With all the analysis of the huge power failure on 8/14/2003 I have not heard even one reference in the news about a very similar failure in November, 1965 which “blacked out” a similar portion of the US and Canada.
I also thought the power companies took provisions way back then, so that this type of massive blackout could never happen again.
There wasn’t one, until now.
There was a large story on NPR Morning Edition this morning all about what happened in 1965.
The power companies have never taken adequate provisions to prevent such an occurrence, an update of the power grid has been chronically underfunded. Sounds to me like “tragedy of the commons” where individual power companies are optimizing themselves but will not kick in resources needed to optimize the system as a whole.
Also, you must be getting all your news from TV. What’s your local paper? Good front-page story on that in this morning’s Washington Post. In fact the whole front page is full of stories on the outage and analysis of it, complete with references to the 1965 outage, plus the 1977 outage.
Just woke up a little while ago and I was getting the “news” from the “hard-hitting investigative journalists” at ‘Good Morning America’.
          :smack:
Geez, can’t believe I took that show as a bastion of journalistic integrtity. (Well maybe not to that extent but it seems news is not their strong suit).
Giant killer asteroid headed toward the Earth spelling doom for everyone - but first, our interview with Cameron Diaz here on “Good Morning America”.
          :smack:
I remember reading an article about GMA (IIRC; it might have been Today), and one point they made was that despite appearances of being a news program, the show was not owned by ABC News, it was owned by ABC Entertainment.
Well, there have been major improvements since 1965. Much, much less of the NE was impacted by the blackout, and the power has been restored dramatically faster than before.
It is simply not going to be possible to positively remove all chance of large scale balckouts unless an enormous amount of money is put into the T&D infrastructure. The estimates on this amount vary tremendously - everywhere from $100 Billion to $500 Billion. I think most engineers in the field believe, however, that a well-planned $100 billion or so would solve about 90% of the issues. To compare with this, however, EPRI likes to tout a number of about $100 Billion as the annual “cost” associated with unreliability in electric power. Even if the real cost is 1/10 that, there should still be a payback in around 10 years…
Another thing that’s being brushed under the rug conveniently, especially by one political party, is the NIMBY thing again. Building and expansion of major transmission lines and substations is frequently a process that is subject to numerous nuisance lawsuits, environmental resistance, and media “scare tactics” on EM fields and high-tension power lines. A note circualted around this morning claims that American Electric Power’s “Wyoming-Jackson Ferry” 90-mile project (a major T&D upgrade and expansion) had to wait 12 years before they could get approval from all federal and state regulators. And a large part of the delay associated with it was, reputedly, nuisance lawsuits filed by everyone with opposable digits who could dial 1-800-SUE THEM. While I wouldn’t know what percentage of delays are purely regulatory versus consumer-driven, I’ve seen firsthand many T&D projects where I work cancelled or delayed for years due to a homes association filing a suit because the T&D towers would “spoil their view of the prairie”, or because somehow the EM fields from the lines situated more than 5 miles away would cause “an epidemic of leukemia” in their children. (assertions and proof that the freaking TV their kids are planted in front of each day for several hours generated several hundred times the EM field levels was met by mockery and claims of “lies”…Cecil, we all may as well give up the battle. It can’t be won.)