The Blackout of 2003 - Part One
September 2003
J.Peter Lynch- Featured Guest Writer http://www.renewableenergystocks.com
On August 14th 2003 50 million Americans were cast into the dark, as a result of the largest blackout in American history. What happened, why did it happen and what can be done short term and long term to help prevent more blackouts?
What Caused the Blackout?
As of this date no one knows for sure what initiated the sequence of events that cascaded into the blackout of 2003. Whatever single event or sequence of events that triggered the system failure it all comes down to:
A severely overloaded electrical grid that is being constantly asked to do things and handle loads that it was never designed for.
The grid was designed over 50 years ago to service a highly centralized, analog, pre-computer society and was never designed to handle the new demands of our increasingly decentralized, digital society.
An easy way to visualize the problem is to picture a large hub with 6 spokes coming out from the center. This is the current “centralized” power generation model, which supplies the majority of power to the industrialized world. The hub is a large power plant and the spokes are transmission lines carrying power from the plant. All of the spokes are running very close to full capacity and all of a sudden, one of the spokes has a technical problem. The system tries to immediately switch the electrical load to the other 5 spokes. However, since they are all running so close to full capacity they cannot handle the surge in power and the whole system goes down. Once the system is down, it can take hours or even days to gradually bring the system back to full operating status.
However, once it is back in operation, it is still running dangerously close to full capacity and the possibility of more blackouts remains possible. In fact, we are just as vulnerable now
as we were on June 14th to another technical accident, human error or worst, a terrorist attack.
Why did it Happen ?
The primary “technical” reason the blackout occurred was:
The Existing Imbalance between Generation Capacity and Transmission Capacity
The Energy Department has recently stated that electricity demand has increased 25% since 1990, while construction of transmission systems to distribute the power has declined 30%. As a result, we have larger and larger amounts of power trying to force itself down inadequate transmissions lines and sooner or later you are going to have a major problem.
In fact, we have had four major grid power failures in the last 10 years that have affected whole regions of the country with the loss of billions in revenues for the regional and nation economy. In addition there have been hundreds of “minor” power outages that may only effect a city or two and do not show up in the national press. All of these events, both large and small clearly point to the fact that we need to address this problem and we need to do it now.
How did this tremendous imbalance occur and why does it seem to be getting worst ?
The answer? The “usual” suspects:
1. Confusing and inconsistent federal government policy’s
2. Politics that are further complicated by different regions and authorities
inability or desire to effectively communicate with each other
3. Antiquated technology that is not capable of reacting at the necessary speed
to avoid a problem.
Deregulation
The “partial” deregulation of the utility industry created attractive incentives for companies to produce power and sell it in an actively traded power market. The utilities were forced by law to pay volatile wholesale prices and as the prices rose it gave incentive for power producers of all sizes to get in the market and produce and sell power.
However, utilities and investors were given little or no incentive to upgrade the grid itself. It only created uncertainty and investors will not invest in anything where there is uncertainty as to how they will recoup their investment. As a result of this, the investment in the grid decreased dramatically and companies cut back on maintenance and the implementation of newer technologies in order to improve profitability. In fact, other countries spent as much as ten times, in relative terms, as the U.S. to upgrade their grids as they’re respective generating capacity increased.
Politics
Five years ago a federal task force of experts warned the Department of Energy that the reliability of the electrical system was based upon a jumble of voluntary standards and that some form of mandatory rules had to be imposed on the electric industry. Standards for a more reliable system were not opposed by the industry and many of these needed regulations were included in an energy bill that came before Congress in 2001.
The bill never passed because of political disputes over matters like Alaskan wilderness drilling and efficiency standards for cars that were attached to the energy bill. Once again, politics caused delays resulting in the legislation getting stalled over totally unrelated subjects that someone had attached to the legislation in order to get “their” pet project through Congress.
In Part Two I will describe what I think must be done in the short term and in the long term to effectively resolve these problems.
1. New technologies that are currently available;
2. Common sense, appropriate government regulations that need to be legislated;
3. A new approach to energy generation and distribution that will better match today’s distributed, digital economy.
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