Blackout

[joywitch_m_curmudgeon]

--- In HPFGU-OTChatter at yahoogroups.com, "psychic_serpent" 
<psychic_serpent at y...> wrote:

> On the blackout (since that's the subject line), I too have mostly 
> heard news about NYC, but I think that's to be expected as it's the 
> biggest city in the country and all of the major networks are 
> headquartered there.  

I think that's the main reason why the news media -- particularly the 
big national news shows -- have concentrated on NYC.  Nothing to do 
w/ 9/11, IMO, but more to do with the fact that they all have their 
offices there, their offices have backup generators, and 
communications with other cities are limited.

> There have also 
> been a lot of long stories on the local news and in the paper about 
> how the Philly area and South Jersey dodged the bullet and didn't 
> get included in the blackout--which makes one wonder why the same 
> safety precautions couldn't have protected the areas that WERE 
> affected.

It has to do with how the interconnects are set up.  NY State, Ohio, 
and several Canadian provinces are in one region; most of NJ,  
Pennsylvania, Maryland, and DC (where I live) are in another.  The 
different regions are all interconnected, as well, but there is a 
system that disconnects one region from the others at the first sign 
of trouble.  In fact, the local electrical people here in DC have 
been on TV gloating about how well their system worked, since 
apparently it did immediately disconnect from the NY system.  
Clearly, though, a system that protects different cities within the 
individual regions is needed.

It is ridiculous that the entire region went down.  There is simply 
no type of power plant equipment failure that could affect such a 
large region, which requires hundreds of plants to supply it.  I'm 
guessing there was some sort of computer system failure, or else 
someone or something triggered a small shutdown, and the entire 
transmission switching network is just so messed up, or old, that it 
completely malfunctioned.  The latter, as I understand it, is 
essentially what happened in the big NYC blackout in 1965, but you'd 
think that someone would have solved that problem in the intervening 
38 years.
 
> When there was a completely unrelated blackout here in Philly in 
the 
> Center City area on Tuesday, one of the biggest concerns of the 
> police seemed to be Jeweler's Row, where there is a concentration 
of 
> jewelry stores and especially diamond dealers.  The cops were down 
> there making sure every establishment had a backup security system, 
> and there were also cops all up and down the major streets 
directing 
> traffic to make up for the signals having no power.  (Although 
you'd 
> think that if the city was going to invest in emergency backup 
> generators for something, getting a system for the traffic signals 
> would be a pretty good investment and free up the cops during times 
> like this.)

A backup system for the entire network of traffic signals would be 
extremely costly.  There are just so many traffic signals spread over 
such a wide area -- it would be a lot more difficult and expensive 
than, say, buying a small backup generator for a small business.  
Would it really make sense for the gov't to spend millions on backup 
systems for traffic signals for such a rare event?  It's considerably 
cheaper just to pay a few hundred cops overtime to go direct traffic 
at the main intersections.

--Joywitch, who does research on energy and electricity