Annual Technical Report 2009

The creation and delivery of power is one basic infrastructure expected by all modern industrial societies. Power distribution basics started in the US in the early 1900s when the first AC grid was established. Since 12 independent power grids were completed in the lower 48 states in the mid-1950s, reliability has been a customer concern. Parts of these earlier grids have been updated, and four of the US grids are tied to similar power grids in Canada. In this context, reliability concerns itself with an understanding of why there are power failures. A power surge in one part of the extended grid may bring down other sections when they are shut down for selfprotection. This action is a self-protection mechanism for the grid which preserves the equipment, but extends the outage to more customers. As one grid becomes larger and more interconnected with other grids, higher power demands, and perhaps larger surges, may be expected. Shut down self-protection, intrinsic design margins, and redundant paths become keys to maintaining reliability. Until a smart grid is developed, which would separate and isolate sections of the grid, the whole grid could come crashing down. Maintenance practices, the incidence of extreme weather events, and the loss of transmission lines or power substations may then dominate the causes of power outages in this complex, dynamic system. Detail Table I presents a summary of major power outages over the last 45 years [1]. Because this is a time dependent table, one can determine if the power reliability is improving or declining over the years. Because the evolution of the power grid is dynamic, one must be careful when drawing conclusions. The items in the following tables show only the major power outages in the US & Canada, Europe, and the rest of the world (International). These failures are typically known by date, weather conditions, grid conditions, cause or causes, locations of failures, extent of failures in population, and duration of the power outage. Table I A Summary of Major Grid Failures Years US & Canada Europe International 19651988 3 fails 3 fails 1 fail 19891994 2 fails None 1 fail 19951999 8 fails 1 fail 7 fails 20002005 11 fails 7 fails 15 fails 20062009 33 fails 16 fails 20 fails 57 Total 27 Total 44 Total The definition of a major grid failure is a) an unplanned event (down for maintenance or rotating blackouts don’t count) that b) affects at least 1000 customers (in this study the number is 30,000 minimum) for c) a total downtime of at least 1,000,000 customer hours. Few major incidents were reported in the 1960s, 1970s, and early 80s. The last 20 years reflects many more outages, and so was divided into smaller groups. Reporting in developed countries (US & Canada and Europe) could not be responsible for this increase. This increase appears to be real, and probably reflects two factors; increasing load on the grid, and the increased cable miles with higher interconnectedness of the grid. The incident curves for the US and Europe are very similar to each other, but different from the international curve. Perhaps, in some of the international entries the change in reporting methods may have added to the increase in reported incidents over the last 45 years. Twelve power grids exist across the US & Canada, and some parts of Mexico. In Western Europe, one large grid exists, and several smaller grids connect most countries. Most of the rest of the world has small self-contained power grids within their country, and are not connected to other grids. It is less likely that power outages beyond the US & Canada or Europe could meet the three criteria for major outages. In fact, if one counts all outages in the US & Canada, there were 76 events in the 1995 to 1999 years, and 140 from 2000 to 2005 [5]. The general trend of Table I reflects increasing major outages since 1970, as well as all outages. Table II shows a basic breakdown of the high level causes. In some cases, there could be multiple interacting events. For example, a windstorm may take down one segment of transmission lines, and that leads to a surge elsewhere which takes down a power grid temporarily. This type of event is reflected only as “high winds” in Table II (i.e. greater than 60 MPH). These events most often occur in the Spring and Fall months as weather patterns change. Two events are listed as cyber attack. These reflect the events of January 2005, and Sept 2007 that brought down the power grid in Brazil [2]. The biggest single cause listed in Table II is snow storms (this includes ice storms) in the US & Canada occurring mainly from December to March. The second biggest item is summer storms. The combination of high winds with lightning and heavy rains may cause an outage. Hurricanes are next at eight events, mostly along the Gulf Coast. Six hurricane events occurred in just three years (2003 to 2005), and this group reflects an irregular hurricane cycle for powerful storms. This cycle has multiple nodes with repeat times of 22 years, 35 years, and 50 years [3], [4]. The years from 1970 to 1995 were a period when the annual number of hurricanes was low, and only one caused an outage. One hurricane in 2008 caused a major outage, and the hurricane trend appears to be for fewer and less powerful storms in the near future [4]. The number of hurricanes in years 1965-2002, and 2006-2009 produced only two major power outages in those 41 years. High winds were next in number. This was important in the US, but not as important in Europe or International regions, though one cause of a power failure in Egypt was listed as “sandstorm”. The “other category” for the US & Canada contains entries such as earthquake, flood, lightning strike, geomagnetic storm (Canada in 1989), and heat wave ( high power usage leading to grid failure). This last incident, like the July 2006 New York City outage, and the August 2006 London outage, can be attributed to multiple events. A multi-day heat wave pushed power consumption of the grid to near its limit. A minor incident then brought the high stressed grid down. The total of all the entries in the “other” category is important, but the events themselves are unique. The same is true of the “other” category for Europe and International. Table II A Breakdown of Major Grid Failures by Cause Main Causes US & Canada Europe Internation al Snow Storm 13fails 3 fails 3 fails Summer Storms 11fails 2 fails 1 fail Hurricane 8 fails None None High Winds 8 fails 1 fail 3 fails Unknown 3 fails 8 fails 11fails Substation 3 fails 2 fails 7 fails Transmissio n Line failures 3 fails 2 fails 4 fails Lightning strike. 2 fails None None Heat Wave 2 fails 2 fails 3 fails Other 4 fails 7 fails 12 fails Total 57fails 27fails 44 fails On the International side, about 1/5 of the power outages (9 of 44) were not given a cause in the reports. A similar problem exists for Europe. Problems at “substations” are the next biggest cause for International regions, while snow storms are a large cause for Europe. “Heat waves” are a common cause (3 incidents each for Europe and International regions) possibly because of the power surge that often accompanies them. Accidents are next in number for International, while transmission line failures are important for both Europe and International. The “other category” is unusually large, and contains entries such as earthquakes, brush fires, floods, lightning strikes, natural gas explosions, incidents of war, terrorist attacks, sandstorms, and cut underseas cables as the detailed causes. The breakdown by regions of the world can be interesting. Of the 57 outages for the US & Canada, 41 could be identified as primarily the US, 14 as primarily Canada, and two were shared (both caused by large winter storms). The raw numbers would suggest Canada reflects more failures than would have been expected. Based upon population, Canada should have had fewer outages during the period. Summer and winter storms combined with high winds and hurricanes totaled 11 of 14 total Canada entries, while these weather issues totaled 21 of the 42 total US incidents. On the European side, there were 27 outages, with the United Kingdom contributing 14 of these. Because Europe is well electrified, and mostly tied to a common grid, this result is surprising. Asia, which is partially electrified, came in second with 26 outages. Australia was the biggest contributor with eight events, with New Zealand and Malaysia next having three each. South America contributed nine major power outages, with Brazil the biggest contributor at four, followed by Venezuela and Colombia with two each. Central America had only three outages, with Mexico sustaining two. Africa logged four outages reported. This may reflect higher levels of grid development in some countries. A few countries such as Poland, Spain, Italy, Nigeria, Ukraine, China, and Taiwan had only one reported incident each during the last 20 years.