Power outage

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This article is about accidental power failures. For intentionally engineered ones, see rolling blackout.
Tree limbs create a short circuit in electrical lines during a storm. This will typically result in a power outage to the area supplied by these lines.

A power outage (also known as a power cut, power failure, power loss, or blackout) is a short- or long-term loss of the electric power to an area.

There are many causes of power failures in an electricity network. Examples of these causes include, faults at power stations, damage to power lines, substations or other parts of the distribution system, a short circuit, or the overloading of electricity mains.

Blackout.

Power outages are categorized into three different phenomena, relating to the duration and effect of the outage:

  • A dropout is a momentary (usually less than one second) loss of power typically caused by a temporary fault on a power line. Power is quickly (and sometimes automatically) restored once the fault is cleared.
  • A brownout or sag is a drop in voltage in an electrical power supply. The term brownout comes from the dimming experienced by lighting when the voltage sags.
  • A blackout refers to the total loss of power to an area and is the most severe form of power outage that can occur. Blackouts which result from or result in power stations tripping are particularly difficult to recover from quickly. Outages may last from a few hours to a few weeks depending on the nature of the blackout and the configuration of the electrical network.
Dropout.

Power failures are particularly critical at sites where the environment and public safety are at risk. Institutions such as hospitals, sewage treatment plants, mines, etc., will usually have backup power sources, such as standby generators, which will automatically start up when electrical power is lost. Other critical systems, such as telecommunications, are also required to have emergency power. Telephone exchange rooms usually have arrays of lead-acid batteries for backup and also a socket for connecting a generator during extended periods of outage.

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[edit] Effects of a brownout

Different types of electrical apparatus will react in different ways to a sag. Some devices will be severely affected, while others may not be affected at all.

  • The heat output of any resistance device, such as an electric space heater will vary with the true power consumption, which is proportional to the square of the applied voltage. Therefore a significant loss of heat output will occur with a relatively small reduction in voltage. Similarly, an incandescent lamp will dim due to the lower heat emission from the filament. Generally speaking, no damage will occur but functionality will be impaired.
  • Commutated electric motors, such as universal motors, whose mechanical power output also varies with the square of the applied voltage, will run at reduced speed and reduced torque. Depending on the motor design, no harm may occur. However, under load, the motor will draw more current due to the reduced back-EMF developed at the lower armature speed. Unless the motor has ample cooling capacity, it may eventually overheat and burn out.
  • An induction motor will draw more current to compensate for the decreased voltage, which may lead to overheating and burnout.
  • An unregulated direct current linear power supply (consisting of a transformer, rectifier and output filtering) will produce a lower output voltage for electronic circuits, with more ripple, resulting in slower oscillation and frequency rates. In a CRT television, this can be seen as the screen image shrinking in size and becoming dim and fuzzy. The device will also attempt to draw more current in compensation, potentially resulting in overheating.
  • A switching power supply may be affected, depending on the design. If the input voltage is too low, it is possible for a switching power supply to malfunction and self-destruct.

[edit] Protecting the power system from outages

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 The examples and perspective in this Section deal primarily with the United States and do not represent a worldwide view of the subject. Please improve this article and discuss the issue on the talk page.

In power supply networks, the power generation and the electrical load (demand) must be very close to equal every second to avoid overloading of network components, which can severely damage them. In order to prevent this, parts of the system will automatically disconnect themselves from the rest of the system, or shut themselves down to avoid damage. This is analogous to the role of relays and fuses in households.

Under certain conditions, a network component shutting down can cause current fluctuations in neighboring segments of the network, though this is unlikely, leading to a cascading failure of a larger section of the network. This may range from a building, to a block, to an entire city, to an entire electrical grid.

Modern power systems are designed to be resistant to this sort of cascading failure, but it may be unavoidable (see below). Moreover, since there is no short-term economic benefit to preventing rare large-scale failures, some observers have expressed concern that there is a tendency to erode the resilience of the network over time, which is only corrected after a major failure occurs. It has been claimed that reducing the likelihood of small outages only increases the likelihood of larger ones. In that case, the short-term economic benefit of keeping the individual customer happy increases the likelihood of large-scale blackouts.

Title XIII of the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007, signed by President Bush on December 19, 2007, makes it the policy of the United States to upgrade the United State's existing electricity grids with advanced communications and embedded sensors to create a smart grid that can avoid power outages (in addition to lowering grid-related CO2 and reducing energy consumption). The Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) has estimated that each year power outages and disruptions cost Americans more than $100 Billion.

[edit] Protecting computer systems from power outages

Computer systems and other electronic storage devices are susceptible to data loss or hardware damage that can be caused by the sudden loss of power. To protect against this, the use of an uninterruptible power supply or UPS can provide a constant flow of electricity in the event that a primary power supply becomes unavailable for a short period of time.

