An amazing (And sad) realization

Spiral_72

A major storm hit our area and knocked out EVERYTHING. According to the news, the airport was without power. How's that for throwing a wrench in everything?


So we're at work with no power. Obviously this stops anything productive.

The next day we have power, but that's it. No internet, phone, or email. I've never realized how helpless we are without this stuff.

I went to the grocery without power. I couldn't even pay with cash because the clerk nor the MANAGER knew how to figure tax and my change on a calculator. That's pathetic!

kwinn

You're right, that is pathetic. It's also one of the reasons I try not to become too dependent in the internet and all the other technology around us. As our dependence increases we become much more fragile as a society/civilization. Very difficult not to become dependent though.

erco

In August 2003, I was travelling to France for a 1200 km bike ride known as Paris-Brest-Paris. My connecting AA flight landed at JFK just after the power went out. Little did I realize how serious it was, the great blackout of 2003: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northeast_Blackout_of_2003 . NYC and much of the Northeast was without power for days. I was trapped at the dark airport for 2 days, sleeping on the baggage carrousel with my bike box, eating Power Gels and using my bicycle lights for illumination. Downtown, people were sleeping on the sidewalks for 2 days because they couldn't get into their hotel rooms with cardkey locks.

THAT was messed up. The whole power grid went down like dominoes, and they never sorted out the cause for certain. I'm sure there are terrorists who would love to cause another one, maybe that's why they haven't "announced" the cause.

WBA Consulting

The scary thing about the blackout in 2003 is that they actually do know the root cause(s). It was a domino effect of conditions that currently exist with just about every other electrical infrastructure in the U.S. The details can be read in the Final Blackout Report made by the "U.S.-Canada Power System Outage Task Force". Part 2 of the report is actually an interesting read. As we keep using more and more energy while wanting to pay less and less for it, our infrastructure is becoming outdated. Some utilities are trying to keep up though; on my daily commute, I sometimes see a helicopter dropping guys or parts onto the tops of high power lines to install yet another set of cable mounts for the high voltage lines coming from the Fiddyment station.

Phil Pilgrim (PhiPi)

Whenever we have a power outage, I get to witness an interesting juxtaposition of two retail cultures. Next to each other, a couple blocks from where I live, are a convenience store (pickup trucks and older-model muscle cars) and a large food co-op (Priuses and Subarus). The co-op always wimps out and closes during an outage; but the convenience store lets people shop in the dark, totes up their sales on a calculator by flashlight, and records them in a notepad for later entry in the cash register. "Jist git 'er done!" seems to be their motto, and it works.

-Phil

erco

Just wait until more people buy "plug in the wall" electric cars. THEN we'll see how far our power grid has evolved!

icepuck

About two weeks ago I had a power outage caused by a squirrel and shorted out the transformer north of my house. There wasn't much left of the squirrel.
-dan

erco

And I suppose we've all seen the online photos of the poor soul who was attempting to steal copper wire from the high-tension lines wearing Playtex rubber gloves for insulation.

JasonDorie

I hadn't seen that (and now I have), but I've seen similar. I took an electrical apprenticeship in high school and we had a number of high voltage safety presentations. I actually got to see *in person* what a high-voltage power line will do to a 4" diameter sausage. The amount of damage done and how little time it takes kind of sticks with you - you can't help but imagine it being a body part, which obviously was the point. It was very effective.

W9GFO

When I lived in Guam power outages were a regular occurrence. One time we lost power for quite a while (couple days) due to a snake slithering into a bad place. There was also a tourist killed when a power line fell on him while walking on the sidewalk.

Rich H

HollyMinkowski

Just imagine the aftermath of an EMP attack.

Chilling :-(

Phil Pilgrim (PhiPi)

... or a coronal mass ejection, like the one that struck Earth in 1859:

http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2008/06may_carringtonflare/

-Phil

HollyMinkowski

There is a really scary movie about a coronal mass ejection.

localroger

I see all of your power failures and raise you Hurricanes Katrina and Rita.

I will fold to the tsunami victims though, both in Indonesia and Japan.

True fact: we had a customer who had several million pound capacity drilling fluid tanks which they left half-full to ballast them before the onslaught of hurricane Rita in coastal western Louisiana (south of Lake Charles). When they got back to the area their entire facility, including the tanks, was GONE. Even the foundations had been swept away. The only way they could be completely sure they had even found the few scant remains of their facility was by the GPS coordinates.

mindrobots

There is an interesting and thought provoking book, "One Second After" by William Forstchen that deals with several high level nukes set off over the US and the effects of their EMP on our modern society.....it's amazing and chilling the things we take for granted that will just stop working and become worthless.

