A HOLIDAY OPPORTUNITY
spectre
A Proposal for the Adoption of the Blackout as a Holiday
In Berlin there is a blown up church you drive by everyday, still
there from World War 2. They kept it there as a reminder of the time
we bombed Berlin. It is a powerful, lucid monument to a complicated
era of history.
The reason we can reach no satisfying solution as to how to
memorialize Ground Zero is because we tore it down already. The
shards were beautiful, like a tree struck by lightning, a natural and
perfect horribly sordid shape. We should have kept it. Had we been
braver, or more honest, we would have. Instead we treated it like
vandalism, and cleaned it off. Any memorial at Ground Zero will never
quite satisfy without it. Anyway, we feel we do not memorialize
enough and it is in this spirit we call to formalize, as a holiday,
the August 14 Blackout.
It could be our version of Carnival, and we could use one. It
requires no municipal support. We as a people could simply do it. A
harmless ritual: You come home from work, or wherever, switch off
your circuit breakers, and that's all, it begins. It is not a
debauchery, not a wild night, but perhaps a free one. Free of the
system, free of the machine, free of the exhaustive burdens of
ambition. Free of electricity, and the 24 hours a day you-don't-stop
that goes with it. There was a time, before electricity, when people
simply retired at night. What else could you do? It was dark. Not
anymore. Progress has its compromise. The blackout took us back to
the basics, of who we are as human beings, with none of this shine
and polish to distract us from the truth.
As with anything good, the blackout as a holiday would be optional;
none of the hospitals must shut down, no vital services would close.
No one must do anything. But for those who can do it, and wish to,
the blackout offers a pre-existing holiday so simple to celebrate
there is almost no reason not to. Every August 14 we could easily
stage a re-enactment of the largest-known naturally-occurring party
in the history of the human race. The city went dark that night and
10 million people did not flip out or riot, or conduct themselves in
any way sinister or foul. Newscasters were amazed at how peaceful it
was. What we did do is get giddily drunk; we danced in the streets,
we opened the hydrants, we made love on rooftops, we handed out sushi
and ice cream. Enterprising restaurants will repeat this last aspect;
bars will sell dollar beers, and those that do will remain beloved
for their unnecessary generosity. Kindness, we have seen, is good
business. The blackout instinctively reminded us, for it was in
living memory, of our city's experience during the weeks following
9/11. Everyone was kind to each other, thoughtful, considerate. You
didn't know which stranger passing by had had someone close to them
die, and all normal modes of self segregation collapsed. With no real
alternative, we were just kind to everyone. We were beautiful. We
were as we would want to be, and as we would want others to be to us,
if there weren't so much wearying over-complicated bullshit to wear
down our decency. We were not competitive; we all pulled together,
looked out for each other, reached out. We held communion. This is a
worthwhile sentiment to exercise, periodically.
And the blackout brought this out it us, instinctively, collectively,
again. Do you remember how it felt? You could see stars in midtown.
It was giddy and magical, like a snow day. It is in remembrance of
this remarkable spirit that we advocate and endorse the unofficial
popular acceptance of August 14 as the purely optional -- but fucking
beautiful -- New York citywide recreational blackout, an unequaled
holiday opportunity. Flip the switch, and enjoy.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2003_North_America_blackout
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COMMENT
"rad. I too had an amazing experience on that date. true appreciaters
may comemorate the day by leaning away from technology in little ways
throughout their lives. sometimes its nice to sit in a dark candel lit
room. I dont play acoustic instruments, but those who do may have felt
galvanized by the experience. Meybe the memory will tip the scale
one day in deciding whether to walk or take a car .
As far as a holiday is concerned, sure. well never be able to
reproduce that moment exactly, but that wouldnt be the point. The
exitement came from a new behavior filling the void left by
electricity; proof that night life is independant of con ed.
