California blackout

[topgroove]

Looks like the blame is gonna land on one poor bastard. Early reports are blaming a single utility worker for switching out a transmision capacitor bank. The line tripped about ten minutes after the cap bank was taken off line. I hope to god he was following a switching order. The blackout affected over five million customers in california,arizona, and mexico. Two states and a neighboring country.......oopsie.

[Pootnaigle]

Ummmmmmmmm I bleve he may just be OK kause of all the media coverage. But I spect he is gonna have a tight ass anyway.I'm purdy sure he would have been workin with a switchin order and if he followed it he can point the finger at whoever wrote it.Aint much freelancing stuff goes on in the transmisson side.And aint nobody in their right mind wants to open a capacitor anyways.

[topgroove]

I here ya poot. Right now there is a room full of suits figuring out how to word this thing. Ferc will be involved.looks like the cost of this thing will be over one hundred million dollars.

[CPOPE]

The blackout was concentrated in San Diego, and San Diego Gas & Electric, which supplies power to most of the region, said it was still examining how the failure had spread so widely. But the initial cause, it said, appeared to be human error in Arizona that took down a line that provides power to the San Diego area. A major nuclear power plant in San Onofre, about 50 miles north of San Diego, also shut down, causing more failures, officials said.

“On their own, these things would cause virtually no impact,” because there would be backup power, said Michael R. Niggli, the president of the utility company. “Having each of these things happen at one time is not something we have considered. That’s not the way the system is designed.”

Six million people lost power, and Mr. Niggli said he had seen nothing on that scale in his three decades at the company. The investigation could take weeks or even months, officials said.

Arizona’s largest utility, APS, said that a worker had been performing maintenance on a substation line when the failure happened, but that it was not clear whether that had been a direct cause.

“Operating and protection protocols typically would have isolated the resulting outage to the Yuma area,” the company said. “The reason that did not occur in this case will be the focal point of the investigation into the event, which already is under way.”

[loodvig]

I here ya poot. Right now there is a room full of suits figuring out how to word this thing. Ferc will be involved.looks like the cost of this thing will be over one hundred million dollars.

We used to call it 'a finger pointing committee'.

[topgroove]

I,m sure he went for his drug test by now. I wouldnt be suprised if they check his phone records, emails, hell they,re gonna know what he had for breakfast.

[Pootnaigle]

One thing to bear in mind is that if they do sumpin to this guy it is the same as an admission of guilt on their part.That could cost em big time.My bet is he skates.

[topgroove]

I hope so poot. I've seen errors on switching orders before.

[T-Man]

Transmission systems are usually based on a network configuration and there are more than one way to keep things going so stuff can be taken out and worked on and still have a feed that can handle the load. Having one person and one piece in control of that big of an area like a choke point would be more of a design flaw. It would be hard to make that, one dudes switching mistake. The guy in the field wouldn't know how all the load has been routed so someone dispatching would have had a full understanding of what could and couldn't be done.They may find a way to blame one person but I'm going to guess there is more to it than we can all sepculate on.

[Pootnaigle]

If its a switching error you can bet they will try and cover it up. If it aint, no matter how pissed off they are at this guy they simply cant risk doing anything to him.His may even be the only name in the whole workforce that top management knows but unless he screws up on a lesser scale he should be Ok.
Its kinda strange but from this day on he will be forever known as the guy that took out half the western world. It will follow him to the end of his days.Personally I hope he lives to see another day and passes on what he learned from all this to his buddies.