northeast power outage

[Jack Berger]

Tom Marinis <tmarinis99 at yahoo.com> wrote:

> Beside, nothing more will happen today, since the NORTHEAST
> power outage occured around 2:00pm PST, 5:00pm EST.
>
> [ Probably a power generator being controlled by
>   POWER MANAGER, and that computer suffered a
>   MS windows BSOD fault                         ]

Well, could be, but...

Ted Kopel interviewed FORMER fed cyber security czar Richard Clark.
What a self serving piece of work this guy is, insinuating that this
is the work of terrorist hackers, since the electrical system was
designed to contain this type of outage to a small area. (Yeah under
the load conditions of 20-30 years ago!) Sensationalism at its best.

The truth is that everyone wants/loves/needs electricity, but no one
wants to pay for it in terms of building the necessary infrastructure
to support it (NIMBY). Large portions of the existing electrical grid
are operating at or near the operating limits and stability margins
they were designed for. The dynamics of the inter-connected power
grids is very complex. In some areas it doesn't take much to cause an
outage or disturbance, which depending on the magnitude, and where it
occurs, can cascade to neighboring locations. Most of the grid can
handle a voltage sag. The problem is when some segments of the grid
trip off-line they cause phase shifts on the system, which are harder
to deal with.

Maybe this is the wake up call that we need to upgrade the existing
system to (at least) current demand.

-jhb-