Power outage problem, de-regulation, related issues... MY THOUGHTS!

[JohnT]

Originally posted by Spiffor
Can Adam Smith or Imran explain me where the loss of reliability comes from please ? I must have missed something.

Can anyone explain to me how the first major blackout in 25+ years means that the system has totally broken down?

Not denying that things can't be improved, but Jesus! If you've never noticed society going through our periodical "Chicken Little" moments, open your eyes.

[Sava]

Well, you'd get the town to switch. If you can come up with a better provider and can get out of your energy contract, you can sway the council to go with the other dudes. Your elected represenatives would decide which way to go, and would moderate any rash changes.

I never said such entities would be direct democracies, but before you manipulate and distort my words any further, I'd like to point out that the US is a representative Democracy. So you can assume when I say "democratic" in reference to the US, I am speaking of representative democratic processes.

[Berzerker]

Sava -

Sure, after you name ONE SPECIFIC regulation and why it should be erased.

I already said I'd get rid of them all and let company employees run their companies, but since that apparently isn't "one specific" regulation , how about the regulation against drilling ANWAR? Or maybe the California regulation prohibiting the construction of new nuclear plants? How about those regulations prohibiting offshore drilling? Now, answer my question oh slippery one, what regulation was eliminated to create regional power grids? You said "de-regulation" created these grids and have been running from that nonsense ever since...

[Geronimo]

Nobody seems to be disputing that NIMBY's are a serious obstacle to upgrading the power grid. Unlike the regulation policies we are debating, NIMBYs are a universal plague across the nation. Can anybody think of any way of getting around this immense and ubiquitous roadblack to power grid modernization?

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/fool/20030815/bs_fool_fool/1060964100

[Proteus_MST]

On n-tv they gave a nice Analysis, why the loss of one Powerplant could lead to the the loss of the whole nordeastern Powergrid and why in Germany and Europe there is much less danger of such things happening.

On a Regional Level the Powerplants of your Energy Companies seem to be connected with very few Interconnections, resembling a Sieries Circuit. So the Loss of one of these Powerplants in the Circuit would cause the next Powerplant in LIne to overload, anhd so on, and afterwards the Problem would spread to other Regions, and, as the Regions themselves are also very sparsely connected, the Outage of one Region could easily lead to the Outage of the next Region.

The German Powergrid is much more Densely connected. There are verymuch Interconnections and the Powerplants on a regional Level aren´t just connected to the next Powerplant in Line, but every Powerplant within the region has Connections to each other Powerplant, so, if one Powerplöant shutsoff, the Load gets distributed among all other Powerplants within the Region´.
The Connections among the Regiuons themselves has the same schematics, i.e. every Region is densely connected to all surrounding Regions, so even in the rare case ot the outage of one Region the other regions could compensate for it.
And, as an added Secutrity measure we could also get Power from the surrounding countries, as there are also dense Connectios to the Powergrids of the neighbouring Countries.

The analysis also stated that the reason why the Powergrids within the USA were so sparsely interconnected is, as some otherpeople in this thread already mentioned, that it would cut into the Profit of the Energy Providers. It is much cheaper to maintain a sparsely connected powergrid than to maintain one with a lot of Interconnections, which don´t grant additional Profit, but just are there for Security Reasons.

So, I think that more Regulations of your Power Companies would benefit almost everyone in America (with the Exception of the Shareholder of these Companies, as they would make much less Profit if they´d have to upgrade their Powergrid and afterwards maintain a much more denser Powergrid).
Without further Regulations, I think, nothing will get done and you could face the same Problems again in Future.

[Wraith]

--" and I really don't want to do another thread on the subject, as people normally pay me for my expertise."

Too bad. You and Adam Smith have been the only interesting posts on this subject. Guess I won't have to bother following the thread.

--"The analysis also stated that the reason why the Powergrids within the USA were so sparsely interconnected is,"

Haven't seen it, but it sounds like they forgot about NIMBY. I'd love to see the faces of all the leftists who always oppose any new power (plant or lines) if government regulation put them in anyway...

Wraith
"'Halt?' Does that work? Has anyone ever stopped?"
- Gieve (Heroic Legend of Arislan)

[mrmitchell]

Nobody seems to be disputing that NIMBY's are a serious obstacle to upgrading the power grid. Unlike the regulation policies we are debating, NIMBYs are a universal plague across the nation. Can anybody think of any way of getting around this immense and ubiquitous roadblack to power grid modernization?

NIMBY is a pretty bad issue, but I don't think it's the main one. As the march of technology advances, we should be able to churn out supercooled lines at least in our lifetime. That's the big "futuristic idea"...although having a -300F line across the nation does seem like it could have its problems. Underground lines are an idea, but I get the feeling that lines on poles are far better for a nation of 300million dumbasses with shovels...

