Brittle Power- PARTS 1-3 (+Notes) - Natural Capitalism Solutions

Chapter Five: The 1977 New York Blackout 55of insufficient capability within … transmission links”—but neither Con Ednor Pool criteria followed the logic. The reason Con Ed had not realized thatload shedding would produce overvoltage and trip the Big Allis generator atRavenswood was simply that they had never analyzed the behavior of an isolatedCon Ed system. 18 (Most utilities still have not done so. For example,when transmission failures led to the isolation of St. Louis from theMidwestern grid on 13 February 1978, the utility was equally startled. 19 Byluck, the city had at the time a surplus of capacity rather than a deficit, so thefrequency rose rather than falling, and electric service did not collapse.)Unexpected complicationsThe July 1977 New York power failure produced unexpected secondaryconsequences which seriously hampered recovery. There was inadequate lightand power for troubleshooting or manually operating major substations. 20Auxiliary equipment at power stations—lubricating and cooling pumps, boilerfeedwater pumps, and so forth—failed gradually with declining voltage, compromisingand in some cases modestly damaging major equipment. 21(Declining frequency probably also damaged turbine blades through vibration.)22 Assessment of the status of equipment, and coordination of earlyrestoration efforts, was also hampered by the complete failure of Con Ed’sUHF and VHF radio networks. The main repeater had two power sources;one had failed before the blackout and the other failed to start. The back-uppower supply to the back-up repeater station also failed to operate. This triplefailure also exposed shortcomings in radiotelephones and direct telephonelines. The back-up radio repeater was not repowered until another emergencypower source could be hooked up two and half hours later. 23Most dismaying was the unexpectedly rapid loss of pressure in oil neededto insulate and cool the main high-voltage underground power cables. Afterthe 1965 blackout, standby generators had been provided to operate generatorlubricating pumps and other key protective equipment in power stations.The Federal Power Commission had then recommended installing standbypower for pumping oil to the underground cables too—as CommonwealthEdison Co. had done, for less than half a million dollars, in the undergroundChicago cable system. Apparently Con Ed was unaware of this recommendation.That cost them at least five hours in recovery time in 1977. 24 Theythought the cables would hold oil pressure for four to six hours, 25 but pressureactually decayed much faster. This caused many short-circuits and someequipment damage, causing further delays which lost more oil pressure.Finally it was necessary to bring in portable generators to run oil pumps,