[edit] Restoring power after a wide-area outage

Restoring power after a wide-area outage can be difficult, as power stations need to be brought back on-line. Normally, this is done with the help of power from the rest of the grid. In the total absence of grid power, a so-called black start needs to be performed to bootstrap the power grid into operation. The means of doing so will depend greatly on local circumstances and operational policies, but typically transmission utilities will establish localized 'power islands' which are then progressively coupled together. To maintain supply frequencies within tolerable limits during this process, demand must be reconnected at the same pace that generation is restored, requiring close coordination between power stations, transmission and distribution organizations.

[edit] Blackout inevitability and electric sustainability

[edit] Self organized criticality

It has recently been argued on the basis of historical data[1] and computer modeling[2] that power grids are self-organized critical systems. These systems exhibit unavoidable[3] disturbances of all sizes, up to the size of the entire system. This phenomenon has been attributed to steadily increasing demand/load, the economics of running a power company, and the limits of modern engineering.[4] While blackout frequency has been shown to be reduced by operating it further from its critical point, it generally isn’t economically feasible, causing providers to increase the average load over time or upgrade less often resulting in the grid moving itself closer to its critical point. Conversely, a system past the critical point will experience too many blackouts leading to system-wide upgrades moving it back below the critical point. The term critical point of the system is used here in the sense of statistical physics and nonlinear dynamics, representing the point where a system undergoes a phase transition; in this case the transition from a steady reliable grid with few cascading failures to a very sporadic unreliable grid with common cascading failures. Near the critical point the relationship between blackout frequency and size follows a power law distribution[4]. Other leaders are dismissive of system theories that conclude that blackouts are inevitable, but do agree that the basic operation of the grid must be changed. The Electric Power Research Institute champions the use of smart grid features such as power control devices employing advanced sensors to coordinate the grid. Others advocate greater use of electronically controlled High-voltage direct current (HVDC) firebreaks to prevent disturbances from cascading across AC lines in a wide area grid.[5]

Cascading failure becomes much more common close to this critical point. The power law relationship is seen in both historical data and model systems[4]. The practice of operating these systems much closer to their maximum capacity leads to magnified effects of random, unavoidable disturbances due to aging, weather, human interaction etc. While near the critical point, these failures have a greater effect on the surrounding components due to individual components carrying a larger load. This results in the larger load from the failing component having to be redistributed in larger quantities across the system, making it more likely for additional components not directly affected by the disturbance to fail, igniting costly and dangerous cascading failures[4]. These initial disturbances causing blackouts are all the more unexpected and unavoidable due to actions of the power suppliers to prevent obvious disturbances (cutting back trees, separating lines in windy areas, replacing aging components etc). The complexity of most power grids often makes the initial cause of a blackout extremely hard to identify.

[edit] Mitigation of power outage frequency

The effects of trying to mitigate cascading failures near the critical point in an economically feasible fashion are often shown to not be beneficial and often even detrimental. Four mitigation methods have been tested using the OPA blackout model[6]:

  • Increase critical number of failures causing cascading blackouts - Shown to decrease the frequency of smaller blackouts but increase that of larger blackouts.
  • Increase individual power line max load – Shown to increase the frequency of smaller blackouts and decrease that of larger blackouts.
  • Combination of increasing critical number and max load of lines – Shown to have no significant effect on either size of blackout. The resulting minor reduction in the frequency of blackouts is projected to not be worth the cost of the implementation.
  • Increase the excess power available to the grid – Shown to decrease the frequency of smaller blackouts but increase that of larger blackouts.

In addition to the finding of each mitigation strategy having a cost-benefit relationship with regards to frequency of small and large blackouts, the total number of blackout events was not significantly reduced by any of the above mentioned mitigation measures[6].

A complex network-based model to control large cascading failures (blackouts) using local information only was proposed in A. E. Motter[7].

[edit] See also

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[edit] References

  1. ^ IEEE Computer Society Conference Publishing Services
  2. ^ Microsoft Word - HICSS2002-paper2
  3. ^ http://eceserv0.ece.wisc.edu/~dobson/PAPERS/carrerasHICSS00.pdf
  4. ^ a b c d Dobson et al. Complex systems analysis of series of blackouts: Cascading failure, critical points, and self-organization. Chaos 17, 2007.
  5. ^ Peter Fairley (2004-08). "The Unruly Power Grid". IEEE Spectrum (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers). http://www.cigre-c1-forum.org/Noticeboard_files/Unruly_grids.pdf. Retrieved 2008-12-19. 
  6. ^ a b Dobson et al. Blackout Mitigation Assessment in Power Transmission Systems. System Sciences 2003.
  7. ^ Cascade control and defense in complex networks, Phys. Rev. Lett. 93, 098701 (2004).

[edit] External links

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