Comments on: Calling BS

By: Jaycee

Jaycee — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 09:58:04 +0000

Alternative explanation for those power outages : maintenance has been decreased to cut costs and improve profits, and more outages are being blamed on weather in order to avoid contractual penalties.

“It wasn’t our fault, that micro burst windstorm took out the lines. We’re not liable.”

I’m not suggesting this definitely IS the cause, just pointing out that it’s easy for alternative explanations to be pretty plausible.

By: Foxfier

Foxfier — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 01:36:29 +0000

I know the Methow Valley has had a lot more power outages– because environmentalists are suing to prevent repair or expansion of the only route for power to get into the area, so a single bad snow storm or even a *car accident* can take power out of the entire area.

Causes like that might effect other places.

By: Michael

Michael — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 00:41:34 +0000

Here in Cincinnati, Ike and a few dry summers put a strain on many of the older trees in the area. It’s not uncommon for these trees to drop branches and take out power lines. I could see how some might claim each of the outages were related to Ike. But in the end it’s just a natural event (Ike) that caused a change to the local ecosystem (trees) that takes a few years to express.

By: DrTorch

DrTorch — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 21:31:09 +0000

Craig,

Actually there was a huge landfall hurricane (Ike) in 2008. It went up the Mississipi River and affected the midwest. Folks in OH were w/o power for a few days. Very atypical.

By: Craig Loehle

Craig Loehle — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 20:36:33 +0000

Several things have been happening. The major building period for power lines and stations was several decades ago. Aging transmission systems will have more outages. Second, resistance to building more power plants means the system is more strained now (closer to max capacity) which also means more outages. The biggest bar in 2008 was hurricanes + storms but there were no (pretty sure) landfall hurricanes in 2008 but plenty of snowstorms that downed power lines.

By: Scott

Scott — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 20:21:02 +0000

Seems that the non-weather related grid disturbances want to ignore the rolling blackouts in California in 2000-2001, the New England grid collapse in 2003, and the rolling blackouts in California in 2005? I would expect outage spikes around these time periods.

By: Nobrainer

Nobrainer — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 19:57:50 +0000

Although it appears that NERC has reports on similar, if not the same, data.

By: Nobrainer

Nobrainer — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 19:46:01 +0000

Unfortunately the reported information source is woefully incomplete.

By: DrTorch

DrTorch — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 19:09:27 +0000

Couldn’t demographics simply be a part of it?

The populations of NC and FL continue to grow, and these are states that are most affected by hurricanes. Used to be people didn’t live there b/c they are the states most affected by hurricanes. But now we have Federal Disaster Relief.

Anyway, if we have many people moving to where natural disasters strike more often, it seems as though we’ll see an uptick in electrical grid disturbances, even if number of storms or their intensity stays the same.