Blackout

About: Blackout is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 2088 publications have been published within this topic receiving 30433 citations.

Why has it happened again? Comparison between the UCTE blackout in 2006 and the blackouts of 2003

Abstract: The paper starts with an overview of, and comparison between, the UCTE blackout of 2006 and year 2003 blackouts in the US and Italy. The main conclusion of the paper is that the European utilities have not really learned the lessons from the blackouts of 2003. Increased liberalisation of electricity supply industry has resulted in a significant increase in inter-area (or cross-border) trades which often are not properly accounted for when assessing system security. The traditional decentralised way of operating systems by TSOs, with each TSO looking after its own control area and little information exchange, resulted in inadequate and slow response to contingencies. A new mode of coordinated operation for real-time security assessment and control is needed in order to maintain system security. This new mode of operation requires overcoming a number of organisational, psychological, legal and technical challenges but the alternative is either to risk another blackout or run the interconnected system very conservatively, maintaining large security margin at a high cost to the consumer.

The Northeast Blackout of 1965

Abstract: Twenty-five years ago, on November 9, 1965, the electric utility industry - and the nation - experienced the biggest power failure in history. While major power outages did happen before and after this unique event, none of them came even close to the Great Northeast Blackout of 1965 - not in terms of the size of the area or the number of people affected, not in terms of the trauma inflicted on the society at large, and not in terms of its impact on the electric utility industry. With our institution memory - as a society - being as short as it is, many of the lessons that were learned by the industry, by the regulators, and by the nation at large in the wake of the Northeast Blackout have been, by now, mostly forgotten. The 25th anniversary of this event offers a unique opportunity, therefore, to refresh our institutional memory in this regard and, by doing so, bring to bear our past experience to the problems of today. This article has been written with this objective in mind and from the perspective of an individual who experienced firsthand - as an active electric utility industry participant - the Northeast more » Blackout itself, its aftermath, and the subsequent evolution of the industry to the present day. « less

Performance of Electric Power Systems Under Physical Malicious Attacks

Abstract: This paper focuses on deliberate acts aimed at the disruption of the electric power infrastructure and their impact on its operational capability. Metrics derived from complex network theory and social network analysis are used to identify the important elements of the electric power transmission grid. Using the outcomes of this screening procedure as a guide, a number of physical attack scenarios have been fabricated and applied. The nature of these scenarios is either deterministic (targeted attacks) or stochastic (sets of elements are randomly attacked). We appraise the effect of these attacks on the serviceability of the electric power system by modeling of potential cascading events through calculation of transmission grid components' loading, a Monte Carlo simulation of hidden failures, and, finally, operator performance analysis based on a simple human reliability model. The effect of each attack scenario is quantified in terms of the blackout size (electric-power-not-served). To illustrate the application of the developed model to the security assessment of targeted physical attacks against the electric power infrastructure, the Swiss transmission grid is taken as the test system.

Signal functions in delayed reinforcement.

Abstract: Three experiments were conducted with pigeons to examine the role of the signal in delay-of-reinforcement procedures. In the first, a blackout accompanying a period of nonreinforcement increased key-peck response rates maintained by immediate reinforcement. The effects of dissociating the blackout from the delay interval were examined in the second experiment. In three conditions, blackouts and unsignaled delays were negatively correlated or occurred randomly with respect to one another. A signaled delay and an unsignaled delay that omitted the blackouts were studied in two other conditions. All delay-of-reinforcement conditions generally produced response rates lower than those produced by immediate reinforcement. Signaled delays maintained higher response rates than did any of the various unsignaled-delay conditions, with or without dissociated blackouts. The effects of these latter conditions did not differ systematically from one another. The final experiment showed that response rates varied as a function of the frequency with which a blackout accompanied delay intervals. By eliminating a number of methodological difficulties present in previous delay-of-reinforcement experiments, these results suggest the importance of the signal in maintaining responding during delay-of-reinforcement procedures and, conversely, the importance of the delay interval in decreasing responding.