Most of the people in the United States and Canada should know about the crippling power outage that hit eastern North America yesterday, leaving New York, Toronto, Detroit, and other cities dark all afternoon and into the evening. When the outage hit, it was sometimes low-tech (or no-tech) devices that were the most useful, as trains stopped and mobile phone networks didn’t work or became overloaded. Pay phones (now rare), pagers, and flashlights were the useful tech tools, and thousands were forced to walk home.
Power to the people.
Wasn’t that bad. First time this summer that I’ve spent seven non-sleeping hours off-line.
perhaps people woke to reality… and found themselves with their own thoughts for a change… away from the constant noise of tv radio cars and the internet
its good once in a while
It doesn’t take long to realize how delicate the balance of our society is or how much our large populations depend upon electricity. Obviously nature would not have so many people in the world.
If they reform electricity than we won’t just have one technology (power grids…ie Microsoft) but a more organic model (fuel cells, wind power, electricity…ie Open Source).
One of the reasons why I live in the Northwest. We have plenty of power and water.
rough translation of from heise.de
connection between Blackout and Windows worm?
The past attempts at explanation to the surface covering Blackout in the USA and Canada are plentifully incomplete: A thunderbolt is to have paralyzed a power station at the cases of Niagara. In the consequence electricity mains broke down in many Federal States.
In order to avoid such losses, country-wide the connections of the power stations are steered to electricity mains via a central Grid center. This ensures normally also for the fact that if necessary supply areas are uncoupled fast by the net , in order not to likewise pull the other power stations into the abyss. Here the protective functions failed. In the consequence increased the net load for other power stations, which uncoupled themselves for its part then to the protection from overloading from the net and with it any longer could not supply some regions of the USA. Why the measures did not seize for the avoidance of such total failures, is still unclear.
With our searches we are encountered the following connections: The failed Niagara power station belongs too national to Grid the USA . This power supplier is specified as a reference customer of Northern Dynamics. This company calls itself as “Home OF the OPC Experts” and offers a set of products, which use OPC for communication with control and control systems.
OPC stands for Process control “for” OLE for and touches down on Microsofts COM/DCOM model. That is however exactly the technology with the safety hole, which the worm W32.Blaster uses. In a net, in which this worm is active, malfunctioned due to the regular restarts, which observe now final users also concerned with their PCS, DCOM communication and concomitantly OPC on ungepatchten systems.
OPC is used among other things also for the coupling of so-called SCADA systems (Supervisory control and DATA Acquisition), as they use also power stations. Process data between a center (MTU) are exchanged and one or more measures (RTU). Also being for processes can be adjusted over SCADA systems.
Since national Grid the USA for a statement was not to be reached, urge itself us the following questions up:
– for which national does Grid the USA OPC begin exactly?
– gave it at the time of the power failure of problems with OPC? And if: Do these stand in a connection with the worm W32.Blaster?
As further reference customers the OPCExperts of Northern Dynamics under other general Electrics, AG, specifies the Siemens the European power station farmer ABB and the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN). Thus clarifying need (heise Security) exists also here/( ju /c’t)
… am I the only one finding it kinda pathetic for the world’s most powerful nation (oops, pun) that pumps billions of dollars into Homeland Security, to be crippled single handedly by a lightning strike (or whatever)?!
Damn lucky no terrorist was involved or the troops would be on the move again. OTOH some spin doctors may be hard at work right this minute…
“It doesn’t take long to realize how delicate the balance of our society is or how much our large populations depend upon electricity. Obviously nature would not have so many people in the world.
If they reform electricity than we won’t just have one technology (power grids…ie Microsoft) but a more organic model (fuel cells, wind power, electricity…ie Open Source). ”
Decentralization is the real key to a resiliant society. Unfortunately, the centralized powers that be tend to disagree. It will take quite a while for them to be overthrown, as it would take many millions of people doing what they can to be more self-sufficient, not relying on centralized goods and services.
American consumerism, corporate greed and political incompetence all help to slow the evolution of a self-sufficient society, but are unlikely to ultimately prevent it. Solar homes, home gardens, home offices, home/Internet schooling fuel cells, wind power generation and open source software and wireless networks are examples of things that help us to create such a resilient situation, but it certainly won’t be overnight.
