On Tue, Feb 26, 2008 at 6:25 PM, Vincent Medina <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Small fire at a substation shutdown 4.4 million customers... That is BS!
The 2003 blackout that knocked out most of the Northeast US is attributed to some power lines contacting with some tree branches. With the present US power grid, things are so interconnected that cascade failures are disturbingly easy. Somewhat ironically, outages can be caused by too much power availability. Generated power output has to be roughly matched by load, or things start to melt/explode. If a generating plant finds it suddenly has a much reduced load -- as when a substation goes offline -- the whole plant may trip offline to prevent damage. -- Ben ~ Upgrade to Next Generation Antispam/Antivirus with Ninja! ~ ~ <http://www.sunbelt-software.com/SunbeltMessagingNinja.cfm> ~