In 2003 we were about 2 miles down the road from "ground zero" - didn't know it at the time - the infamy of living in Northeast Ohio!!

A tip of the hat to localroger - short term power outages are nothing compared to other natural/man-made disasters.

Rick

ctwardell

erco wrote: »

And I suppose we've all seen the online photos of the poor soul who was attempting to steal copper wire from the high-tension lines wearing Playtex rubber gloves for insulation.

Saw a news story in Central Ohio a couple of nights ago about some idiot that tried to steal copper from a pole near his house and got zapped. Whole story was a sob piece about feeling sorry for his wife and kids that saw it happen.
He wasn't killed and was in hospital last I heard. They should have a least followed up about the dangers and fact that had he not been zapped it still would have created a situation where a lineman working in the area could be injured or killed.

C.W.

bill190

Around here the power goes out at least once a month. We have lots of trees and rain, then a wind storm comes along and trees fall on the power lines.

I have all battery clocks and don't bother setting the time on anything like the microwave. Then also UPS for my computer and a generator for extended outages. Also oil lamps and camping stove for cooking.

The grocery stores have back-up generators. Just enough power for a few lights around the store and the cash registers. Then anything important like police 911, rest homes and electronic life support, fire, etc. all have back-up generators.

The entire wired U.S. phone system has had back-up power as long as I can remember.

Beau Schwabe

What scares me a little about the US power grid and perhaps I'm stepping into the "I don't know what I'm talking about" territory ... sombody please correct me if I'm wrong.

The way I understand it, you need a magnet to pass in front of a coil of wire to generate electricity right, ok, I get that, BUT the magnets used in the generators for the power grid are electrical magnets and 'borrow' some of the power from the grid itself. Similar to a car alternator (you need the 'battery' in order for it to work)... Now, that said, if we (the US) were to suffer a large scale "grid event" would there be enough grid power left to restart? I realize that there are probably local gas generators used for kick-start power, but depending on what caused the grid event in the first place can we guarantee that the gas generators will even work?

Peter KG6LSE

Beau there is a way to excite a "cold start " Power station .

the Exciters on many smaller plants are DC perm magnet a KW or so ... But Still a cold start is a HUGE issue with a AC system as the phase is a issue .


I have had a personal tour with the Cal ISO . I learned a Ton from them .

Peter

Shawn Lowe

Beau Schwabe (Parallax) wrote: »

What scares me a little about the US power grid and perhaps I'm stepping into the "I don't know what I'm talking about" territory ... sombody please correct me if I'm wrong.

The way I understand it, you need a magnet to pass in front of a coil of wire to generate electricity right, ok, I get that, BUT the magnets used in the generators for the power grid are electrical magnets and 'borrow' some of the power from the grid itself. Similar to a car alternator (you need the 'battery' in order for it to work)... Now, that said, if we (the US) were to suffer a large scale "grid event" would there be enough grid power left to restart? I realize that there are probably local gas generators used for kick-start power, but depending on what caused the grid event in the first place can we guarantee that the gas generators will even work?

I agree. I think (once again, not an expert or have even googled) that is what is so fearsom about a EMP attack. It fries anything electrical/electronic. I am sure we could revert to non electrical means of getting by, but for awhile, the US would be devestated.

localroger

Beau, the backup systems for cold-starting conventional power plants are very mature. As Peter said they generally have at least one small PM steam generator for exciting the armature coils. But they also need power for the various control and SCADA systems without which they can't run the boilers or big generators at all. A typical solution for that is a diesel generator in a trailer or shipping container; these are kept closed when not in use and being in steel boxes are safe from even a very strong EMP event.

If you look at what happened at Fukushima Daiichi, they got hit with a really extraordinary series of punches. Being nuclear and online at the time of the earthquake they needed a lot of power for cooling, much more than a conventional plant needs to cold start. They had both batteries (which held for 8 hours or so) and multiple generators, which were only taken out of the game by the tsunami contaminating their fuel storage tank. Portable generators couldn't be brought in quickly because of the general devastation. They were really quite well prepared and if just one thing that did go wrong hadn't they would be doing OK, as the sister plant at Daiini is.

Those plants also have a lot of expensive equipment whose sole purpose in life is to take them offline and isolate their expensive bits if something bad happens. Big power failures are usually caused bya cascade of safety systems failing out to protect the equipment. The bad news there is it takes patience and care to get everything reset. But the good news is that because most of the equipment will be protected, it can be.