On Friday, August 15, 2003, at 08:55 AM, lauf-s wrote:
On the local news (here in Philadelphia) last night, it was reported
from the (I don't know the official name) Power Interconnect at Valley
Forge, that yesterday, at 4:11 PM it was immediately noticed that a
huge amount of power was being drawn from within the larger network
towards the blackout area(s). The controllers at Valley Forge realized
what was going on, and thus quickly 'disconnected' their facility from
the area of the overall network that was then in the process of
blacking out. If this 'disconnect' had not happened, the Philadelphia
region would have also blacked out.
From this report, I'm assuming the 'disconnect' was done 'manually'
rather than via automation, ie, via some software programmed to
prevent 'cascading'.
there's a similar story running in the local paper here, that XCEL
energy, the regional energy firm (after consolidating several
other companies, like North States Power (NSP) here) had a
similar 'blip' in their monitoring and knew something big had
happened (in the 'rockies' system, it might have been called),
though this grid is one of the four separate ones, whereas
parts of Pennsylvania (northern, northeastern?) were without
power i read, due to this event. another aspect being that the
commentary has been that 'this should not have happened',
given the givens- it should have been contained in a much
smaller area, instead of the cascading effects. this may or
may not be an indication of the software not working to stop
this automated circumvention of any preventative measures.
if indeed switches were thrown by hand to stop the cascade,
it may be because the communications may not work in such
situations of massive power failures: and this should be non-
politically defined as a 'massive power failure' as it is, exactly
this. the GOP energy plan is already being touted as a solution
but those 7-9 nuclear plants now offline in 4 states are the GOP
Energy Plan that came out of the still top-secret Energy Task
Force meetings chaired by VP Cheney (and Kenneth Lay,
which no one is reporting the California Energy Crisis as the
last major power outages, it was not 1997, it was 2000-2001.)
The infrastructure needs to be upgraded, but not with the same
systems now failing, which is the proposal. it needs to be re-
configured, diversified, and secured from this type of failure.
Using nuclear power and more long-distance national grids
for deregulation will only further this cascading effect or the
potential for hackers to take down more of the grid, if, when,
should it happen, and it will happen someday, seems likely.
But who is to know when the US President "believes" that
"he is certain" this is not a terror attack. How the hell does
he know this, with certainty, when no one else does. Only
an 'act of God' would legitimize Bush's statements on this,
and sure enough that is what the likely cause will be, it was
all inevitable, when it was all preventable, with innovative
planning, strategic design, and public goals for the grid.
This is going to force the Energy Task Force records to be
opened, to change the energy planning in the .US, which
is about what it will take to make it a prime issue that it
never was, all through the election, post election, in Iraq,
in the courts, now in the dark. We need new energy policies
that are public policies. And need real answers, not beliefs
of a politicized class seeking to exploit this for their own ends.
We need a public awareness of what has just now happened.
brian thomas carroll: research-design-development
architecture, education, electromagnetism
http://www.electronetwork.org/bc/
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