Cause of New Orleans Superdome partial Blackout

The Superdome in New Orleans was hit by a partial blackout on February 03, 2013. Some six weeks later you can find a technical report on the causes of the interruption of power flow.

There are multiple reasons reported why the circuit breaker tripped:

• Misoperation of the protection function under certain conditions
• Using factory default settings that had not been adjusted for the application at the Superdome
• Unclear technical documentation and communication between manufacturer and user

It is likely that the responsible technicians had a lack in experience and education or that they had to do the commissioning and testing in some haste. You know: Haste produces waste! Who knows.

Lessons learned: The electrical system requires highly experienced and educated protection engineers!! The application of more and more information and communication technology will require even more educated and experienced engineers!!

Click HERE to download the report [pdf, 560 KB].

There was another crucial “misbehavior” of technical people that caused a very crucial outage. Relay settings are very crucial … care must be taken to prevent outages … or you will see huge outages like the one in Europe Nov 04, 2006 which was caused by inconsistent alarm and trip settings (from UCTE Report, link see below):

The limits on both ends of a line must be the same (!!) … at least both sides need to take the values of the other side into account.

But what happens if you don’t take them into account? a big outages maybe the result (usually) as on Nov 04.

IEC 61850 would have help to prevent this situation: if each side gets read access to the alarm and trip settings … let’s say once a week, then you will figure out an inconsistent situation … or send an spontaneous report in case any setting value changes …

Click HERE for the Final Report of the Nov 04, 2016 outage [pdf, 2.8 MB] 

Information and communication technology can help to do routine tests and checks and help to get consistent settings. But it will not replace the well trained and experienced engineers.

Urgently Needed: A Dumber, Tougher Grid

A “request” published by the famous IEEE Spectrum today (2012-11-21) asks for a

Dumber and Tougher Electric Grid !!

Why?

“Since the hurricane and “nor’easter” that devastated the New Jersey and New York coasts two weeks ago, leaving millions without heat, gasoline and electricity, there has been a lot of loose talk about how a smarter grid might moderate the effects of such catastrophes in the future.

The smart grid will indeed have a role to play—especially in speeding recovery. As Massoud Amin of the University of Minnesota recently put it, “a more resilient, secure and smarter infrastructure…would localize impacts and enable a speedier restoration of the services.

However, what we need even more urgently than a more agile and interactive grid incorporating advanced computing and communications in all dimensions is a grid that’s basically old-fashioned, stupid and really, really tough. … brittle wooden electricity poles would be replaced with stronger steel poles, or the distribution lines …”

My personal experience is that many “dump” people have not allowed many “smart(er)” people to exactly to do that: replace xx by yy … very often they were not allowed to do so! To make the system more robust is known form more than 130 years!!

Read paper on “Smart Grids – A 19th century invention”

“Since the 19th century engineers have developed, tested, used on a large-scale and continuously improved suitable solutions for the safe and reliable operation of the rapidly growing supply of ever more applications with electrical energy. During the sustained further development of the supply systems, it is necessary to handle the available resources (energy sources, technical installations and individuals with experience) as well as the laws of physics both responsibly and in a "smart" manner.”

The rallying cry should be: to do this (replacement of poles and “dump” people, … ) and not stop doing the other (implementing smart(er) equipment and smarter ways to deal with energy and especially electric power).

While I am writing these lines I listen to a radio report telling that part of the city Karlsruhe (my home town) is in dark: a huge blackout … electricians are on their way to check substations what has caused the outage … they recommended to have a flash lighter at hand – just in case … one of two transformers tripped … they are working on the other to take over …

News on Karlsruhe blackout (German only).

More to come … I mean more outages to come … have a flash light in all rooms … in your car …

Less than 200 Outages in New York still to be repaired

As of today (Friday, 2012-11-16 05:00 a.m.) there are 168 outages left to be repaired.

Updates could be found here.

Power Outage in San Diego on September 08, 2011, and Synchrophasors

The other day I reported on standards for synchrophasor measurements. The question was and still is: Could synchrophasor measurements prevent huge black outs? Some say yes – others say maybe or no.

Today it has been reported by Platts (Atlanta) that “The installation of phasor measurement units on part of the power grid affected by the September 8 power outage in Arizona, California and Mexico is aiding the data collection process as entities look into the cause of the outage, the head of the North American Electric Reliability Council said Monday. … Synchrophasors provide precise measurements of critical grid operating data from devices called phasor measurement units, which inform operators of conditions on a real-time basis. The goal of having the units in place is to help operators see conditions deteriorate and take actions to avoid large outages, Paul Barber of the NERC board of trustees said Tuesday.”

Obviously the synchrophasor measurements could not prevent the power outage on September 8, 2011. There needs to be experts to interpret the values!! and understand what to do to stabilize the electric system … or software needs to be written by experts …

What is missing in many organizations to keep control over the electric power delivery system? Peopleware!! Well educated Experts that understand the electrical system !! Measurements are a tool: Even a fool with a tool is a fool. And: A fool with a tool can foul-up a system much faster than a fool without a tool. In this regard, IEC 61850 is also just a tool.

Click HERE for the complete report from today.

Hannover (Germany) Black Out Caused by Aging Infrastructure

Some 600,000 people of the city of Hannover (Northern Germany) were hit by a blackout (up to 81 minutes) on July 13, 2011.

First a power plant was tripped due to some internal problems. Then it was expected that a 220 kV / 110 kV transformer substation would transform more power from the 220 kV network into the 110 kV network – this would have balanced the load in the city and provided power from outside.

The transformer was protected by protection functions that prevent overloading (overheating) the transformer – in order to not damage the transformer windings by too high temperatures … Due to the increase of power flow after the power plant outage in the city, the protection tripped, because it decided that the flow was above the configured limit. The limit was correctly set – but a capacitor (worth a few Euro) was defect and the result was that the protection tripped the circuit breaker even at a current below the configured limit! It would be interesting to know how old the protection relay was.

Due to the aging of the hardware (capacitor) it happened in Hannover recently. What city or region will be next hit by the aging infrastructure of our electrical delivery system?

More to come.

More maintenance (as decided by the utility in Hannover) is not an anti-aging means – refurbishment of aged components of the infrastructures may help … but costs a lot of money.

Click HERE for the press release of the enercity utility of Hannover [German only].
Click HERE for a discussion of aging infrastructures [German only]