I can’t wait for that future to arrive though.
I read an article in a book that I still have around somewhere, but it even said that power/energy can be produced by certain organic plants. How can you beat that? Good for people who need power/energy and at the same time good for the environment.
It is quite a shock when a centralized (anything) breaks down and we are all left volnerable because we are so dependant on one supplier/source.
it qould be great if the people of the world would “decentralise” and throw off their central governemt and centre of culture which reisdes in Washington.
a centralised anything relies on that fact that the centralised thing is good and right. and right now its not. decentralised systemsa allow a healthy dynamic of evolving diversity and culture. don’t get me started on culture.
and the centralisation of the consumer opwerating system, Microsofts Windows, has effects we can all see again and again.. Melissa, ILuvYOU, MSBlast, … centralised M$ is not good.
The only people who don’t like diversity in computer systems and OSes are those who don’t understand…. the finance department, the CEO with his eye on the bottom line… those in the know, know that diversity and adaptabilty is the key to success…
… and no-one ever said that the things worth their salt … don’t take some effort to learn about.
Next time we take out power all across the states 🙂
I work for the largest bank in Canada, our centers in Toronto are all down right now, so all calls are re-router to Montreal, I had to work 2 shifts to cover up. Most likely, I’ll have to do that again tonight. That’s crazy.
When things like that happen, you realise how depend we got of electricity and other things we take for granted.
Actually, it was kind of nice in a bizarre way. It made me realize just how much I use technology, and how much I did not miss it when it was not available.
After sitting in a parking lot for 2 hours to wait for the traffic gridlock to die down, it only took me 25 minutes to get home, so I sat in the shade and fed some squirrels while I was waiting.
Had some sandwhiches for supper and then went out for a drive. It is really strange driving around a pitch-black metropolitan area….it gives you a totally different perspective.
My wife and I lit some citronella candles and mosquito coils, and sat outside listening to an AM radio ’til almost 1 AM and watched the stars and the airplanes that were heading to western Canada. Also got to see the remnants of the Perseids meteor showers.
Our power came back on at 2:45 AM, and has been on ever since.
Hopefully it will stay on, but they may have to do rolling blackouts until the grid becomes stable again.
This happened before.
This cost lives before.
And we did not spend the money to fix it.
So I bet it will happen again.
And I also bet its worth the cost of lives, to allow this system to continue as is. Ain’t the status quo wonderful?
Don’t change a thing. Its perfect the way it is. No, really.
Capitalism at its best.
Throw more money at it, the system has to work eventually.
If this power outage was caused by a lack of supply vs. demand, don’t you think we should have been monitoring that? Shouldn’t we know precisely how much power is being used and how much we will need in the future. Do we plan ahead in a capitalist society? At all?
How do you recommend we prevent this thing in the future? Focus less on profits, perhaps?
Or is it that the power companies just didn’t make enough money? Maybe they’re not profitable or economicly viable. What happens when the electric companies or airlines can no longer make a profit? Anyone got a clue?
that energy crap is old hat here is the future http://www.discover.com/may_03/featoil.html
hmmm, this isn’t your forum to rail against capitalism (i.e. free market). If you had an ounce of brain, you’d know that the government regulates power companies right down to the point of how much money they’re allowed to make.
I wish there was some more info on this guys version of thermal depolymerization, including how much energy input is required by the flash vessels and reactors.
The idea (and industrial process) has been around a long time, but has never produced much more useful fuel than is required to keep running the plant.
There are reasons we use large coal/gas/water/nuclear power stations… They may not be the prettiest, but they are efficent.
you’d know that the government regulates power companies right down to the point of how much money they’re allowed to make.
Well, I might not have a brain, but I know they don’t regulate them right down to the point of how to keep everything running. Which some might say is more important than money. Some might say that. Maybe.
And you can’t severely limit the revenue of an industry in the name of the public good, then attempt to force them to do equipment upgrades and quality assurance with money they don’t have. Oh, but wait. We can get around that. We’ll just force them with guns!
