What Caused the 2019 New York Blackout? Infrastructure. (theatlantic.com) 119
On Saturday night in New York City a power outage struck Midtown Manhattan, hitting Hell's Kitchen north to Lincoln Center and from Fifth Avenue west to the Hudson River. The blackout darkened the huge, electric billboards of Times Square, forced Broadway shows to cancel performances, and even disabled some subway lines. But what caused it? From a report: According to reports, the outage was caused by a transformer fire within the affected region. Power was fully restored by early the following morning. [...] Saturday's blackout was most likely caused by a disabled transformer at an area substation. There are at least 50 of those in New York City, which are fed in turn by at least 24, higher-voltage transmission substations. When it comes to power, New York is unusual because of the city's age and the density of its population, both residential and commercial. That produces different risks and consequences. In Atlanta, where I live, storms often down trees, which take out aboveground power lines. In the West, where wildfires are becoming more common, flames frequently dismantle power infrastructure (sometimes the power lines themselves cause the fires). But across the whole of New York City -- not just Manhattan -- more than 80 percent of both customers and the electrical load are serviced by underground distribution from area substations. That makes smaller problems less frequent, but bigger issues more severe.
When a transformer goes down in a populous place like Manhattan, it has a greater impact than it would on Long Island, say, or in Westchester County, where density is lower. The amount of power that central Manhattan uses on a regular basis also contributes to that impact. Times Square, the theater district, hundreds of skyscrapers -- it's a substantial load. In New York's case, supplying that load is not usually the problem. Generating facilities can be located near or far away from where their power is used, and New York City draws power from a couple dozen plants. Some of it is imported from upstate. But much of New York's power is still generated locally, in large part at plants along the waterfront of Queens. Those plants are older, and more susceptible to disruption from local calamities, especially severe weather. When peak demand surges -- most common during heat waves, such as the ones that struck the region in 2006 and 2011 -- the older, less efficient generating stations have a harder time keeping up, and brownouts or blackouts become more likely.
[...] But new risks associated with climate change, cyberwarfare, and other factors haven't necessarily been accounted for in the design and operation of utility infrastructure. The perils build on one another. Climate change amplifies the frequency of heat waves, which increases electrical load, which puts greater pressure on infrastructure. At the same time, it increases the likelihood of superstorms that can cause flooding, fire, and other disasters that might disrupt nodes in the network. When utility operators designed their equipment years or decades ago, they made assumptions about load, storm surge, and other factors. Those estimates might no longer apply.
When a transformer goes down in a populous place like Manhattan, it has a greater impact than it would on Long Island, say, or in Westchester County, where density is lower. The amount of power that central Manhattan uses on a regular basis also contributes to that impact. Times Square, the theater district, hundreds of skyscrapers -- it's a substantial load. In New York's case, supplying that load is not usually the problem. Generating facilities can be located near or far away from where their power is used, and New York City draws power from a couple dozen plants. Some of it is imported from upstate. But much of New York's power is still generated locally, in large part at plants along the waterfront of Queens. Those plants are older, and more susceptible to disruption from local calamities, especially severe weather. When peak demand surges -- most common during heat waves, such as the ones that struck the region in 2006 and 2011 -- the older, less efficient generating stations have a harder time keeping up, and brownouts or blackouts become more likely.
[...] But new risks associated with climate change, cyberwarfare, and other factors haven't necessarily been accounted for in the design and operation of utility infrastructure. The perils build on one another. Climate change amplifies the frequency of heat waves, which increases electrical load, which puts greater pressure on infrastructure. At the same time, it increases the likelihood of superstorms that can cause flooding, fire, and other disasters that might disrupt nodes in the network. When utility operators designed their equipment years or decades ago, they made assumptions about load, storm surge, and other factors. Those estimates might no longer apply.
Why was this a national story??? (Score:2, Insightful)
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Gross Metropolitan Product (ca. 2011) (Score:2)
Who cares about NYC???
At $1.28 trillion, the NY metro is equivalent to the 13th largest nation in the world, close in scale to Canada ($1.57 trillion). Its gross metropolitan product is bigger than Australia's $1.23 trillion GDP and South Korea's $1 trillion, and just under India's ($1.6 trillion). If U.S. Cities Were Countries [theatlantic.com]
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America's collapsing infrastructure isn't a local story.
So a transformer went pop in NYC in the summer (Score:2, Funny)
Yes, we know the power went out in NYC. It was like, seriously, the end of the world! I nearly starved to death when I realized that I couldn't get delivery chinese since the restaurant had no power. I NEARLY STARVED! AND MELTED!
MELTED AND STARVED, DO YOU HEAR?
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Hey you know what we need? (Score:1)
More tanks in the streets, pretending to be a dictatorship. That's what we voted for right? We didn't vote for an infrastructure candidate. We voted for a show pony.
The only infrastructure Trump has improved is in Russia.
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https://www.theobjectivestanda... [theobjectivestandard.com]
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What a dumb headline. (Score:5, Insightful)
There was a WSJ article yesterday that indicated that the protective relays on the circuit failed to function which probably led to the transformer fire. But I'm sure glad the article throws in the climate change tripe for good measure. The subject is totally irrelevant in this incident.
What a simple readership. (Score:1)
Well, in this incident yes, but not in the evaluation of "such" incidents ongoing as king tides flood into electrical vaults and other such issues. Thus the lack of infrastructure funding comes into play in both counts, and CC exacerbates it.
I see why a Republican would want to make a point of saying climate change was irrelevant, but increasingly it is relevant. The infrastructure in place is not sufficient even for random failures and more incidents are forecasted from CC.
Nothing even close to sufficient
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I see why a Republican would want to make a point of saying climate change was irrelevant, but increasingly it is relevant. The infrastructure in place is not sufficient even for random failures and more incidents are forecasted from CC..
I am not a Republican. I was (perhaps poorly) making the point that the article uses politically-charged talking points rather than addressing specific cause of the outage, which the headline promised but the article didn't really deliver.
Your observations about the state of the infrastructure are accurate.
Re: What a simple readership. (Score:1)
Never waste a good crisis!
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You are unable to counter the fact that warmer means better for all biology. That means better food production in the now too cold places. Therefore you resort to being a grammar Nazi.
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The infrastructure in place is not sufficient even for random failures
But if climate change is the root cause, then the solution is to reduce consumption of electricity. That will relieve the stress on the (inadequate) infrastructure. And reduce the need to burn coal or natural gas to generate increasing amounts of power.
New York, unplug those air conditioners. And stop using elevators. Climb a few flights of stairs. It'll be good for you. And all those lighted billboards in Times Square? Off, right now. And for heavens sake, stop plugging all those EVs into the grid. Switch
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Trump is why the transformer failed?
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These so-called experts also attempt to forecast the weather along with climate change. They can't even all the time forecast the weather for next week. Then they tell us that climate change will happen in the next decades or so. If it does get warmer, which isn't even certain, then that will only be good, because energy use, including electricity consumption will go down in winter. Just think of the vast areas on earth right now that are too cold for human habitation or agriculture.
Not so dumb Re:What a dumb headline. (Score:1)
Whether it was blah blah blah it will always be the in infrastructure that has failed in some manner.
What the headline means is that infrastructure - or the failure to maintain it - was the primary culprit, as opposed to recklessness, sabotage, an extraordinary natural event such as a meteor strike, or other external event which was either preventable (recklessness), malicious (sabotage), or so out of the ordinary it's not cost-effective to have infrastructure strong enough to withstand it (meteor strike).
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I questioned it the moment they said "as heat rises, electrical grid becomes overloaded...". Air conditioning is far more efficient nowadays than it was even 20-30 years ago, to the point where running the central AC at a comfortable 76 degrees in a 1200sqft apt results in an electric bill less than 1/3 of what it is in the winter keeping the heat at 68 for only one room.
NYC is lucky it's old / dense enough that natural gas is ubiquitous, or winter would be when the electrical grid is failing due to overus
Old age (Score:2)
But what caused it? (Score:3)
Re: But what caused it? (Score:5, Interesting)
That transformer fire may have been the first problem. But what caused the widespread aspect of the blackout were overly-sensitive protection circuits that, ironically, are supposed to prevent the spread of the problem to other areas. At least, that is what ConEd said last night.
And this is correct. Blackouts are not usually caused by a lack of generation capacity in the system, but by an imbalance in how the power is moving around in the system. The problem with the control systems is that this is NOT something you can monitor and decide (in real time) how to manage, especially when the system has transmission resources which are heavily loaded start going offline. It's not usually the initial failure, but the cascading series of events caused by the flow of power overloading transmission resources around the original failure that causes the outages to spread. More and more transmission resources overload and snap offline, putting more and more customers in the dark.
The solution is expensive, but simple. You build out extra capacity in all your transmission and generating resources. You design a system where the failure of any one resource cannot lead to a cascading failure, by adding margin to everything and never operating above that margin on a regular basis. This is easy to describe, but hard to do. We expect our electric utilities to deliver power at low cost and high reliability. We complain about our electric bills, but don't bat an eye when cranking up the HVAC equipment, drying our clothes and cooking on electric stoves or taking hot showers heated by electricity. We squeeze profits out of the system by our political views and competition all the while forcing transmission companies to be more efficient, push their design margins lower until something bad happens like this.
