Power grid

[oldman]

So this is how it starts? Lose the power grid.

Wow, happened in 2003 in the US and now to a greater extent in India.

[UncleJak]

This has always been my favorite version of the end...

[Guest robin.kempton]

Don't know if its the solar storms (the sun is having its fit still, and should continue through about December) that are causing the power grid outages. Or if its states not able to pay their bills when they have to borrow energy from the neighbor. I'm sure the extended hot season isn't helping it either. But in a lot of movies....this is how it all starts...somewhere there is a fridge with a virus stored in it that loses power, then all hell breaks loose.

[RobertNashville]

Any massive disruption or the power grid by any cause (natural, man made, overtaxing, etc.) is my biggest nightmare...modern society depends more and more on electricity every day for almost every function that makes live necessary and concurrently we are less and less protected from any sort of EMP attack (solar storms or man-made) and we keep falling further and further behind in building infrastructure to meet demand.

I spent quite a while in Beirut (Lebanon) a few years ago and had to experience several hours daily of no power - you just had to plan to do almost nothing during those times; it was no fun even though we knew (or at least expected) the power to come back on. I don't even like thinking about a complete loss of power for an extended period of time.

[dethspec]

Power grid is the thing most people take for granted. What would really be a bummer is an EMP attack or an event like the Carrington Event (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_storm_of_1859) Something like that would knock out communications and power for weeks to months.

[RichardR]

I don't always plug into the power grid, but when I do I prefer 110v AC.

No but seriously it would be disasterous if we had a wide spread grid failure, not only would there be rioting and looting everywhere, but all of the icecream in my freezer would melt!

[Caster]

We can survive the riots and looting. The murder and mayhem. But tell me how, how, how!!!!! Are we to deal with warm beer!?!?!?

[Guest HvyMtl]

Um. From what I recall, the solar flare creates a static electric burst of energy when it hits the atmosphere. The last major, extreme one, there was no grid. Only powered item was the Morse Telegraph. And that system was taken down. Burned the wires, supposedly electrocuted (burns not death) telegraph operators. If that happens now, well, the whole grid, world wide, may go.

Look how long it takes to set up and replace after a major storm. Guestimate how long it would take to redo the whole system.

And what would occur with vehicles, generators, batteries, etc.?

[Guest Lester Weevils]

Long ago was reading about one of the first "legendary" outages in the northeast corridor. 1960's as I recall. That one was supposedly a domino effect where one small section of the grid went down, which caused protection circuits of its neighbors to trip out, which caused protection circuits of the neighbors neighbors to trip out, and several states went dark lickity-split. Dunno if it was related to a solar storm at all, just a technical snafu.

Anyway, nine month after the northeast corridor blackout, the northeast corridor experienced a noticeable baby boom. Turn out the lights in new york, and they don't have TV, Radio, or anything else to do... So, hey baby!

[runco]

Long ago was reading about one of the first "legendary" outages in the northeast corridor. 1960's as I recall. That one was supposedly a domino effect where one small section of the grid went down, which caused protection circuits of its neighbors to trip out, which caused protection circuits of the neighbors neighbors to trip out, and several states went dark lickity-split. Dunno if it was related to a solar storm at all, just a technical snafu.

Anyway, nine month after the northeast corridor blackout, the northeast corridor experienced a noticeable baby boom. Turn out the lights in new york, and they don't have TV, Radio, or anything else to do... So, hey baby!

Blizard of 93 in Knoxville had the same effect. Channel 10 ran a story on the number of December births of 1993, and what a significant increase there was. No electric power = Love

[Dirtshooter]

When Katrina hit here we lost power for 12 days, and it was HOT!!, you can't imagine how many times I hit the light switch, yes the one with no power. Talk about a habit, we just naturally expect it to work. Main thing we learned was be prepared which we were, our neighbors ran out of everything, matches, water, had no propane stove to make coffee. You need some sort of generator, but you need fuel. A southern engineered 12 volt fan from a late model car and a trolling motor battery saved us at night, these newer style homes even with all window up don't circulate air like the older homes with 12-14 foot ceilings. The cold showers took the most to get used to, but we really got used to our extended camping trip. Layed in the shade during the day, kinda like a Democrat does while I work everyday! No offense to the working Dem's. but if the shoe fits!

[Guest robin.kempton]

We can survive the riots and looting. The murder and mayhem. But tell me how, how, how!!!!! Are we to deal with warm beer!?!?!?

That is where I draw the line......warm beer....unacceptable. We will have no such talk like that here. But it is a good point Sir...something to think about. Time to consider buying that power generator I've been putting off lately now that you bring that up.

