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Re: RE: Western Power Outage

You stated that "It's the road not the car that caused the crash."  This is 
true, but the longer the road, the more likely a crash.  The problem seems  to 
be that the power demand far exceeds the capacity of power plants near the 
load centers, so that power has to be transmitted long distances.  The system 
is then vulnerable to grid failures at key points, since there is little, if 
any, reserve in both generation and transmission capacity.  If the additional 
generation capacity of the nuclear plants that are now closed were available, 
the probability of a blackout would be lower. 
Bill Lipton 





In Message Sat, 10 Aug 96 20:33:39 -0500,
  Brent Rogers <brogers@MPS.OHIO-STATE.EDU> writes:

<snip>
>
>I can't help but wonder if these outages would have happened if Rancho
>Seco, Trojan and Fort St. Vrain (all in the effected states) were still on
>the grid.
>
I live 25 miles from San Onofre and my power didn't fail!  However, nobody
has placed the blame for the outage on any GENERATOR, but on the
transmission lines and associated areas [current "theory" is that untrimmed
trees shorted out lines sagging in the heat, if you can believe that one].
Therefore, I don't think that nuclear power plants would have made any
difference at all.  It was the road, not the car that caused the crash.
>Brent Rogers
>brogers@ohstpy.mps.ohio-state.edu
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William G. Nabor
University of California, Irvine
EH&S Office
Irvine, CA,  92697-2725
WGNABOR@UCI.EDU
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