVD burner a few days ago. :whew!:
At about 4:10 PM EST, somewhere along Lake Erie something tripped and isolated the power plant. Without any load, the power plant were shut down. Because the power grid were already near maximum capacity (mostly due to all those A/C running to beat the heat), and with one power plant isolated the grid couldn't handle the demand and started tripping more safeties. More tripped safeties meant more power plants were offlined but the demand didn't change and the power grid tried to draw power from elsewhere.
Now had Ohio power plant isolated the power grid from the nation, the blackout would have been confined to Michigan and Ohio but that didn't happen.
In the span of just a few minutes from the initial trip, nearly 30 more power plants throughout the New England region were shut down before the power companies finally isolated the grids to protect the rest of the nation from blackout.
Exactly what started the cascade failure is unclear but too many power companies didn't isolate their grids quickly enough to contain the spread of the blackout.
Michigan power company should be comended because they did isolate quickly enough, and that prevented the failure from reaching Illinois, Wisconsion, even as far as Montana. And since other states shut down quickly enough to keep the failure from reaching as far south as Florida.
The way the grid was set up, had nothing been done, we're looking at blackout from the entire Eastern seaboard all the way to Rockies and more than half of Canada. Texas has its own power grid and the remaining Western states were also on separate grids and neither would be affected by this worse case scenario. (Akaska and Hawaii are separate and uses different system)
Had the worse case scenario happened, it'd be weeks and not days before it's fully restored. Water shortage was already bad as it is right now, and would have been a lot worse along with fuel shortage (no electric to run pumps) and food shortage. Basically USA would have been reduced to 3rd world quality of living.
Although I live in Michigan, I was sparred the worse. I did suffer sudden brownout and noticeably flickering lights for a minute before the upper portion of Michigan was isolated from the failing grid. The only casuality is one of my PC needs a complete reinstall of Winblows because it was on when the power failure hit and the hard drive's trashed so badly I can't recover anything and had to reformat. Thankfully I just made backups of everything important on my new DVD burner a few days ago. :whew!: