Cascade failures of the power grid are rather common, unfortunately.
Properly designed SCADA systems can compensate/correct for such conditions.
That's what they think and test and computer simulate. Then a real world event happens, or some real world piece of equipment has other ideas** ...
They do an okay job with anticipated modes of failure or single event issues. Don't toss too much too fast at them or they are the cause of the cascade.
**Switch 14BA is a bit balky. You have to command it three times before it will auto switch. Humans running the system know it and it is on the future maintenance schedule for a fix after the high use season. They forgot to reprogram the SCADA system to tell it!
I must say, it has been a very long time, several years I think, since a power outage at my home. They used to be fairly common, but not lately.
Cascade failures are, of course, the reason for the famous New York blackouts of the 60s and 70s.
At the train museum, commercial power enters the property at 25KV at a single point, our own substation. It brings the voltage down to 120 and 240 and 480 and whatever else is needed for the lights and outlets and machines all around the campus, and also produces the 600VDC for the trolley wire. That side of it is designed so that if it shorts out, it will try two or three times to reset itself and then stay down until someone intervenes. On the outside of the building are two lights, indicating a yellow lockout and a blue lockout. IIRC, a yellow can be reset by pressing a button on the outside of the building, while a blue requires a qualified person to go inside.
There is a legend going around lately that one day some years ago, someone opened the controller on an L car or something that had a shorted motor. The result was not merely a lockout of the 600V, but a complete blackout of the museum: the surge had been enough to lock out the Com Ed feed before the power even reaches our own equipment.
And then of course, we had the situation about five years ago at work where the transformer/switch/whatever feeding the whole building burned out. They had to bring in a large (40 ft. container sized) portable generator, with a voracious appetite for diesel fuel, to run the school for three days.
I'll have another mai tai.
David
Miserable old git
Patiently waiting for the asteroid with my name on it.
I have been under the weather as they say for a few days but my local power company did its typical shut down and power back up in less than 10 seconds so I had to get up and reboot all my computers and make sure each one was doing what they are supposed to be doing.
So the wind must have knocked a tree across the power lines off in the distance somewhere.
This time it didn't burn up any circuit boards (even refrigerators have them these days)
Not cold enough here yet to run the heat more than a couple hours (wood pellet stove)
One of my pc's with the GeForce 660Ti SC is now having some problem since it won't run Einstein tasks for some reason and when I get a chance I will plug it in another pc and see if it still works..........it did have the OS screwed up so it went from 10 back to 7 with a disc but it doesn't seem to want to do any of the 125 updates it tends to have when I use that disc.
It is running the vLHC-VB tasks X3 with no problems
That's funny I was just researching that myself the other day, the back of my house faces the West so any solar panels could easily be 'hidden' from the street. I was looking for an alternative to running a generator as they can be noisy and running one 24/7 for several days may not make the neighbors very happy. I would be happy in my own home, but without any power they would have their windows open and listening to my generator may not make for 'good' neighbors.
Indeed. That's why I was looking at the 'quiet' generators which are typically diesel with water cooling. The specs sheet claims 65 to 70 dB at 10 meters which if true is OK where I live. That pretty much doubles the price though. Ultimately I think I'll go off-grid, our kids are grown up, living and working elsewhere etc. The imminent Hazelwood shut down has hit the headlines as someone has noticed some power futures contracts for mid next year have changed hands for 18% more, which is about the right amount ( if the loss is 20% of generation capacity ) for an April closure. The traded amount was relatively small and for July '17, but that shows someone has been sniffing, or taking an early position, or knows something others don't, or it is a pump & dump or ...... if anyone should be happiest about that it will be the utilities over the borders which ought do a brisk trade. The retail price will go up but probably not the full 20% - which makes that datum+18% contract either over-anxious or well informed.
{ I don't trade futures but I find them fascinating to watch ie. how a financial instrument originally intended to yield price stability and risk offset has been so thoroughly subverted by greed. }
Another tree has gone down this morning, over the lines, taken two poles down, twanged the wires all over the place. It evidently has several strong DC grounds, plus on the way down likely had some brief phase crossing which is almost never nice. One of the wires snapped the top off of a bird aviary and they have flown away .....
