| Submit your comments on this article | |
| Europe | |
| Italy Blackout Cuts Power to Millions | |
| 2003-09-28 | |
A massive blackout struck almost all of Italy early Sunday, leaving millions of people without power, stranding planes and trains, and leading to traffic accidents as drivers sped through darkened streets. Most of Italy's 57 million people were affected — more than in North America's biggest blackout which left 50 million people without power in Canada and the United States on Aug. 14. As in the North American blackout, the early hours of Italy's power outage were filled with confusion as to the cause and finger-pointing among neighboring countries. Italy blamed France. France denied responsibility but then said an investigation showed a disabled power line in Switzerland set off a chain reaction of outages. Swiss authorities said a tree that touched a high voltage power line and disrupted supplies in Switzerland could have been partly to blame. And heavy storms in southeastern France near the Italian border might have been a factor, officials initially said.
| |
| Posted by:Fred Pruitt |
| #7 Grid maintenance is much like bridge maintenance - a good place to cut spending in the short term ... and again... and again. Kind of makes you apprehensive about driving across a bridge. |
| Posted by: Super Hose 2003-9-28 4:04:36 PM |
| #6 Old Patriot has it right. A grid is a network of power sources, routes, and sinks. To be able to take disturbances in stride, the grid must have excess capacity in power generation and distribution. If one component goes down, then another component will take up the slack. I am not an electrical engineer, but I can see that the amount of redundancy in power generation, transformers, and power transmission and distribution lines will be determined by a number of factors that will relate to the acceptable probably of failure that society is willing to live with. For instance, in an operating room, one may have their electrical system continually floating on a battery source of power, because interruptions may be unacceptable. Certain commercial buildings may require standby generators, whereas a suburban business for a realtor will not require an alternate source other than a battery backup for a computer. Right now, we have optimized operation of our grids, but have no reserve, because we have not put a serious commitment toward future generations for a number of years. We talk about "green energy" but we do not develop a consensus that can turn into real public policy. Our dependence upon importation of a huge percentage of our oil needs from foreign sources is another example of our collective shortsightedness. I believe that it is not only the greens who are at fault but also governmental leaders who do not have the cojones to lead, but instead wind up beholden to the contributions or intimidation of special interests. |
| Posted by: Alaska Paul 2003-9-28 2:47:11 PM |
| #5 Now the Italians can chant, "We're #1!" "We're #1!" |
| Posted by: Anonymous 2003-9-28 1:15:21 PM |
| #4 I think the entire world has been doing much the same thing the United States has been doing - growing in population, in wealth, and thus in electrical use, but held back from growing in production capacity by one segment of society - the Greens. If you stress a system every day, day after day, it's eventually going to fail. We're beginning to see the effects, not only in the US, but all over the world. Someone needs to get a clue... |
| Posted by: Old Patriot 2003-9-28 12:53:30 PM |
| #3 This is the favored weapon of Professor G.Bogdanov |
| Posted by: Shipman 2003-9-28 12:37:14 PM |
| #2 ???????????? First USA/Canada, then London, then Sweden, now Italy. Lot of major blackouts in a short amount of time, no? |
| Posted by: Anonymous 2003-9-28 12:22:21 PM |
| #1 The power outages have always been there, but were made news worthy by our problem. I think it would be highly unlikely that you could run a reliable power grid with everone going on vacation during the same period for 6 weeks or whatever. North American plants are extremely reliable. I worked in a DP&L plant on the Ohio river as a maintenance supervisor for about a year and a half. The address of each person in the plant was listed on a big map. Routes were established to pick up the next shift in a fleet of Chevy Suburbans should it snow. I worked with a Romanian forging engineer at another job. He told me that in the old days in Romania the government power plants could only produce 25% of the rated power and backouts were common. Made induction heating for forges a dicey proposition. Imagine it simular to what the Shiites lived like under Sadaam. |
| Posted by: Super Hose 2003-9-28 12:00:00 PM |