I was ready to blame the Canadians, but oops...
 

I guess I have to blame those people in Ohio instead!! Thanks Ohio for sweating my balls off, dumping most of my refrigerator contents and a hellish of a long night!

Not too "Glad."

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Ohio Line Failure Likely Caused Blackout

August 17, 2003 12:04 AM EDT


WASHINGTON - A failure to contain problems with three transmission lines in northern Ohio just south of Cleveland was the likely trigger of the nation's biggest power blackout, a leading investigator said Saturday.

Alarm systems that might have alerted engineers to the failed lines were broken, according to FirstEnergy Corp., the Akron, Ohio-based utility that officials said owned at least two of the three lines.

It was not immediately clear whether that impeded efforts to isolate the local line disruptions, some of which occurred an hour before power system shutdowns cascaded Thursday from Michigan to New York City and into Canada.

"We are fairly certain at this time that the disturbance started in Ohio," Michehl Gent, head of the North American Electric Reliability Council, said in a statement. "We are now trying to determine why the situation was not brought under control after three transmission lines went out of service."

Gent said the transmission system was designed to isolate such problems and suggested that human error might have been involved in not containing the situation.

"The system has been designed and rules have been created to prevent this escalation and cascading. It should have stopped," Gent said in a telephone conference call.

FirstEnergy, which officials said owns four of the first five lines that failed, said a system that is supposed to flash a red warning on computer monitors at the company's control center was not operational when the lines began failing Thursday afternoon.

FirstEnergy was aware the alarm system was broken, said company spokesman Ralph DiNicola. A functioning backup alarm at the Midwest Independent System Operator, a nonprofit power pool that oversees the region's electrical grid, was in place, DiNicola said.

At the Midwest ISO, spokeswoman Mary Lynn Webster said she did not know when workers noticed the FirstEnergy lines were disabled and what, if anything, they did about it.

Webster said the pool copes with "thousands of alarms every minute," and that the failed lines weren't in areas most prone to problems.

A failure in the monitoring system could be devastating because it prevents operators from isolating failures before they spread, said Thomas Stuart, a professor of electrical engineering at the University of Toledo.

Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham, co-chair of a U.S.-Canadian task force that will look into the cause of the blackout, said the group is putting together investigative teams that will include experts from the government's research laboratories as well as private resources. In addition to determining the cause, the task force will recommend actions to prevent a repeat.

The task force hopes to complete an initial report within a month, the Canadian co-chairman said Saturday. "We want to move as quickly as possible," said Canada's Natural Resources Minister Herb Dhaliwal, a former an electric company official.

Dhaliwal spoke Friday with Abraham and planned to meet him Wednesday in Detroit to talk about the panel's work.

Gent did not identify specifically the three power line failures that became the focus of the NERC investigation. But other council officials said they were among five reported transmission failures in the Cleveland area leading up to the blackout peak Thursday afternoon.

According to NERC, the first report came in at 3:06 p.m. EDT Thursday and involved a 345-volt line that had "tripped" - or gone offline. That was followed by reports on other lines failing at 3:32 p.m., 3:41 p.m., 3:46 p.m. and 4:06 p.m.

Two minutes later, according to the NERC summary, "power swings (were) noted in Canada and the U.S." and three minutes after that power disruptions hit across eight states.

The transmission system in northern Ohio is operated by FirstEnergy.

Among the things yet to be determined is the relationship between lines tripping in Ohio and the unusual power swings that were observed in lines leaving Michigan and going into Canada and then back again, according to investigators.

There are more than 10,000 pages of data, including automatically generated logs on power flows over transmission lines, that need to be closely examined, said Gent.

Complicating the matter, he said, is that at the time of the power breakdown "events were coming in so fast and furious that (some reports) ... weren't even being logged in a timely way."

Nonetheless, Gent said he is convinced that no data was lost and whatever was not recorded will be recovered.

"We will get to the bottom of this," he said.

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Contributing to this story were AP writers Andrew Welsh-Huggins in Columbus, Ohio, Ryan Lenz in Indianapolis and Jim Krane in New York.

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Sure, blame Ohio. You'll be sorry after we burn Pennsylvania to the ground and you can't find any Amish to buy super fly pumpking pies from!