Lights of all kinds have come to represent the life of the city,
like led indicators on electronic eqipment. True, most of the citys
lights are utilitys (street lamps, traffic lights, lights from all
kinds of windows, ads), but light on some buildings and monuments are
used with the sort of pomp and circumstance of public entertainment. I
dont know what part of the empire state buildings electrical bill is
for their nightly multycolored display but im sure it aint cheap.
They do it because of their pride in the building, and as a small gift
to the city. The continuity created by many buildings participating in
this nightly pagent is like living in a generator of civic emotion,
transforming all other lights into part of the show, radiating from the
suited up, jumbotron skins of time square to the remotest beacon of
outgoing ferrys.
When thats all gone its like the tv getting unplugged. The illusion
is gone but your apt still exists. so do your friends. It turns out,
beer still exists. would it taste different in some tiny way if no
commercials for it existed? Ive been reading alot about reducing
certain technologys and this seemed like a cool sentiment. anyway,
happy blackout. hope you read yr email before you turn off tonight."
spectre
http://www.blackoutday.ca/results.html
http://www.streetsareforpeople.org/blog/?p=23
http://www.flickr.com/photos/martinreis/sets/72157606733589660/
AUGUST 14 BLACKOUT AS HOLIDAY
http://www.eyeweekly.com/article/36352
Blackout Anniversary Parade
BY Chris Bilton / August 15, 2008
TORONTO - “Where were you when the lights went out?” There’s about
100-150 of us amassed in front of Central Tech as local jazzer-about-
town Richard Underhill leads the crowd through a few refrains of this
tune, which he’s written for the fifth anniversary of the Big
Blackout. It’s nearly 9pm, and the extensive horn section, goth-punk
circus performers, costumed eccentrics, fire dancer, Streets Are for
People enthusiasts, photobloggers, filmmakers and random curious
citizens have just been joined by a legion of Critical Mass cyclists,
all ringing bells and post-ride glow.
We’re waiting for the go code — the word from on high. We’re waiting
for a man in a full Sorcerer’s Apprentice Mickey Mouse costume to lead
us on a quest to reclaim the intersection of Bloor and Spadina in
celebration of that one impossible day when Toronto (and most of the
eastern seaboard) went dark.
The crowd has been growing steadily since the scheduled 8pm meet-up
time. With a number of community groups participating — the
aforementioned Streets Are for People and Critical Mass, along with
Newmindspace, Reclaim the Streets, Drummers in Exile, Take the Tooker,
Bike Pirates (you get the idea) — the word is out and everyone is in
great spirits.
Even when I first arrived and people started getting calls about a
huge storm over Dufferin Street, everyone seemed to be trying to
ignore the impending doom-rain by watching the sky melt through a few
layers of threatening hues: orange, rust, blood. The massive bursts of
lightning that scraped across the westward Bathurst skyline at unreal
angles elicit much cheering and awe. It’s almost as electric as the
pent up energy of a crowd of people preparing to illegally parade
though the main street of Canada’s biggest city.
Chatting with people as we wait, most were in the city for North
America’s biggest power outage. The few who were out of the area say
they were sorry to have missed it — I guess this is one disaster that
qualified as being pretty fun. One guy recounts how he was off that
day hanging out in a park when all of a sudden scores of people
started showing up and having picnics. It took him a little while to
realize what was going on. I, like many people, was working that day
and delighted in being set free well before my shift at a Queen Street
home-furnishings shop was due to end. I still remember just hanging
out on the curb with the rest of the staff and chatting with
passersby, trying to piece together what was going on and what it all
meant.
At 9pm, Mickey Mouse (who is actually Streets Are for People’s Shamez
Amlani) gives the crowd its final instructions: the parade will creep
along Sussex Street and up Robert. “And then when we hit Bloor, the
shit busts open wide.”