Should we, as I said earlier, try to FIX the problem instead of CHANGE the system, then NIMBY will not become an issue when it's mandated or when all the "Not in my backyard!" fellows try to go without power for a few days. But, like I said, once the system is changed, so much less actually has to travel...

[MichaeltheGreat]

Originally posted by Wraith
--" and I really don't want to do another thread on the subject, as people normally pay me for my expertise."

Too bad. You and Adam Smith have been the only interesting posts on this subject. Guess I won't have to bother following the thread.

--"The analysis also stated that the reason why the Powergrids within the USA were so sparsely interconnected is,"

Haven't seen it, but it sounds like they forgot about NIMBY. I'd love to see the faces of all the leftists who always oppose any new power (plant or lines) if government regulation put them in anyway...

Wraith
"'Halt?' Does that work? Has anyone ever stopped?"
- Gieve (Heroic Legend of Arislan)

OK, I'll nibble a little.

The biggest reason for "sparse" interconnection in the US is scale and economics. PJM and the northeast are closer to European scale than the west, but problems like this happen on a scale of every few decades within any particular regional grid. An embarassing headline and some inconvenience every few decades hasn't been convincing to ratepayers to be willing to suck up a few extra billions in costs. People assume 100% reliability, when it's more like 99.9 and change, and 100% is unrealistic and uneconomic.

NIMBY is not really an issue here. The key question ain't who's gonna build it, but who's gonna pay for it?
There's surplus generating capacity (to meet reserve levels), and most times of the year, there's a lot of surplus transmission capacity. Same with generation - you can only recover the costs of a system asset two ways - just making everyone suck it up, or charging when the asset is utilized. When you're talking 5-20 billion transmission projects that will be utilized maybe parts of 10 days a year in a good year, most people would rather take their chances on system failure every few years or decades than pay the extra costs, and still come up short of 100% reliability.

As far as the system trip, obviously the regional grid was at a low reserve level, and perhaps the reserve level requirements were violated - i.e. the utility didn't start dropping interruptible customers or institute rolling blackouts. The system performed as intended, i.e. substation undervoltage and overcurrent relays responded to conditions and tripped, to break and isolate the grid to prevent any sort of real damage to other assets.

It takes a while to restore that kind of situation when it happens, because you have a problem with uncontrolled load on the other side of the breaker. That is, customers aren't disciplined about turning off electricty using stuff - lights, appliances, chillers and some industrial equipment. So the moment you reset a breaker, you have a live load that wants to cause an undervoltage/overcurrent trip all over again. The only way you can solve the problem is to expand and distribute the outage (what the system did, and what it's designed for), so that it can be broken down into smaller chunks at secondary tramsmission substations, and primary distribution subs, and then you can bring replacement generators on line, and ramp them up simultaneous to bringing individual power blocs back on line from your lower level substations.

It takes one big hit to trip and unload the system, but to put it back together successfully, you have to build it back up in hundreds of small blocks, and that's why it takes hours.

[MichaeltheGreat]

Originally posted by mrmitchell

NIMBY is a pretty bad issue, but I don't think it's the main one. As the march of technology advances, we should be able to churn out supercooled lines at least in our lifetime. That's the big "futuristic idea"...although having a -300F line across the nation does seem like it could have its problems. Underground lines are an idea, but I get the feeling that lines on poles are far better for a nation of 300million dumbasses with shovels...

Supercooled lines will only have limited applicability at best. The main heating issue (besides airflow) is the current in the line itself, which changes all the time on most lines, and which can change far faster than cooling systems can change a closed environment like an underground line bus.

There's a big environmental issue involved, especially in cities, because heat rejection from normal underground high voltage lines is pretty extreme. Try supercooling those lines, and add the extra heat from the mechanical inefficiency of the cooling equipment, and you'll add a few degrees to the local temperature every place you have to vent exhaust air. Not a good way to make friends with the neighbors when it's already 100 degrees outside.

KEPCO (Korea Electric Power Co.) are the world's leading authority on ownership and operation of underground high voltage transmission, but they have a forced economic case, due to the extreme crowding and extremely high land costs in South Korea.

[HershOstropoler]

Originally posted by MichaeltheGreat

An embarassing headline and some inconvenience every few decades hasn't been convincing to ratepayers to be willing to suck up a few extra billions in costs. People assume 100% reliability, when it's more like 99.9 and change, and 100% is unrealistic and uneconomic.

One thing mentioned in the media was that over the last 10 years, consumption has grown much faster than grid capacity. Is that correct? Have blackouts become more likely?

Another thing, are those multi-state grids federally regulated? Is there a designated system operator for regional transmission and distribution grids? Are there federal rules for reliability (reserve generation, transmission and distribution capacity) ?

[Odin]

Originally posted by HershOstropoler

One thing mentioned in the media was that over the last 10 years, consumption has grown much faster than grid capacity. Is that correct? Have blackouts become more likely?