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You're making GREAT cases for a decentralized local-storage and local-generation renewables schema... blackout-proof cities, imagine that. Literally, what is that worth? Calculate it, lol.
Maybe, but the only working solution is to have more capacity in the transmission system. Local storage may slow down the cascade failures, but they won't fix them. The problem is how fast all this happens and that the calculations required to model enough of the system have a big O of N Squared or more. You *might* be able to configure small storage to make up the gaps while the transmission system gets adjusted and avert some cascade failures, but if you cannot get the power to where it's needed with th
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The solution is expensive, but simple. You build out extra capacity in all your transmission and generating resources.
I have lived in the same area near Helsinki for 40 years and I could really tell when the electric distributing company doubled capacity to the area. Before that severe thunder storms or other events could cause blackouts, but now they are so rare that a maintenance is more likely to cause them, which is communicated before hand so the residents and businesses in the area can prepare themselves. The doubling of connections to critical areas really works as a solution. Legislation of infrastructure as critic
PROTECTIVE RELAYS (Score:2)
WTF is a "protection circuit"?
They are called protective relays.
Fun fact: once we start talking about power systems outside of your house, the device that causes the circuit to trip(protective relay) is isolated from the actual breaker. They are also much more complicated than the simple over-current devices found in your house. They also typically require careful design and regular calibration(at least if they are older units. Newer microprocessor units are a little bit more reliable, but still rely on ana
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Con Ed's failover infrastructure is non-testable (Score:2)
ConEd's reliability infrastructure is basically untestable.
In any case, what seems to have happened is that a relay shut off too much stuff. Given the age of the NYC electric grid you have to wonder how and when that relay was actually configured. I wouldn't be surprised if that behavior was set 40 years ago.
The question is, if that didn't happen what would have the impact been on the rest of Manhattan's grid?
A power outage struck Hell's Kitchen? (Score:5, Funny)
I bet Gordon Ramsay was pissed.
Re:A power outage struck Hell's Kitchen? (Score:5, Funny)
I bet Gordon Ramsay was pissed.
Has he ever not been pissed?
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https://www.google.com/search?... [google.com]"Gordon+Ramsay"
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Except they replaced the transformer, in the place of the old one. Derp. Not every failure is predictable beforehand. That's a fact.
It's almost as if you didn't read the post you replied to.
So they are not replaced at EOL, they are allowed to run until they catastrophically fail and then they can legally be replaced as en emergency measure and put in the same place.
Derp.
Re:Probably the same as in Sweden. (Score:2)
I have no idea if that's actually true in Sweden or if similar rules also apply to New York, but _if_ such regulations exist in New York then what the GP said logically holds together. The original response either ignored or didn't even read the second half of the c
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As he quoted, the GP post said that in Sweden they can't "plan" to replace a transformer because of regulations, but they can wait for it to fail and then put in a replacement as an "emergency" measure.
And how plausible is that? How much sense makes a claim like that in a first world country? *The* First World counry?
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Hmm ... (Score:2)
In the West, where wildfires are becoming more common, ...
Someone should look into that.
Fake News (Score:2)
No, it was an attempt by the deep state to extract Epstein to safety. They failed.
What really caused the blackout? (Score:2)
A VERY High Standard (Score:3)
By all means, figure out what went wrong and make improvements. But this falls into the category of commercial airline fatalities. So rare, it's a big deal when it happens.
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What's the uptime of the NYC electrical grid? I bet it's greater than 99.9%?
Is that measurement even meaningful? I would be pretty pissed off if 99.9% reflected the power being lost for 1.5 minutes out of every 24 hours.
How many power outages of any duration do they have in a given amount of time?
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Not at all true. The Camp fire started in a grassy area with only sparse trees. Calling it a brush fire is a gross mischaracterization.
According to Wikipedia, the major contributing factors were:
Was Caused by a Transformer Fire (Score:2)
totius mundi (Score:2)
Many New Yorkers do think Manhattan island is the whole world. Few, however, think Midtown is the whole island.
Non story (Score:2)
"..blackout is a warning that infrastructure doesn’t only exist when it breaks"
He would be casting an eye at the UTILITIES COMPANY. *ahem* Con Edison - you know the publicly traded, corporation that provides and maintains the infrastructure.
So stop the sky is falling bullshit and hold utility companies accountable.
it wasn't hacking (Score:2)
"doth protest too much, methinks"
Climate Change (Score:1)
First to do the baby story for 9 months from now. (Score:1)
Remember that black out 9 months ago? The babies are being born now.
I wonder what a Disabled transfomer word look like (Score:1)
i love it... (Score:2)
Step 2) Find some way to tie it to tangentially link it to climate change
Step 3) Write article, spread FUD
Rinse, repeat.