As we begin to March and the crowd stretches out like a many-celled
organism, I try to gauge just how many people are out here. We are
rounding corners and Sussex Street is appropriately dark, but I can
see people peering out their windows, shocked that the strange noise
out on their quiet residential street is actually a parade in
progress. I’m surprised that more of them don’t come down and join in.
I mean, who wouldn’t want to join a seemingly random late-night
parade?
As soon as Bloor Street is in sight, the big whoop-up begins.
Underhill (pictured above) leads the band through a wicked Mingus-
styled jam on his “Where were you?” theme, which works perfectly for
the oddball ensemble now comprised of djembes, bagpipes, a percussion
corps and a considerably expanded version of the Kensington Horns.
We overtake Bloor and Spadina for about 15 minutes. There’s so much
dancing and drumming that it’s hard to decide what to do. A picnic
table supporting a kiddie pool full of water is now a dancing station
for three girls and a hose. Shamez/Mickey is scurrying around the
intersection setting up pylons to divert the traffic. A bunch of young
maple trees are posted around the perimeter. Eventually the police
show up, but it’s already speech time and Shamez is explaining that we
just demonstrated that this intersection could be a piazza with a
fountain where people could hang out.
The intersection is clear within minutes and the crowd either
disperses or joins up with the not-so-silent Street Rave beside the
domino sculpture in the Art Park. I manage to corner Shamez for a few
minutes to get his thoughts on the evening. “It went off without a
hitch,” he says, “although we couldn’t get all the streetlights off.
But this is fun and quirky. That’s why the costume: you can’t put
handcuffs on these big mitts.”
“For a brief 10 minutes a hole opened up in the space-time continuum,”
he says, explaining that it’s wrong to think that this intersection is
static and can’t be changed. There’s no reason why we shouldn’t have a
park where people can fall in love and hang out. The subway is still
running below us. “Cars have enough streets,” he adds. “We need more
streets for people.”
If ever there was an appropriate occasion for thinking outside the
urban box, the blackout certainly qualifies. If only we could make
Aug. 14 some kind of civic holiday.
PREVIOUSLY ON SPECTRE --- A HOLIDAY OPPORTUNITY
http://groups.google.com/group/spectre_event_horizon_group/browse_thread/thread/c18138d950899bfe/aa7b9590fb5dd982
XXXXX AUGUST 14 XXXXX
OR JUST WAIT FOR ANOTHER
http://www.oe.energy.gov/our_organization/blackout.htm
http://www.nysun.com/editorials/blackout-of-2010/26624/
http://www.amsc.com/products/hydra.cfm
A CASCADE OF FAILURES
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=preventing-blackouts-power-grid
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=2003-blackout-five-years-later
The 2003 Northeast Blackout--Five Years Later
Tougher regulatory measures are in place, but we're still a long way
from a "smart" power grid
BY J.R. Minkel / August 13, 2008
On August 14, 2003, shortly after 2 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time, a high-
voltage power line in northern Ohio brushed against some overgrown
trees and shut down—a fault, as it's known in the power industry. The
line had softened under the heat of the high current coursing through
it. Normally, the problem would have tripped an alarm in the control
room of FirstEnergy Corporation, an Ohio-based utility company, but
the alarm system failed.
Over the next hour and a half, as system operators tried to understand
what was happening, three other lines sagged into trees and switched
off, forcing other power lines to shoulder an extra burden. Overtaxed,
they cut out by 4:05 P.M., tripping a cascade of failures throughout
southeastern Canada and eight northeastern states.
All told, 50 million people lost power for up to two days in the
biggest blackout in North American history. The event contributed to
at least 11 deaths and cost an estimated $6 billion.
So, five years later, are we still at risk for a massive blackout?
In February 2004, after a three-month investigation, the U.S.–Canada
Power System Outage Task Force concluded that a combination of human
error and equipment failures had caused the blackout. The group's
final report made a sweeping set of 46 recommendations to reduce the
risk of future widespread blackouts. First on the list was making
industry reliability standards mandatory and legally enforceable.