(That's right, damnit. I said "pumpking")

Oh, bring it on Ohio. PA has had it's eye on you for years. Bring your cow tipping ass across the border and we'll see who gets burninated.

i'm glad that this is settled after the blame game.

....hehe....he said pumpking.....

The only thing that will be "certain" is that the power companies will ask every state involved in the blackout for permission to raise rates.

I'm just glad it didn't end up being Western NY, as they had said it was at one point!

Come on you didn't really expect the power companies to use their profits to upgrade the system did you ? Mind you I think it is going to be quite funny watching everyone sue each other. The lawyers must be rubbing their hands in glee over this.

I was without power for only 13 hours. Enough to be inconvenient, but not destructive.

When it was first speculated that Canada may have been the source, my only reaction was, "Shit, this is big."

And when the PM of Canada immediately responded with, "No way, eh. It was a lightning strike at Niagara Falls, NY, eh,"
I was a little suspect. I thought, "How can anyone already know where this started if none of these people currently has power?"

But later on the radio, was a report from Niagara saying (warning: paraphrase ahead) ,
"Lightning, my ass. It was a clear blue sky today. And, oh by the way, <b>we</b> still have power."
That's when I started singing the South Park song, "Blame Canada!"

Of course, it doesn't matter where the problem originated.
The fact is the entire power grid is antiquated and we are going to experience this again, probably soon.

What really sucks is that the news reports regarding this "Blackout of '03" have spelled out, to the letter, a new blueprint for terrorists.

Isn't it nice to be shown how connected we all are?

For those looking to retaliate, remember that's Northern Ohio... not Cowlumbus.

Thanks for listening.

its pretty sad. the power is out for millions of people, and all they do is start blaming eachother instead of FIXING TEH FUCKING PROBLEM!!! FISTFUCK!!!!!!

you think fistfucking will fix the problem?

*lubes up arms* all right, if you insist...

:lol: That shit made me laugh my ass off.

I didn't lose power. It stayed about 20 miles north of me. I stayed nice and cool. :p

I didn't enjoy walking down nearly 40 stories' worth of stairs when the power went out.

Nor did I enjoy taking nearly 2 hours to drive 10 miles.

As a lawyer, my hands were fists. No glee involved.:mad:

Ohio did it on purpose, just to let everyone know how much we own you all. *evil laughter ensues*

Apparently the cause was a tree that fell on a power line and exploded. Still, they say that the systems that should have kicked in to prevent further loss, did not.

So yea, it looks like we Yanks are at fault. Whoopsie! :D

Well thank christ for that.

We Canadians are starting to feel like the americans are blaming us for everything from 911 (WTF??) to cold winters, to SARS, to Mad Cows.

One previous poster hit the nail right on the head, stop pointing fingers and fix the fucking problem.

The solution is very simple.

Build more power generation plants.

The problem is that that takes shit loads of money and no one wants to belly up for that one. I read not too long ago that Ontario at one time had its own plans to build a mega hydro facility at James Bay like Quebec did only it got sqashed in the environmental assessment phase and some IDIOT decided to build nukes. Well now the nukes are shut down half the time and falling apart and we still get most of our power from conventional sources like Niagara Falls.

It was interesting to note that Hydro Quebec had NO PROBLEM coping. They have tons of capacity. Why?? Cause they are smart and built a huge installation with future growth in mind.

It's time ontario hydro woke up and started thinking James Bay. We could generate enough clean hydro power there to feed half of north America.

Of course, you would have to flood a million acres. Details details.

I hear ya. I was waiting for the shit to hit the fan... but then again the fan's were not working :P

I'm so happy the city I live in (Medicine Hat) has it's own power. Its all ours... no-one else gets it. Well we are the Gas City :D

Please don't burn Pennsylvania! The smoke would gag here in NYC!! Not that there won't be much loss!

Glad

when i saw this on tv i thought it was something else, in like the mid 70's i guess, there was a big blackout in the northeast. i thought they had fixed it by now.

Ohio's retaliation of having horrible vehicle care, and laws, losing the browns, and getting thier tallest roller coaster shutdown for a lil while..

I see how it is....

