Cause of Electrical Outage a Mystery

Medicine, Science & Technology Forum

The largest power blackout in American history prompted new calls Friday for overhauling the nation's electricity system. Investigators said the power disruptions likely began in the Midwest but they have yet to pinpoint the cause.

Investigators said they are focusing on a massive electrical grid that encircles Lake Erie, moving power from New York to the Detroit area, into Canada and back to New York state. There had been problems with the transmission loop in the past, officials said.

The head of the North American Reliability Council, who earlier said northern Ohio may have been the flashpoint, later backed way from reaching any conclusion "until we're absolutely certain."

"We had some indication that the first transmission lines that were tripped were in the Midwest. .. We're not certain that is where it started," said Michehl Gent, president of NERC, an industry sponsored group that tracks power grids to assure their reliability.

At a news conference, Gent provided a picture of the enormity of the blackout that began Thursday at 4:11 p.m. and raced from New England to Michigan and southeastern Canada.

He said more than 100 power plants - including 22 nuclear reactors in the United States and Canada - were shut down, and the blackout affected 50 million people over a 9,300-square-mile area from New England to Michigan.

He said a preliminary determination of the cause of the cascading power disruption, which raced through the system in less than 10 seconds, may not be available until next week and more detailed investigations could last months.

"We never anticipated we would have a cascading outage" like this, said Gent, adding that he was "personally embarrassed" because his organization is supposed "to see that this doesn't happen."

Source: AP

I imagine he'd be "personally embarrassed" seeing that a good chunk of the nation lost power and its ALL HIS FAULT.

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My father in law works on high power systems and understands them well, he once told me about how the nature of "power" changes shape once you start building grids and it takes on a behavior of its own with fluctuations, and undulating behavioral patterns that come and go - it wouldn't surprise me one bit if it ends up being one, small component that blew on just the wrong circuit, on just the wrong grid, in just the wrong place at just the wrong time to cause a cascading chain reaction in a structured system that requires the other members to all be operational. I honestly wonder if our engineers are even capable of fully comprehending all the behavioral patterns of such massive power systems and explaining exactly what has happened here.

Probably not... I don't think anyone will ever really know for 100% exactly what happened. And even if they do, we will likely never hear about it...

You're right about that Mike....

If they are to release to the public what caused the blackout... well, we might as well just pass out instruction booklets to future terrorists and tell them what they can do to cause mass chaos and havoc.

It won't become something that we truly know the why's and what's about!!!!

On the news tonight, they said that the power outage was caused by a tree on the powerlines in Ohio. If that is all it took to put us into darkness for almost 2 days, then god help us.