Ask Grey Davis.

[HershOstropoler]

Well, that's a, shall we say, "special case".

[MichaeltheGreat]

Originally posted by HershOstropoler
One thing mentioned in the media was that over the last 10 years, consumption has grown much faster than grid capacity. Is that correct? Have blackouts become more likely?

The problem isn't so much overall grid capacity, but transfer points within substations. As you get variable growth over time at different load centers, you have a problem in that your grid that used to be optimal for routing between generation injection points and extraction points for load centers 20 years ago is distinctly suboptimal today, and you can't just pick up and shuffle the pieces.

It doesn't necessarily mean that you'll have a higher probability of blackouts under most conditions, but when you do have one, the effects will be worse. The biggest ongoing impact is that you now have a lot more choke points that constrain where you can site new generation, and the impact the economic opportunities for that generation. (higher site costs, air quality mitigation, water supply costs, fuel supply, etc.) In theory, if you can get generation into each major load center at the rate of load growth, you can maintain the overall net import/export characteristics of the major extraction/injection points on the regional grid.

Another thing, are those multi-state grids federally regulated? Is there a designated system operator for regional transmission and distribution grids? Are there federal rules for reliability (reserve generation, transmission and distribution capacity) ?

There are some aspects of the regional grids that are subject to Federal regulation, and some also subject to state regulation wrt the owning utility(ies) of the individual transmission resources. The majority of the regulation (which really is beyond government ability, since it has to be agile with new load conditions and resource availability) is done by member-based RRC's (Regional Reliability Councils) that are the ten regional members of the North American Electric Reliability Council.

map of regional reliability council areas of responsibility

One of them, ERCOT, in Texas, is solely intrastate and is under oversight, but not directly controlled by, state regulators. The biggest, WECC, is multinational, and is essentially regulated by nobody other than NERC.

The main reasons for the regional councils being defined with these boundaries are interoperability and different regional requirements. For example, the WECC (which I deal with a lot) has different reserve requirements (more stringent) because of the greater effects of distance, line losses, transmission constraints and different generation portfolios within it's area of responsibility. The boundary limits are as large as they are because all of the component utility systems are strongly interconnected and fully synchronized, so that the same electical conditions exist on the overall grid, and reliability issues within one member affect reliability over the entire regional membership.

When you get to interfaces like WECC-MAPP or WECC-SPP, you have a very few low level connections, with phase rotators and phase shifters, so that two grids not synchronized with each other can pass still pass some power if needed (mostly for black starts on the regional boundary in emergency conditions)

There are designated ISO's, but their scale and regulatory control varies from the NERC regional councils. The WECC has multiple ISO's, and a majority of areas which are non-ISO operated (two main dispatchers are Federal agencies - WAPA and BPA, plus several states still have fully regulated, fully dispatching utilities)

The ISO model is about assuring impartiality between system operations and market conditions, so as not to favor some market participants over others, rather than a reliability issue. Whether a given asset is under an ISO, a contract dispatch center, or a company dispatch center (for a dispatching utility's own assets) doesn't matter, since they're all obligated to observe their own RRC protocols.

[Odin]

[Spiffor]

Originally posted by JohnT
Can anyone explain to me how the first major blackout in 25+ years means that the system has totally broken down?

The system is not completely broken down. But it's the second time in a few years that the strongest economy on earth knows a major power outage, in quite ordinary weather conditions. Imran and Adam told us that the Californian ones happened because of an insufficient deregulation, but this opinion is pure speculation.

Across the world, we have seen many failed deregulations, and -I must admit- some successful deregulations too. Failed deregulations happened when the politicians didn't consider that the emergence of local monopolies or oligopolies was inevitable (British rail, British & French water distribution, American electricity...).

These monopolies or oligopolies skew the competition, and have their hands free to make as much money as possible with as bad a service as possible.
This led to drastic staff reductions in many of these companies to increase the profit margin, at the cost of quality, safety, or reliability.
In some other cases, the private companies had to respect some quality norms, and it led to huges price raises (I'm especially thinking of France's water)

If these systems were public, the problems could have emerged as well, if the community abandoned these utilities (British Rail was completely obsolete and didn't wait for its privatization to suck - the privatization merely made it suck even more). Public companies aren't the miracle solutions IMHO. These companies don't only have to be public, they also have to be good.

The American energy system isn't completely broken, proof is that you have electricity. But it surely needs some hefty investment for a quantitative and qualitative improvement of the power grid, and it requires some thought about how to avoid such problems to come back in the future. The solution will be either to have a healthy competition (I hardly see that happen because of the high entry costs), to have politicians define very tight guidelines concerning quality, reliability and price for the energy suppliers to follow, or to made energy companies public again.
But to keep the oligopolistic system as it is will only continue to hurt.