Given the risk and inpact of a power grid failure, reguardless of the chance, what is wrong with the following plan? Reduce demand to a minimum. Shut down large manufacturing facilities (do we have any left?), unnecessary commercial lighting (empty parking lots, we should do this anyway), etc. Then, EVERYONE disconnect from the grid, island. Go through the rollover. Anyone in the dark has only themselves to blame, but will not be a problem to others. FEMA, Red Cross, NG, can concentrate on those areas while the problems are diagnosed. If the problem is in generation but not distribution, connect them to a neighboring producer who is up. Reconnect the grid. Too simple? Impractical? Is it a technical problem or a political one?

-- curtis schalek (cschalek@earthlink.net), September 06, 1999

Answers

What about power companies like Muni Light in Cleveland that use only wheeling power? They generate NO power. You island, you turn off a lot of municipal power "suppliers" who buy all of hteir power.

You also have a problem iin balancing the generation within one power company system if you simply disconnect at will.

Chuck

-- Chuck, a night driver (rienzoo@en.com), September 06, 1999.

Let us flush and I'll sign on.

-- Mara Wayne (MaraWayne@aol.com), September 06, 1999.

You gotta admit lessening power usage is a good idea. (They send "state workers" home in the summer to avoid brownouts here in NE)

-- mar (derigueur2@aol.com), September 06, 1999.

Absent thee from simplicity a while....

(Sorry, Will, couldn't resist.)

Simple solutions, alas, are not in the cards.

-- Tom Carey (tomcarey@mindspring.com), September 06, 1999.

Chuck: Include the non-producers within the "islands", or reconnect them immediately after rollover. (?)

-- curtis schalek (schale1@ibm.net), September 06, 1999.

Curtis,

How much research have you done regarding this proposal? For example, how many islands, and how many intercnnections, would your porposal entail? How much coordination is required when making/breaking each connection to prevent adverse side effects? With the current numbers of available trained personnel, how long would it take to do that much islanding and reconnecting? What other aspects should be checked out before anyone should regard this proposal as worth more than a moments consideration?

Jerry

-- Jerry B (skeptic76@erols.com), September 06, 1999.

Jerry: I seem to remember some power companies (Florida Power) threatening to go off the grid even though they would face fines. Better a planned and coordinated disconnect rather than an adhoc one. Is anyone in the power industry considering any of this? What are the risks of each senario? Thanks for your response.

-- curtis schalek (cschalek@earthlink.net), September 06, 1999.

If you island the grid the multitudes of coops in the country will go without power as they purchase power from the grid and have no generating stations of their own. If islanding happens, all you folks in the boonies WILL see power outages, without a doubt.

No, unfortunately, islanding is not a simple as it looks.

scratchin' an itch...

The Dog

-- Dog (Desert Dog@-sand.com), September 06, 1999.

Curtis,

It looks like the questions are adding up faster than the answers. This does not bode well for the proposal.

Jerry

-- Jerry B (skeptic76@erols.com), September 06, 1999.

Curtis, I do have some information on this which should be reliable since it came directly from a y2k manager at CP&L about 3 months ago. He said that the last thing they want is a very low load situation at rollover. If I understand his explanation, he said if they make electricity, it has to go somewhere, so they need to have enough demand that the power industry can have all of its "peaking" plants operating and therefore the grid will have maximum resiliency at rollover. If it's a real low load situation, then some plants will not be operating and that reserve capacity would be unavailable. The power companies want the demand at rollover to be not too heavy and not too light.

So turning your power off before rollover and then on soon after rollover might be the worst possible combination of activities. Check with your local power company.

-- Puddintame (achillesg@hotmail.com), September 06, 1999.

Puddintame - That is exactly the situation that has me expecting a very unstable grid on Monday, 1/3/00.

-- Brooks (brooksbie@hotmail.com), September 06, 1999.

The grid will pose a very special problem come midnite dec 31 1999, If they shut it down to prevent damage to the system due to expected loss of telecomunications for the scada they risk sending all nuke plants into hot standby, if they leave it on and hope that the remidation of the telecomunications, AGC,DCS,all embedded tripp and surge arrestors and Scada are all going to work together for the first time under the real world conditions and it doesnt it could take years to fix the damage, Substations and other components could fail and cause fires and hard core infrastructure damage. The engineers know how serious the risks are. This one is the President's call. Thats why the E.O.'s on critical infrastructure protection. If they choose wrong and seriously destroy the grid they will blame it on terrorism. I would not want to be in his shoes to have to make such a tough decision. Have lots of alternative lighting ready. Pray they get it right or close enough so that they can bring it completely back on line in a couple of months after the rollover.

-- y2k aware mike (y2k aware mike @ conservation . com), September 07, 1999.

Y2K Aware Mike.

Are you saying here that you believe the grid will go down for 2 months? If so, on what do you base such an opinion? Have you some special inside information?

btw, I'm not discounting such a possibility. I think it is feasible the grid could go down for a much longer period, but I'm not sure of the possibility, however marginal it may or may not be. I'd just like to hear you develop that aspect further.

-- R.C. (racambab@mailcity.com), September 07, 1999.

Umm. Don't you realise that it IS a holiday when this event happens, it IS midnight, and it IS winter (in the upper hemisphere). Winter demands are a lot less than summer when can only be done by electricity. Their are other forms of generating heat, such as natural gas-which uses electricity to run-but not as the source of that heat. This issue is discussled int this thread

-- Cherri (sams@brigadoon.com), September 07, 1999.

Curtis,

The problem is it doesnt work that way. Most things will be shut down anyway because of it being a three day weekend of because of Y2K concerns. However if the load get too light than you have to be careful that you dont have too much generation. Its kind of like a car. They get their best mileage when in when operating in an optimum condition. If you drive around at 10 miles per hour or 100 miles per hour you dont get very good performance. What Puddintame wrote is correct.

Also islanding is very tricky. Again you have to balance load to generation. Its not something that is done voluntarily but only as a last resort.

Mar, the reason that they send people home is because they are having problems generating enough power for the load in the summer. In most places in North America the winter loads are a lot less than the summer loads.

All of the islanding is planned but only under dire circumstances. It isnt something that just happens but rather something that is triggered by other things happening.

Im not too sure what y2k aware mike is saying. Utilities wont shut down due to telecommunications loss of SCADA. It really doesnt work that way. AGS DCS, embedded systems, SCADA and surge arrestors are all working together every day under real world conditions anyway. Thats why you have electricity now. Surge arrestors are just big blocks of zinc oxide anyway. No chips in them. No chips in most things by the way.

-- The Engineer (The Engineer@tech.com), September 07, 1999.

Tom -

Cheeky devil - paraphrasing the melancholy Dane...

Hamlet, Act V, scene ii:

(Hamlet is dying and Horatio wants to drink from the poisoned cup and follow him in death)

...O God, Horatio, what a wounded name,

Things standing thus unknown, shall I leave behind me!

If thou didst ever hold me in thy heart,

Absent thee from felicity a while,

And in this harsh world draw thy breath in pain

To tell my story...

Let us fervently hope that we do not have occasion soon to echo Hamlet's final words: ...the rest is silence.

Hamlet: the ultimate Doomer. 8-}]

-- Mac (sneak@lurk.hid), September 07, 1999.