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Power Government United States

What Caused the 2019 New York Blackout? Infrastructure. (theatlantic.com) 119

Posted by msmash from the closer-look dept.
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.
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What Caused the 2019 New York Blackout? Infrastructure. More

What Caused the 2019 New York Blackout? Infrastructure.

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  • Why was this a national story??? (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Who cares about NYC???

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      This isn't news because it doesn't directly affect MEEEEEE!!!!

    • 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]

    • America's collapsing infrastructure isn't a local story.

  • So a transformer went pop in NYC in the summer (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward

    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?

    • Re: (Score:2, Troll)

      by pgmrdlm ( 1642279 )
      You mean, they couldn't deliver the food in their rickshaws? I am so going to regret this comment, I know I am. But, so be it.

  • Hey you know what we need? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    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.

  • What a dumb headline. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Known Nutter ( 988758 ) on Tuesday July 16, 2019 @01:22PM (#58935148)
    Of course it was infrastructure. What else would it be? Unicorns? Whether it was physical externally derived damage like conductor damage, vermin in some switchgear, or system derived failure, like protective relay failures resulting in a transformer overload going unprotected resulting in spectacular fire, or human intervention either intentional or accidental, it will always be the in infrastructure that has failed in some manner.

    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)

      by Anonymous Coward

      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

      • 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: (Score:3)

        by PPH ( 736903 )

        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

      • 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.

    • 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).

    • 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

    • I also appreciated how it tried to explain it as "New York is unusual because of the city's age". It's not even 400 years old yet. Many European cities predate New York by a millennium or two but that does not mean their electrical infrastructure is better, or worse. The issue is not the age of the city but the age and condition of the infrastructure and that depends on how good you are at repairing, maintaining an upgrading it which has nothing to do with the year the city was founded.

  • But what caused it? (Score:3)

    by QuietLagoon ( 813062 ) on Tuesday July 16, 2019 @01:22PM (#58935150)
    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.

    • Re: But what caused it? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by bobbied ( 2522392 ) on Tuesday July 16, 2019 @02:08PM (#58935474)

      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.

      • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward

        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

    • 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

      • }}} WTF is a "protection circuit"? {{{ --- It's what I call a protection relay when it is wired into a circuit.

    • 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)

    by DontBeAMoran ( 4843879 ) on Tuesday July 16, 2019 @01:26PM (#58935186)

    On Saturday night in New York City a power outage struck Midtown Manhattan, hitting Hell's Kitchen.

    I bet Gordon Ramsay was pissed.

  • In the West, where wildfires are becoming more common, ...

    Someone should look into that.

  • No, it was an attempt by the deep state to extract Epstein to safety. They failed.

  • A VERY High Standard (Score:3)

    by Thelasko ( 1196535 ) on Tuesday July 16, 2019 @02:22PM (#58935566) Journal
    What's the uptime of the NYC electrical grid? I bet it's greater than 99.9%? It's so good, people take it for granted. Frankly, it's amazing that a system that old [wikipedia.org] and complex can achieve that level of reliability.

    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.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Agripa ( 139780 )

      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?

  • The rest of the summary just blathers on about global warming and possible threats from bad actors and becomes TL;DR. That a single transformer, or even a single substation can take down the entire island means the fault tolerance and redundancy is poorly engineered. Another house of cards.
  • Though of course if the author really had a point,

    "..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.
  • On the news yesterday morning the talking heads were saying "we have no idea what caused it - but it wasn't hacked"... um...ok.
    "doth protest too much, methinks"
  • Oh so climate change is to blame.

  • Remember that black out 9 months ago? The babies are being born now.

  • I just keep imagining Optimus Prime in a wheel chair.
  • Step 1) Wait for any disaster of any kind
    Step 2) Find some way to tie it to tangentially link it to climate change
    Step 3) Write article, spread FUD

    Rinse, repeat.

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