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Copyright P. Kundur
This material should not be used without the author's consent
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! Approximately 50 million people in 8 states in the
US and 2 Canadian provinces affected
" 63 GW of load interrupted (11% of total load
supplied by Eastern North American
Interconnected System)
! During this disturbance, over 400 transmission lines
and 531 generating units at 261 power plants tripped
! For details refer to: "Final Report of Aug 14, 2003
Blackout in the US and Canada: Causes and
Recommendations", US-Canada Power System
Outage Task Force, April 5, 2004. www.NERC.com
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! Electricity demand high but not unusually high
! Power transfer levels high, but within established
limits and previous operating conditions
! Planned outages of generating units in the affected
area: Cook 2, Davis Bess plant, East Lake 4, Sammis
3 and Monroe 1
! Reactive power supply problems in the regions of
Indiana and Ohio prior to noon
! Operators took actions to boost voltages
" voltages within limits
! System operating in compliance with NERC
operating policies prior to 15:05 Eastern Daylight
Time
Aug 14, 2003 US-Canada Blackout
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! The Midwest ISO (MISO) state estimator and real-
time contingency analysis (RTCA) software not
functioning properly from 12:15 to 16:04
" prevented MISO from performing proper "early
warning" assessments as the events were
unfolding
! At the First Energy (FE) Control Center, a number of
computer software problems occurred on the
Energy Management System (EMS) starting at 14:14
" contributed to inadequate situation awareness
at FE until 15:45
! The first significant event was the outage of East
Lake generating unit #5 in the FE system at 13:31:34
" producing high reactive power output
" voltage regulator tripped to manual on
overexcitation
" unit tripped when operator tried to restore AVR
cont'd
Aug 14, 2003 US-Canada Blackout
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ONTARIO
2
1
ONTARIO
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! Initial line trips in Ohio, all due to tree contact:
" Chamberlin-Harding 345 kV line at 15:05:41
" Hanna-Juniper 345 kV line at 15:32:03
" Star-South Canton 345 kV line at 15:41:35
! Due to EMS failures at FE and MISO control centers,
no proper actions (such as load shedding) taken
! Critical event leading to widespread cascading
outages in Ohio and beyond was tripping of
Sammis-Star 345 kV line at 16:05:57
" Zone 3 relay operation due to low voltage and
high power flow
! Load shedding in northeast Ohio at this stage could
have prevented cascading outages that following
Aug 14, 2003 US-Canada Blackout
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(3:05:41)
(3:32:03)
Star- S. Canton (3:41:35)
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Sammis-Star
(4:05:57.5)
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! Tripping of many additional 345 kV lines in Ohio and
Michigan by Zone 3 (or Zone 2 set similar to Zone 3)
relays
! Tripping of several generators in Ohio and Michigan
! At 16:10:38, due to cascading loss of major lines in
Ohio and Michigan, power transfer from Canada
(Ontario) to the US on the Michigan border shifted
" power started flowing counter clockwise from
Pennsylvania through New York and Ontario
into Michigan
" 3700 MW of reverse power flow to serve loads
in Michigan and Ohio, which were severed
from rest of interconnected system except
Ontario
! Voltage collapsed due to extremely heavy loadings
on transmission lines
! Cascading outages of several hundred lines and
generators leading to blackout of the region
Aug 14, 2003 US-Canada Blackout
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Areas Affected by the Blackout
Service maintained
in some area
Some Local Load
Interrupted
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1. Inadequate understanding of the power system
requirements:
# First Energy (FE) failed to conduct rigorous
long-term planning studies and sufficient
voltage stability analyses of Ohio control area
# FE used operational criteria that did not reflect
actual system behaviour and needs
# ECAR (East Central Area Reliability Council)
did not conduct an independent review or
analysis of FE's voltage criteria and operating
needs
# Some NERC planning standards were
sufficiently ambiguous that FE could interpret
them in a way that resulted in inadequate
reliability for system operation
cont'd
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2. Inadequate level of situation awareness:
# FE failed to ensure security of its system after
significant unforeseen contingencies
# FE lacked procedures to ensure that its
operators were continually aware of the
functional state of their critical monitoring
tools
# FE did not have adequate backup tools for
system monitoring
3. Inadequate level of vegetation management (tree
trimming)
# FE failed to adequately manage tree growth
into transmission rights-of-way
$ resulted in the outage of three 345 kV
lines and one 138 kV line
cont'd
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4. Inadequate level of support from the Reliability
Coordinator
# due to failure of state estimator, MISO did not
become aware of FE's system problems early
enough
$ did not provide assistance to FE
# MISO and PJM (Regional Transmission
operator) did not have in place an adequate
level of procedures and guidelines for dealing
with security limit violations due to a
contingency near their common boundary
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! Pre-disturbance conditions:
" system moderately loaded
" facilities out of services for maintenance:
$ 400 kV lines in South Sweden
$ 4 nuclear units in South Sweden
$ 3 HVDC links to Germany and Poland
! The first contingency was loss of a 1200 MW nuclear unit
in South Sweden at 12:30 due to problems with steam
valves
" increase of power transfer from the north
" system security still acceptable
! Five minutes later (at 12:35) a disconnector damage
caused a double busbar fault at a location 300 km away
from the first contingency
" resulted in loss of a number of lines in the
southwestern grid and two 900 MW nuclear units
! At 12:37, voltage collapse in the eastern grid section
south of Stockholm area
" isolated southern Sweden and eastern Denmark
system from northern and central grid
cont'd
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At 12.30: Loss of a 1200 MW
Nuclear Unit
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At 12.35: Double bus-bar fault leading to
-Loss of two 900 MW Nuclear Units
-Disrupture of the south-western grid
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Voltage Collapse
Isolated Subsystem
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The blacked-out area after the grid separation at 12.37
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! The isolated system had enough generation to cover
only about 30% of its demand
" voltage and frequency collapsed within a few
seconds, blacking out the area
! Impact of the blackout:
" loss of 4700 MW load in south Sweden
$ 1.6 million people affected
$ City of Malmo and regional airports and rail
transportation without power
" loss of 1850 MW in eastern Denmark
$ 2.4 million people affected
$ City of Copenhagen, airport and rail
transportation without power
! Result of an (n-3) contingency, well beyond "design
contingencies"
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! Predisturbance conditions (Sunday, 3:00 am):
" total load in Italy was 27,700 MW, with 3638 MW
pump load
" total import from rest of Europe was 6651 MW
! Sequence of events:
" a tree flashover caused tripping of a major tie-line
between Italy and Switzerland (Mettlen-Lavorgo
380 kV line) at 03:01:22
" Sychro-check relay prevented automatic and manual
reclosure of line due to the large angle (42) across
the breaker
" resulted in an overload on a parallel path
" attempts to reduce the overload by Swiss
transmission operators by network change was not
successful
" at 03:21 import by Italy was reduced by 300 MW but
was not sufficient to mitigate the overload of a
second 380 kV line (Sils-Soazza), which tripped at
03:25:22 due to sag and tree contact
cont'd
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" the cascading trend continued and the power
deficit in Italy was such that the ties to France,
Austria and Slovania were tripped
" the outages left the Italian system with a power
shortage of 6400 MW
" the frequency decay could not be controlled
adequately by under-frequency load shedding
" over the course of several minutes, the entire
Italian System collapsed at 3:28:00
! The blackout affected about 60 million people
" total energy not delivered 180 GWh
" worst blackout in the history of Italy
" power was restored after 3 hours in the
northern area and during the same day for
most of Italy