You believe every word of the Mayak interview about "it can't happen here," right?????
I do not mean only to sound snide; in fact, probably I should go find some cites, but ....
There are some general questions at the bottom.
In a message dated 8/16/2003 4:08:07 PM GMT Daylight Time, itschris13 at hotmail.com writes:
> Subj: Re: [lbo-talk] Re:lbo-talk] Power blackout in US
> Date: 8/16/2003 4:08:07 PM GMT Daylight Time
> From: <A HREF="mailto:itschris13 at hotmail.com">itschris13 at hotmail.com</A>
> Reply-to: <A HREF="mailto:lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org">lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org</A>
> To: <A HREF="mailto:lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org">lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org</A>
> Sent from the Internet
>
> BBC Monitoring
> Russian top energy officials comment on vulnerabilities of US power system
> Source: Radio Mayak, Moscow, in Russian 1400 gmt 15 Aug 03
>
> The power blackouts in the USA are indicative of fundamental systemic
> technological problems, according to the head of the Unified Energy Systems
> of Russia, Anatoliy Chubays. Similar blackouts could not happen in Russia
> thanks to the centralized control system managed by controllers, according
> to Georgiy Kutovoy, the head of the Federal Energy Commission. Kutovoy
> added that the Russian approach of cutting off consumers early makes it
> possible to localize accidents.
Oh! Is that what regular local power interruptions are for?
The following is an excerpt from a report
>
> by Russian Mayak radio on 15 August. Subheadings have been inserted
> editorially:
>
> [Presenter] This is not the first large failure of power systems in
> America. Altogether, there have been 17 of them. However, the head of the
> Unified Energy Systems of Russia, Anatoliy Chubays, said that nothing of
> the kind - either in respect of the scale or the duration of the blackout -
> has taken place in the history of the world energy industry. Within
> seconds, over 60,000 MW of power supply failed. This is the same as one
> third of Russia being left without electricity.
>
> Fundamental systemic problems
>
> [Chubays] This does not have precedents as far as the duration is
> concerned. The inter-system accidents which took place here, both in Soviet
> times and later in Russia, were normally to do with losing power if not for
> minutes then for an hour or an hour and half. Practically never longer.
>
Practically never longer? How do you count those regular interruptions?
[Passage omitted]
>
>
> The fact that this was not the first accident, but the third of the large
> ones, whereas in addition to the large ones there has been a string of
> smaller accidents, signifies for me, no doubt, that there are fundamental
> systemic technological problems in the way the power industry as a whole is
> set up in this region. [Passage omitted]
>
> [Presenter] Under orders from Chubays, an analytical group was set up today
> at the Unified Energy Systems of Russia, which should study the
> circumstances of, and the reasons for, the accident in America. According
> to Chubays, the conclusions of the group should prevent similar
> technological disasters in Russia. By the way, Chubays thinks that in our
> country these are less likely thanks to a more reliable system of
> anti-accident protection.
>
> Impossible in Russia
>
> A similar view is also held by Georgiy Kutovoy, the head of the Federal
> Energy Commission. He thinks that power accidents similar to the one that
> took place in America are simply impossible in Russia.
>
> [Kutovoy] I think such an accident is ruled out in principle in our
> situation. Judging by the information we have - although it is
> contradictory in respect of the causes of the accident - of course, we
> cannot have such accidents.
Way to go. Saying it cannot happen before the cause has been clearly identified in the west.
The reason for this is that we have a
>
> centralized control system managed by controllers in a single unified
> system from the Far East to Kaliningrad. Whatever accident happens, it
> should be localized near its source. For this, a very complicated system of
> anti-accident control has been built.
>
> In America, there was a cascade of failures of automatic systems which led
> to such results. Thus, it follows that American designers and engineers
> responsible for the system did not provide for such accidents.
>
> If one looked at the scenario of, say, lightening damaging a large
> sub-station on the Niagara cascade of hydro-electric power station, failure
> or fire at this sub-station could affect automatic systems on all power
> transmission lines, say, going to America. If I am not mistaken, there are
> five such lines. This is, indeed, quite a serious difficulty for the
> receiving system, which all of a sudden has to deal with such deficit. In
> order to cope with such deficit, one has to mobilize one's own capacity. It
> appears that they did not have enough of it. But they do not have a system
> for cutting off consumers in such cases, whereas we do. For them, cutting
> off consumers is a whole story with serious consequences.
>
> Cutting off consumers in time is to save them
>
> Here [in Russia], the system is viewed as a technical one where the
> development of an accident is treated as an emergency, and to cut off a
> consumer means to save him, rather than the other way round. Keeping a
> consumer connected to the system during any accidents means that his future
> situation can be exacerbated. This is because the supplies of power that
> did not cope will be switched off and the accident continues to spread.
>
> Our approach is to mobilize all our capacity, first of all, and then, if
> this is not sufficient, to deal with the system of consumers [i.e. start
> cutting them off].
>
> In the American systems, the cutting off of consumers is the worst crime.
> Any power cut brings about claims for compensation and the like. Therefore,
> in the USA, the likelihood of such accidents, of course, is great.
>
Huh? Am I the only one who does not see how the last part of this paragraph follows from the beginning?
Does anyone have comparator data from around the world? I think in good swatches of the world 7X24 electrical power is NOT the norm. I am curious how regular supply interruptions correlate with level of investment in transmission capacity, regulatory environment, digital vs mainly manual monitoring and switching.
This NY blackout happened really fast implying that all the switching involved was automated. So in one view, manual switching is better for giving people time to stop large scale event cascades. But what in this case would be the load management programming's equivalent of Wall St's "circuit breakers" (I know, BAD confusing choice of terms in this situation.), the automated measures that halt trading temporarily in the event of sudden large changes in for stock prices or indices?
I understand the point about low investment in transmission capacity in the US, and I know nearly nothing meaningful about the management of large power grids. The Mayak interview says nothing really about technology or investment mix in Russia, but is it possible as the Mayak interview implies, that less might be more as far as containability of problems. It is not obvious to me that either rabid deregulation or more regulation would get to functional scenarios in that case.
DoreneC
DoreneC -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <../attachments/20030817/27977458/attachment.htm>