Look. Obviously energy companies have to be somewhat regulated since they control all means of production and distribution in an area. But there has to be some kind of incentive to upgrade equipment. (Normally tax breaks).
Currently the energy companies have two choices. Spend money on upgrades and make no more money than they were before. Or don’t upgrade and deal with the blackouts- making no less money than they were before.
Hence, the reason every socialist government ever instituted has failed.
15% – 5% energy input. i think it says in the article. all the energy comes from the process though so it runs itself once its started.
“”all the energy comes from the process though so it runs itself once its started.””
Perpetual machine? Go back to thermodynamics 101 :>
did you bother to read the article? its not perpetual motion. the energy comes from methane being produced and burned on site to keep the system going. ultimately the whole process runs on sunlight
“Most of the people in the United States and Canada should know about the crippling power outage that hit eastern North America yesterday, leaving New York, Toronto, Detroit, and other cities dark all afternoon and into the evening.”
I was out for 21 hours. Some people are still out now, 30 hours later. Not a big deal for me, it’s the people with kids they have to feed that got hit hard. Some places are still out and may stay that way for the weekend.
Listening to the radio and watching the stars all night was fun. Lots of people are really helping out by donating generators, food and water.
Don’t listen to the news about the “blame game”, it’s all crap. I’m Canadian and I don’t “blame” the U.S. like CNN say’s. Some generators somewhere just overloaded, nobodys fault. These things happen. It’s not fair, but that’s life.
Only thing I learned from this is, do not trust people with candles!! So many fires lastnight, so many homes lost.
Dear George,
Instead of pissing away billions of dollars in the Middle East, hunting down one despot, why not invest that tax payer money into the infrastructure of your country, instead of the military industrial complex (aka your buddies)?
Regards,
Modern Day Hippie
some comments here and on BBC world about the state of the US electricity infrastructure. Question: who owns thes lines? the federal/state governments? local governments (city councils), publicly listed? privately owned?
Although today it isn’t politically correct to say this, however, I do consider that the lines should be owned by the state to ensure that the infrastructure is properly maintained.
In Auckland (NZ) for example, the electicity in the CBD was off for several weeks due to the lines company not maintaining the backbone properly. Had there been less penny pinching and more investment the whole issue would never had happened.
well it was a candle and a good book to save my evening from utter bordom having lost tv and internet.
We live just east of Toronto (Oshawa) and my wife and I got by Thursday night with our Coleman stove and our barbeque. Then, Friday afternoon, we found a little nearby pub that was selling cold beer and burgers (big buckets of ice for the beer and big bbq’s for the burgers). We had a great time.
Yes, it happened before, but no, a great deal of money was spent in fixing *that* problem (which had to do with relay switches IIRC).
Who owns the utilities? They are privately owned, for the most part (not certain about Canada), but in most places are still regulated by the states (in sanctioned monopolies), though some, such as Pennsylvania and Ohio, IIRC, which have deregulated to allow competetion in lower pricing.
The infrastructure is maintained (there are gov’t regulatations afterall), and I doubt if the government could do a better job. Given their history, probably worse. However, the problem as it is now seen seems to be inadequate number of transmission lines, though it should be stated the cause is still far from known. Current (no pun in intended) theories suggest there was a major power swing in Ohio or Pennsylvania, which eventually caused generators to trip in Canada then throughout the “Erie Loop.” Once the latter began, it took about 9 seconds to turn the lights off to 50 million people.
Problem is not one of “capitalism” but more of NIMBY. No one wants unsightly transmission lines or new power plants in their back yards. So don’t blame “capitalism” as the problem is at the governmental level as well. I might add, though, that the Clinton Administration, pandering to the enviromentalist lobby, refused to authorize any more nuclear power plant construction. That said, however, even had they not stopped authorizations, none could have been constructed in time to help avert the Blackout.
The Northwest is just as vulnerable. It is mostly a transmission line problem.
FWIW, I was without power for 26-1/2 hours. My only real complaint was the loss of a couple hundred dollars worth of food (including some nice expensive steak). The last major blackout here occurred in the Blizzard of ’78, and was without power or water for three days (had water this time unlike those poor sods in Detroit and Cleveland), but nature provided a nice outdoor freezer, and at that time had a gas stove, so one could cook food and boil water (snow). Saw less stars than usual because of the haze. Could still see a glow over Detroit from all the cars.
