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It only took one human error and about 4 seconds to leave
over 30 million people without electricity; the second largest power outage in
U.S. history.
The Incident
On November 9, 1965 at about 5:15pm, a faulty relay tripped
at the Ontario - New York border near Niagara Falls due to a surge coming from the
Adam Beck-Niagara hydroelectric plant near Queenston, Ontario. Within 2.5
seconds, five other lines became overloaded and had tripped, causing the
isolation and return of 1,800 MW of power to lines headed in to the U.S. A
widespread separation throughout the northeastern grid (CANUS) followed in
seconds. Electric utilities isolated from connection to the CANUS power grid
subsequently failed to meet and sustain their loads.
This resulted in the loss of power for most of Connecticut,
Massachusetts, New York, and Rhode Island as well as a large portion of Ontario,
Canada. New Hampshire, Vermont, and northern parts of Pennsylvania and New
Jersey also experienced varying levels of power failure.
It took up to 14 hours to restore power for all those
affected by the blackout. The power loss had the biggest impact on major cities
such as New York City, where about 800,000 were left stranded for hours in a
multitude of everyday situations, including subway trains, elevators, and
building stairways. Many hospitals, which lacked backup generators, were also
left without power for their operations.
The image to the right depicts the blackout at Grand Central Railway Station in NYC. (Source: George
Mason University)
The Cause
After six days of investigation, the Federal Power
Commission found human error to be the cause of failure. A single safety relay,
which operated as expected, was set lower than the current capacity of the
transmission line (oops…). During peak energy-usage hours, it was inevitable
that the relay would eventually trip.
This trip caused a key transmission line to disconnect,
triggering a series of line overloads which separated major generation sources
from load centers. Other power plants were shut off automatically to prevent
their turbines from overloading. The whole incident was described as a "cascade
effect" much like a row of falling dominoes.
The Effect
In the aftermath of the blackout, reliability councils such
as the Northeast Power Coordinating Council (NPCC) and National Electric
Reliability Council (NERC) were formed to establish standards and improve the
coordination between service providers. Most notably, a single-contingency loss
standard was set up to keep the grid system functioning if a single unit
(generator or transition line) failed.
 The lack of voltage and current monitoring was considered a
significant factor in the events of the incident. Consequently, new metering
and monitoring equipment was developed to standardize and improve flow
analysis.
The reserve capacity of many facilities was also bolstered
by these events to maintain in the case of power failures.
Lessons Learned?
Maybe you've had to deal with or help fix systems that
failed in similar (smaller scale) incidents to the 1965 blackout, or
maybe you've been involved in developing preventative maintenance, analysis, or
safety measures for power failure situations. How do our electrical systems today compare to those of years ago?
The blackout of 1965 taught the U.S. a lesson in the fragility
of its electrical power grid. It took only one unchecked human error and some
bad decisions made after the initial failure to cause massive power loss
across the northeast United States.
Maybe you were around for the 1965 blackout. If not, maybe
you remember subsequent outages occurring in 1977 and 2003, both which left
millions without power. Were these mistakes acceptable or unavoidable, or were
they merely failures to learn from past mistakes?
Image Source: comcast.net
References:
SEMP
GMU - Blackout History
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Re: Who Turned Out the Lights? - 1965 Blackout