Edited September 11, 2012 by robin.kempton

[Guest 6.8 AR]

We've been getting hints about the power grid for years. I think it will eventually just be turned off, due to excessive costs

in a lot of areas gradually until it squeezes the life out of us. Those who can't survive without it will die off. That's part of

what I think Mac's big squeeze is.

I doubt a "natural" disaster will have much of anything to do with it.

[mikegideon]

Long ago was reading about one of the first "legendary" outages in the northeast corridor. 1960's as I recall. That one was supposedly a domino effect where one small section of the grid went down, which caused protection circuits of its neighbors to trip out, which caused protection circuits of the neighbors neighbors to trip out, and several states went dark lickity-split. Dunno if it was related to a solar storm at all, just a technical snafu.

Anyway, nine month after the northeast corridor blackout, the northeast corridor experienced a noticeable baby boom. Turn out the lights in new york, and they don't have TV, Radio, or anything else to do... So, hey baby!

Most power outages are tripped protection. Resetting the protection is always complicated by "cold start" currents. Almost everything draws more current when you first turn it on, especially motors and light bulbs. Long term outages normally come from things like hurricanes and tornadoes, Stuff that requires construction work to restore the actual wiring.

One of these days, a thread like this will inspire me to see if anybody has actually modeled widespread failure of oil filled transformers on the grid with one of these scenarios. Transformers are tough, especially since they're all fused. Resetting a large portion of the grid is time consuming, because you just can't throw the coal to it. Still, it's a real different deal than widespread component failure.

[Guest HvyMtl]

but all of the icecream in my freezer would melt!

I feel your pain. (To use a former President's quote.)

Considering the power grid could be protected from this, supposedly, through proper grounding, which has not occurred due to "costs," I think they will make the CEO / boards of the power companies scape goats for the crash.

It has occurred once. In the 1800's. Can it occur again? Yes. Predictable? No. Frequent to occur? No. So, they do not protect against it.

Add to the fact the grid is mostly antiquated, and yes, you can have failures without the Sun's participation. So. Prepare for loss of power for short time intervals (less than a week?) in severe hot or severe cold. A viable short term issue. And a possible End of the world, as we know it, senario. . .

Edited September 11, 2012 by HvyMtl

[JKGlock17]

[Guest Lester Weevils]

Most power outages are tripped protection. Resetting the protection is always complicated by "cold start" currents. Almost everything draws more current when you first turn it on, especially motors and light bulbs. Long term outages normally come from things like hurricanes and tornadoes, Stuff that requires construction work to restore the actual wiring.

One of these days, a thread like this will inspire me to see if anybody has actually modeled widespread failure of oil filled transformers on the grid with one of these scenarios. Transformers are tough, especially since they're all fused. Resetting a large portion of the grid is time consuming, because you just can't throw the coal to it. Still, it's a real different deal than widespread component failure.

Thanks, Mike. Interesting stuff of which dunno nothing about. Can't recall if that first big northeast corridor blackout was 1960's or 1970's. The article I read long ago had lots of interesting trivia. One thing, it described when the power went out, everything went dark, and then it "came back" for about a second afterwards. Said that the "afterglow" surge was all the connected devices on the system winding down and dumping their power back into the lines. Everything from big motors turning into generators, down to little motors in clock radios and such. I suppose transformers in residential appliances, TV's and radios and such, would run down and dump their power in just a couple of cycles, rather than tens of cycles?

Me not being an EE, another interesting feature about "cold restart" in addition to initial power draw-- It said that interconnected generating systems have to be very precisely on-frequency and in-phase before they can put the plant on-line without tearing everything up. Which makes perfect sense, but sounds like something that would take awhile to bring up if several states worth of stations got tripped off-line. Makes one wonder how they managed to keep big systems of generators synced decades ago. Even in the 1960's. To say nothing of the early Tesla days, when even vacuum tubes hadn't even been developed. When did they start heavy-networking widely distributed power stations? As early as the beginning of the 20th century, or substantially later?

When the storms knocked out Chatt last year a tree took out a pole across the street, and the repair crews were earning their keep in the entire area. When they got to replacing our pole they had to disconnect in three directions, then remove/replace the pole and hook everything back up. Maybe 8 hours, with part of the job occupying three bucket truck crews, and all the job occupying two bucket crews. And they weren't goofing off. Was fun to watch. I love work, can watch it for hours.

If something took out a bunch of substations and pole pigs, over a huge area, it would take a long time to recover. When I was a kid we were in Atlanta when there was a big ice storm. Dad hadn't got his engineer license and was climbing poles for the railroad. At that time I got the impression anybody that could climb a pole got put to work. He was gone "at work" several days, and I think they had him working on power lines as well as railroad communication lines.

In a big national outage, maybe the same thing nowadays. Anybody who knows how to climb a pole would get "drafted" for the duration?