—
Michael
Who owns the utilities? They are privately owned, for the most part (not certain about Canada), but in most places are still regulated by the states (in sanctioned monopolies), though some, such as Pennsylvania and Ohio, IIRC, which have deregulated to allow competetion in lower pricing.
Famous last words of the fly-by-night operator, “competition in utilities stimulates lower prices”. Question is, how well maintained are these companies? If an electicity company owns the lines, generation and resale then the government regulates for the electricity company to give access to low cost resellers, how can they (the generation/line/reseller) compete with a company who doesn’t need to maintain such a large infrastructure? hence the reason why I harped back to prefering to have the infrastructure publicly owned and ran as a State Owned Enterprise which runs at an arms leng of the Crown.
Problem is not one of “capitalism” but more of NIMBY. No one wants unsightly transmission lines or new power plants in their back yards. So don’t blame “capitalism” as the problem is at the governmental level as well. I might add, though, that the Clinton Administration, pandering to the enviromentalist lobby, refused to authorize any more nuclear power plant construction. That said, however, even had they not stopped authorizations, none could have been constructed in time to help avert the Blackout.
Question is, where is the nuclear waste going to go to? Nuclear power has been around for around 30years IIRC, and still there is no safe way of displosing of nuclear waste.
btw, I’ve always wondered, why did the US standardise on 110v instead of 240v which most countries use?
“”did you bother to read the article? its not perpetual motion. the energy comes from methane being produced and burned on site to keep the system going. ultimately the whole process runs on sunlight
“”
Yes, I did read it, and it’s very interesting. I was just making a little joke based on your comment, the smiley should have given it away.
What I’m not enthusiastic about is the idea of increasing dependency on oil. If efficient, and its use is widespread, this technology could massively increase use of oil-based technologies such as cars etc that produce a lot of bad waste products (I don’t particularily like their CO2 justification, but CO2 isn’t the only gas I’m referring to anyway).
Personally I’m have a preference for fusion technology, but we’re still a good 30 or 40 years from it being a practical reality. Until then our dependance on carbon fuels is set to continue, so this technology could provide the stop-gap required due to dwindling global reserves (Plus it sounds like a neat way to help deal with the rubbish problem facing most industrial nations). I just wish the environmentalists would stop dismissing fusion simply because it is a nuclear process, even though it is one with no bad consequences. Windfarms and solar power cannot meet the global demand for power (Or even a small portion of that demand) so the addiction to carbon fuels is set to continue as the insatiable demand for power made by the modern world continues to increase.
this is actually, contrary to popular belief, a psychological term.
When you support what we just did in Iraq, now knowing the facts, you have the military industrial complex.
————
And nuclear waste could be shot into the sun, if we could figure out a way to safely transport it out of our atmosphere. The Sun would have no problems with all the extra radiation of nuclear waste. Although I think its a bad idea to put nuclear power plants on our home planet. Why not float them around in space or dump them on the moon or something? Just collect the energy as we pass by. Now I’m dreamin.
except for the fact that is outragously expensive. plus i already know of a technology that makes nuclear “waste” storable in solid form. what is waste today might be very useful tomorrow. its a competing yet complimentary technology to the one i linked to before. i myself have no problem having more nuclear power plants. if you really want to solve energy problems build cities differently.
“And nuclear waste could be shot into the sun, if we could figure out a way to safely transport it out of our atmosphere. The Sun would have no problems with all the extra radiation of nuclear waste.”
While we’re dreaming here, I’d just like to point out that it would take far less energy to send such waste away from the sun than it would take to send it to the sun. Interstellar space would also have no problems with all the extra radiation generated by the radioactive waste. Things like exploding stars already send such materials into the void, and our doing so would be no worse.
RE: Err (IP: —.range81-152.btcentralplus.com)
I just wish the environmentalists would stop dismissing fusion simply because it is a nuclear process, even though it is one with no bad consequences.
