It all started as a normal humid and hot summer day. Before it was over, the entire Northeast including a large portion of Canada was without power. Ironically, In fact, most of the East and Midwest was operating only at about 75 percent of capacity and in past summers, power systems in the region have used much more capacity on hotter days.
At 4:06 PM EDT the chief engineer on duty at the Albany New York complex, which is an Independent System Operator and the nerve center of the states power grid, noticed something wrong. A large amount of power flowing from New York toward Ontario through the transmission linesunderground and overhead cables. That wasnt so unusual. A power plant must have gone down. But seconds later, something happened that hed never seen. The 800-megawatt surge reversed course and began hurtling back toward New York, like some giant ectoplasmic monster on a rampage.
Generators from all over started to shut down to ward off the tremendous surge, which could overload and burn them out. Faster than most humans could respond, power grids across the region began islanding themselves, disconnecting automatically from the overloaded system. Generators clicked off in a cascade of shutdowns that darkened New York, Pennsylvania, the Midwest and much of Canada. In seconds, North America had suffered the worst blackout in its history. In about nine seconds, 61,800 megawatts were lost, and at 4:11 EDT 50 million people were abruptly left without power.
Despite the initial reassuring signals to the public, during an emergency conference call with senior officials, at 5:30 p.m. EDT, the CIA" stated there was the possibility that there might have been some terrorist tampering. Informants and interrogations of terror suspects have led the CIA to believe that Al Qaeda is seeking to target power grids to produce just the widespread chaos witnessed. Last year the FBI concluded that terrorists are eagerly surveying weaknesses in power grids through Internet connections in Saudi Arabia, Indonesia and Pakistan. Even if they had no role in this episode, many worry that this blackout of 2003 provided them with a perfect case study.
Information Source => http://enigma.elfrad.org/
Computers cannot keep a complex power grid balanced unless the balance points have been set manually in advance. The reason for this is a mathematical problem known as the traveling salesman problem.
A computer cannot determine the shortest route of travel for a salesman to visit the largest cities of every state in the U.S. The problem is far too complex for a computer, at this time. Yet, a real salesman, by looking at a map, has no problem determining the optimum route to visit all of the cities.
The calculations are overly complex. A complex grid has too many balance points and not enough time for a computer to determine optimum balance. Once balanced, the balance condition can be maintained by computer only if the power fluctuations are minor. If the fluctuations exceed the "balance window", computer rules can be set to protect power nodes if the grid becomes highly unbalanced due to unexpected conditions. These rules involve the isolation of power nodes from unexpectedly high surges. Once the grid has failed, it can only be restored using preset manually determined actions on a node-by-node basis.
John Mark Kallio
source=>
http://www.tvbn.com/ near bottom of page
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