My power was out until the wee hours of Saturday AM. I had a heavily stocked fridge and freezer that is a total loss. The trash man doesn't visit until Thursday. I have to boil my water until Wednesday- at the earliest. My store lost two days worth of revenues. And First Energy KNEW THAT THE FUCKING ALARM SYSTEM WAS BROKEN!!!!!!

"GRUMPY" IS AN UNDERSTATEMENT!!! I want Ralph DiNicola's ass impaled on a flaming hot poker. Where does he get off passing the buck to Midwest ISO? First Energy should foot the entire bill for cleaning this mess up--- including some compensation for the personal losses incurred by business and private consumers alike. And they should be compelled to do it without raising a single rate.
I estimate my personal loss at @ $1500.00, separate from what DTE is going to sock me for in rate increases. The parts stores are short @ $30,000.00 in sales for the blackout period.
First Energy is clearly negligent. Can you say "Class Action"?

Of course it wasn't the Canadians.
Sheesh!

The question is, would Ohio be fined for smoking Pennsylvania upwind of NYC?

Well, now everyone has had a good explanation of what I do for a living. Taking care of part of the transmission system. I am so glad I was in Oklahoma when this happened.

And yes, of course they will raise your rates. It was somehow all the customers fault, it always is. You will all pay for being bad!

Bad users, bad!


Canadians have electricity? Who knew?

Why do we need to blame anyone?? This is just plain stupid. Why can't they just say, "Apparently there was a failure that wasn't caught. It started in Ohio." And then just simply nuke Ohio. Most of the industry that was there has been moved overseas anyway. Besides Kentucky has been looking for beachfront property on the Great Lakes for a long time.

We had faith that it was you guys all along

being in the southern part of ohio, i got to stay nice and cool :D

though, my extended family lives in NYC so that kinda sucked :\

Who the hell cares who caused it? Just fix the fucking problem, PROPERLY this time. I have read estimates where fixing the part of the grid affected by the blackout would cost about $50 million. Split that among the 50 million people affected.

Here's my $1.00, now go fix it.

As for me, yes it was a bloody inconvenience, but it wasn't the end of the world and I got to know the neighbours.

Yes. Fix the grid. Make more power... and while we are all at it let's look at reducing the amount of fricken power we all use...

Ontarians are the largest suckers of power per capita in the world. The rest of the blackout area isn't far behind.

It wouldn't take much to reduce (as we can all see by the amount of power reduced by most people trying to avoid continued rolling blackouts).

I heard it was going to be 60billion to 100 billion to fix the antiquated system. Guess who winds up paying it? We do of course!


Glad

hey.. lets not burn down pennsylvania just yet.... after all its definetly not OUR fault...

watch it ohio.

growing up in michigan, there was a grass roots movement in favor of digging ohio up to we could be an island!

They say that Nova Scotia (Canada) 's power grid isolated itself from the Niagra Power Grid in under a millisecond. My lights didn't even flicker!

:D

From Gregg Easterbrook's column on ESPN Page 2:

-Mikey

You should meet my freaking neighbours....

They never shut off their air conditioning in the summer. All three houses on either side of me. The worst one is my adjacent neighbour. They have a house with windows that don't open for the most part. The house is old (bloor west area) but the owners refuse to buy new windows "cause in 6 years we are retiring up north"

So meanwhile, they have this window AC unit between the houses that they never shut off. It can be 20 degrees outside and they are still running it. Because it's between the houses, it's like it's operating in an ampitheatre or something.

My other 2 neighbours both have central air.

It's a cool summers evening and they BOTH have their air conditioning running. WTF?

It drives me fucking crazy. A nice summer's night and all you can hear is their air conditioners whirring away non stop.

They should just ban AC with a $1,000.00 fine if you get caught using it unless there is someone over 75 in the place.

And who uses that power? We Do, so why shouldnt WE pay for it?

Power isnt free you know....

People need get over the fact that your gonna have to have power lines and plants closer to your home if you want any sufficient power supply.

Mm.. Point. However, a law was recently passed in Ontario that would let the hydro company add a line item to the bill for debt recovery. It's a piddly little amount, like $5.00 a month. They worked up a big debt due to, for the most part, poor money management, not due to improvements in equipment or service. Yet, the public has to pay to make them profitable again.

Yes, I realise that most companies would just jack up the price and hide it in there, but fuck, just once I would like to see a company take responsibility for their own fuckups.