I’ve never heard ANY environmentalist dismiss Fusion, what they have dismissed is Fission which is the currently being used. It isn’t the danger but the fact that the nuclear waste can hang around for 50-100years. No one has yet come up with a way of doing something with it.
RE: hmmm (IP: —.client.attbi.com)
And nuclear waste could be shot into the sun, if we could figure out a way to safely transport it out of our atmosphere. The Sun would have no problems with all the extra radiation of nuclear waste. Although I think its a bad idea to put nuclear power plants on our home planet. Why not float them around in space or dump them on the moon or something? Just collect the energy as we pass by. Now I’m dreamin.
Coal powerplants are not necessarily a bad way of producing electricity. What has given the Coal industry a bad name is the number of countries which have coal power plants and insist on using the most dirt cheap coal humany possible, the net result? a lot more pollution that one used a coal type with low mosture content. For example, in New Zealand we have a Coal power plant in Hunter and the pollution put out is VERY low because the coal used is VERY high quality and every effort is made to ensure that full combustion is done to minimise negative spinoffs.
“I’ve never heard ANY environmentalist dismiss Fusion, what they have dismissed is Fission which is the currently being used.”
Actually I have recently read (sorry for the lack of a reference, my bookmarks are on a temporarilly powered down machine an hour away from here) that there is some small concern regarding fusion reactors emissions damaging ozone. They stressed that it was a small concern, but a concern nonetheless. Still orders of magnitude better than fission or fossil fuels.
“It isn’t the danger but the fact that the nuclear waste can hang around for 50-100years. No one has yet come up with a way of doing something with it.”
Correct me if I’m mistaken, but isn’t the half-life of all but the nastiest radioactive waste generated from fission plants in the 10,000 year range? (I’m too lazy to Google right now). Sure it’s not as bad as the shorter lived truely gastly stuff, but there’s so much of it at any one time that the radiation levels would still be evil in the general area of the waste.
I live in Toronto. May of the pay phones I came across did not work during the blackout. My cell did – when the network wasn’t jammed.
“”I’ve never heard ANY environmentalist dismiss Fusion, what they have dismissed is Fission which is the currently being used.””
Obviously you’ve got a much better class of environmentalist wherever you live.
For example:
I got stopped on the street a few months back by a Greenpeace recruiter. Nice pictures of wales and other endangered species, and then a huge amount of nonsense about how wind and hydroelectric power was desperately needed. I asked about fusion, they didn’t know it existed. I explained about fusion, they were concerned because of nuclear waste. I explained a little more about fusion (Ie that there isn’t any nuclear waster) and they said they’d look into it later. Needless to say they didn’t convince me to signup, it takes more than pretty pictures.
There is widespread ignorance about fusion technology (Hell, I’ll admit everytime I want to differentiate between fusion and fission I have to picture little atoms in my head), and that’s hampering its acceptance as the technology that will provide clean energy in the future. I’ll agree that fission is a seriously dumbass way of generating energy, but I just wish people wouldn’t confuse the bad thing that is fission with fusion.
it does not produce new oil, it produces oil that has existed in the world before…how else do you think you can get oil from a bird or a chunk of plastic?
at any rate, the oil from consumer products as well as the metals and such will most likly be recycled into similar products…plastics get recycled to make more plastics with the oils and chemicals out put from the process etc.
this is also good for the coal industry. it can take coal, and turn it into a high grade zero moisture fine grain (I.E. higher energy output) product for almost zero cost.
good gosh it doesnt JUST use already existing oil you can turn yard waste and sewage into oil too. anything organic.
heck their first commercial plant is turning turkey guts and waste into oil sheesh.
umm….and where do you think the oil comes from?
organic material contains the hydrocarbons needed to make the oils, which means they already exist hence, it is already in the environment and accounted for.
i think i understand what you was getting at now. i thought you meant that the process required mined oil but looks like i just misunderstood your comment
.
as a side note, it is also good for oil.
it can refine oil much cheaper than a refinery can and it makes it very high grade.
so not only do the coal and oil industry benifit, but we can have perfect recyclbility of all things.
which also means that they can use tar sand and other substances with oil in them but were expensive to mine and put it through this process to get the oil out.