What has also been confirmed is the intention to load shed on really hot and/or bushfire days this summer. We survived the '09 firestorm by haring off quickly in the car with almost no warning, and wind changed and missed the house by 30m. I understand the risk mitigation for cutting the feed ( ie. ignition source ), but on the other hand the advice/warning network now in place largely relies upon functioning power grids. As recently demonstrated the cellular net may go down too. And yes some protection systems need power eg. sprinklers. I appreciate the conundrum at least and will ( unlike many others ) claim/accept the risk of living half way up a box canyon as my own. What I'll do if need be is what I did last time : get up on the roof, look around and sniff the wind ! :-)
Cheers, Mike.
I have made this letter longer than usual because I lack the time to make it shorter ...
... and my other CPU is a Ryzen 5950X :-) Blaise Pascal
Saw the uro again today. He said drink lots of water and come back in a year. I mentioned that in my blood work last week, my testosterone was low. He said treatment could cause other problems; try to lose some weight and get it tested again in six months, before 8am.
David
Miserable old git
Patiently waiting for the asteroid with my name on it.
That's funny I was just researching that myself the other day, the back of my house faces the West so any solar panels could easily be 'hidden' from the street. I was looking for an alternative to running a generator as they can be noisy and running one 24/7 for several days may not make the neighbors very happy. I would be happy in my own home, but without any power they would have their windows open and listening to my generator may not make for 'good' neighbors.
Indeed. That's why I was looking at the 'quiet' generators which are typically diesel with water cooling. The specs sheet claims 65 to 70 dB at 10 meters which if true is OK where I live. That pretty much doubles the price though.
I found the same thing!!
Quote:
Ultimately I think I'll go off-grid, our kids are grown up, living and working elsewhere etc.
Cheers, Mike.
I'm not nearly that far along for that, I still have waaaay too many pc's and peripherals running to be anywhere close to that, it would take several very large barns worth of solar panels to keep my pc's powered up that way, let alone any extra for when the power goes out.
As for futures you can make a shipload of money, or lose a shipload of money in them, but if you don't have some tips, you will almost always lose. I don't do them either, they require time etc that I don't want to give them, in fact I have turned all my investments over to an investment broker that I am very happy with. My goal was to maintain the original balance despite any withdrawals, they are doing slightly better than that so far, which makes me happy. They get paid by the total amount of money I have, the more I have the more they make. They get a fixed percentage of the whole no matter the balance, I figure that gives them an incentive to not be stupid with my money.
robl wrote:Gary Charpentier
That's what they think and test and computer simulate. Then a real world event happens, or some real world piece of equipment has other ideas** ...
They do an okay job with anticipated modes of failure or single event issues. Don't toss too much too fast at them or they are the cause of the cascade.
**Switch 14BA is a bit balky. You have to command it three times before it will auto switch. Humans running the system know it and it is on the future maintenance schedule for a fix after the high use season. They forgot to reprogram the SCADA system to tell it!
DOUBLE POST by robl!!!
DOUBLE POST by robl!!! Drinks on robl at the Bistro!
I'll have two Double Shots of Jager, please!!!
TimeLord04
Have TARDIS, will travel...
Come along K-9!
Join SETI Refugees
I must say, it has been a
I must say, it has been a very long time, several years I think, since a power outage at my home. They used to be fairly common, but not lately.
Cascade failures are, of course, the reason for the famous New York blackouts of the 60s and 70s.
At the train museum, commercial power enters the property at 25KV at a single point, our own substation. It brings the voltage down to 120 and 240 and 480 and whatever else is needed for the lights and outlets and machines all around the campus, and also produces the 600VDC for the trolley wire. That side of it is designed so that if it shorts out, it will try two or three times to reset itself and then stay down until someone intervenes. On the outside of the building are two lights, indicating a yellow lockout and a blue lockout. IIRC, a yellow can be reset by pressing a button on the outside of the building, while a blue requires a qualified person to go inside.
There is a legend going around lately that one day some years ago, someone opened the controller on an L car or something that had a shorted motor. The result was not merely a lockout of the 600V, but a complete blackout of the museum: the surge had been enough to lock out the Com Ed feed before the power even reaches our own equipment.
And then of course, we had the situation about five years ago at work where the transformer/switch/whatever feeding the whole building burned out. They had to bring in a large (40 ft. container sized) portable generator, with a voracious appetite for diesel fuel, to run the school for three days.
I'll have another mai tai.
David
Miserable old git
Patiently waiting for the asteroid with my name on it.
I have been under the weather
I have been under the weather as they say for a few days but my local power company did its typical shut down and power back up in less than 10 seconds so I had to get up and reboot all my computers and make sure each one was doing what they are supposed to be doing.
