Chronology Current Month Current Thread Current Date
[Year List] [Month List (current year)] [Date Index] [Thread Index] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Date Prev] [Date Next]

Re: power-grid physics



Some detailed description about the actual event kickoff:

I have an Icelander drinking buddy who is a power transmission engineer currently working in Ontario, Canada. He sent me the following emails, with attached maps discussing the initial events and some of the politics. I extracted the maps.

An original unannotated Erie Loop Map is available at <http://www.enermap.com>. It looks like actual failure events started just off this loop in OH, then propogated around the W side of the loop, before expanding across the NE. The sizes of the plants look pretty telling, as do the comments of the engineers below.

The ioenergy / Electric Transmission Week folk at <http://www.ioenergy.com/> annotated a version of this map with early failure events and distributed it by email. I stowed a local copy of a PDF of their annotated map at
<http://physicsed.buffalostate.edu/PHYS-L/14Aug03Blackout/>. While the email implies the modified image can be redistributed I will remove it if requested by the copyright holders.

This would make a GREAT article for The Physics Teacher if someone can reduce it to 3500 words or so.

Dan M

Dan MacIsaac, Assistant Professor of Physics, SUNY-Buffalo State College
222SCIE BSC, 1300 Elmwood Ave , Buffalo NY 14222 USA 716-878-3802
<macisadl@buffalostate.edu> <http://PhysicsEd.BuffaloState.edu>

Dan,
 
I don't know of a website as such, but this might be of interest, both a map showing the sequence and a phone conference later this morning.
 
Regards
Haddi
 

-----Original Message-----
From: Godfrey, Myles
Sent: 19. ágúst 2003 14:51
To: Khan, Iftikhar; Rehman, Ata U.; Spaziani, John; Griesbach, Robert (Bob); Hjartarson, Thorhallur; Barrett, Bruce A. (in Castlegar); Reid, Neil
Cc: Haney, Janice
Subject: FW: Outage Sequence Map and Audio Conference on Blackout 2003

Hi Everyone:
 
Here's the best Sequence of Events info I've seen so far on the August 14 event.  I sat down with Ata for 30 minutes today, and near as we can tell, this incident developed from almost 60 minutes of progressive weakening of the transmission path feeding Detroit-Toledo-Cleveland from the Southeast (probably by a combination of operator interventions and overload protections); followed by a mini-meltdown at 15:10-15:11 that took out three transmission lines and a coal unit near Cleveland and a Perry nuke unit East of Cleveland; followed by one more transmission circuit at 15:15, and then the Fermi plant near Detroit at 15:17, then cascading line outages from 15:17 to 15:21.
 

[attached map stowed at <http://physicsed.buffalostate.edu/PHYS-L/14Aug03Blackout/> as sequenceofevents.pdf] all original artwork copyright of ENERmap Inc <http://www.enermap.com>.

Myles
 
 
Dear Electric Transmission Week Subscribers:
 
Here's an updated map of the outages as they occurred.  Please feel free to forward it to colleagues and customers.  All we ask is that proper attribution be given to Electric Transmission Week and ENERmap.  We are also conducting an audio conference this Thursday morning on the consequences of Blackout 2003.  Please see below for registration details.