So the wind must have knocked a tree across the power lines off in the distance somewhere.
This time it didn't burn up any circuit boards (even refrigerators have them these days)
Not cold enough here yet to run the heat more than a couple hours (wood pellet stove)
One of my pc's with the GeForce 660Ti SC is now having some problem since it won't run Einstein tasks for some reason and when I get a chance I will plug it in another pc and see if it still works..........it did have the OS screwed up so it went from 10 back to 7 with a disc but it doesn't seem to want to do any of the 125 updates it tends to have when I use that disc.
It is running the vLHC-VB tasks X3 with no problems
mikey wrote:That's funny I
Indeed. That's why I was looking at the 'quiet' generators which are typically diesel with water cooling. The specs sheet claims 65 to 70 dB at 10 meters which if true is OK where I live. That pretty much doubles the price though. Ultimately I think I'll go off-grid, our kids are grown up, living and working elsewhere etc. The imminent Hazelwood shut down has hit the headlines as someone has noticed some power futures contracts for mid next year have changed hands for 18% more, which is about the right amount ( if the loss is 20% of generation capacity ) for an April closure. The traded amount was relatively small and for July '17, but that shows someone has been sniffing, or taking an early position, or knows something others don't, or it is a pump & dump or ...... if anyone should be happiest about that it will be the utilities over the borders which ought do a brisk trade. The retail price will go up but probably not the full 20% - which makes that datum+18% contract either over-anxious or well informed.
{ I don't trade futures but I find them fascinating to watch ie. how a financial instrument originally intended to yield price stability and risk offset has been so thoroughly subverted by greed. }
Another tree has gone down this morning, over the lines, taken two poles down, twanged the wires all over the place. It evidently has several strong DC grounds, plus on the way down likely had some brief phase crossing which is almost never nice. One of the wires snapped the top off of a bird aviary and they have flown away .....
What has also been confirmed is the intention to load shed on really hot and/or bushfire days this summer. We survived the '09 firestorm by haring off quickly in the car with almost no warning, and wind changed and missed the house by 30m. I understand the risk mitigation for cutting the feed ( ie. ignition source ), but on the other hand the advice/warning network now in place largely relies upon functioning power grids. As recently demonstrated the cellular net may go down too. And yes some protection systems need power eg. sprinklers. I appreciate the conundrum at least and will ( unlike many others ) claim/accept the risk of living half way up a box canyon as my own. What I'll do if need be is what I did last time : get up on the roof, look around and sniff the wind ! :-)
Cheers, Mike.
I have made this letter longer than usual because I lack the time to make it shorter ...
... and my other CPU is a Ryzen 5950X :-) Blaise Pascal
Saw the uro again today. He
Saw the uro again today. He said drink lots of water and come back in a year. I mentioned that in my blood work last week, my testosterone was low. He said treatment could cause other problems; try to lose some weight and get it tested again in six months, before 8am.
David
Miserable old git
Patiently waiting for the asteroid with my name on it.
This is a seriously epic
This is a seriously epic video ..... especially after the guy gets out of the car.
Cheers, Mike.
I have made this letter longer than usual because I lack the time to make it shorter ...
... and my other CPU is a Ryzen 5950X :-) Blaise Pascal
Mike Hewson wrote:mikey
I found the same thing!!
I'm not nearly that far along for that, I still have waaaay too many pc's and peripherals running to be anywhere close to that, it would take several very large barns worth of solar panels to keep my pc's powered up that way, let alone any extra for when the power goes out.
As for futures you can make a shipload of money, or lose a shipload of money in them, but if you don't have some tips, you will almost always lose. I don't do them either, they require time etc that I don't want to give them, in fact I have turned all my investments over to an investment broker that I am very happy with. My goal was to maintain the original balance despite any withdrawals, they are doing slightly better than that so far, which makes me happy. They get paid by the total amount of money I have, the more I have the more they make. They get a fixed percentage of the whole no matter the balance, I figure that gives them an incentive to not be stupid with my money.
Mike Hewson wrote:This is a
Yes, rather spooky. The future of paying for car parking, will change - why pay parking if the car can wander around looking for a free space?
I noticed they are using nVidia for some of their processing, wonder if it can crunch a few WU's when it parks up.
You got a nice long win,
You got a nice long win, Agent B. But it's time for some girl power on the throne.
Kathryn :o)
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