Prior to the blackout, the North American Electricity Reliability
Council (NERC) set voluntary standards. In the wake of the blackout
report, Congress passed the Energy Policy Act of 2005, which expanded
the role of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) by
requiring it to solicit, approve and enforce new reliability standards
from NERC, now the North American Electricity Reliability Corporation.
FERC has so far approved 96 new reliability standards.* These cover
the three Ts—"trees, training and tools"—identified by the blackout
task force but are not limited to them, says Joseph McClelland,
director of FERC's Office of Electric Reliability, which was
established last September. Standard PER-003, for example, requires
that operating personnel have at least the minimum training needed to
recognize and deal with critical events in the grid; standard FAC-003
makes it mandatory to keep trees clear of transmission lines; standard
TOP-002-1 requires that that grid operating systems be able to survive
a power line fault or any other single failure, no matter how severe.
FERC can impose fines of up to a million dollars a day for an
infraction, depending on its flagrancy and the risk incurred.
If the standards have reduced the number of blackouts, the evidence
has yet to bear it out. A study of NERC blackout data by researchers
at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh found that the frequency
of blackouts affecting more than 50,000 people has held fairly
constant at about 12 per year from 1984 to 2006. Co-author Paul Hines,
now assistant professor of engineering at the University of Vermont in
Burlington, says current statistics indicate that a 2003-level
blackout will occur every 25 years.
He says many researchers believe that cascading blackouts may be
inherent in the grid's complexity, but he still sees room for
improvement. "I think we can definitely make it less frequent than
once every 25 years."
The U.S. power grid consists of three loosely connected parts,
referred to as interconnections: eastern, western and Texas. Within
each, high-voltage power lines transmit electricity from generating
sources such as coal or hydroelectric plants to local utilities that
distribute power to homes and businesses, where lights, refrigerators,
computers and myriad other "loads" tap that energy.
Because electricity in power lines cannot be stored, generation and
load have to match up at all times or the grid enters blackout
territory. That can result from a lack of generating capacity—the
cause of the 2000 California blackouts—or because of one or more
faults, as in the 2003 blackout. The interconnectedness of the grid
makes it easier to compensate for local variations in load and
generation but it also gives blackouts a wider channel over which to
spread.
Transmission system operators scattered across some 300 control
centers nationwide monitor voltage and current data from SCADA
(supervisory control and data acquisition) systems placed at
transformers, generators and other critical points. Power engineers
monitor the data looking for signs of trouble and, ideally,
communicate with one another to stay abreast of important changes.
One of the realizations since 2003 is that "you can't just look at
your system. You've got to look at how your system affects your
neighbors and vice versa," says Arshad Mansoor, vice president of
power delivery and utilization with the Electric Power Research
Institute of Palo Alto, Calif.
Until recently, there was no one place to view information from across
the grid. McClelland says FERC is working with industry and other
government agencies to pull data into a prototype coast-to-coast real-
time monitoring system at its Washington, D.C., headquarters. "We have
put the system together and it is functional," he says, although "some
parts are better than others": FERC has full coverage of the western
U.S. and good information from the Southeast, he says, but data from
Texas and other areas is still spotty.
Gathering the data is only the beginning. The holy grail is a smart
grid capable of monitoring and repairing itself, similar to the way
air traffic control systems are used to coordinate aircraft routes.
Mansoor says that dream is still a good 20 years away because it
depends on better data, a reliable communications network and computer
programs capable of making decisions based on the data.
One promising tool for collecting better data is called a phasor
measurement unit (PMU), which measures voltage and current on power
lines and uses GPS (global positioning system) connections to time-
stamp its data down to the microsecond. That level of resolution
across a network of PMUs could reveal an important electrical property
of power lines called phase, which tells whether power generators are
rotating in sync with respect to one another, Hines says.
When a blackout approaches, that difference, called the phase, is
believed to grow rapidly. "A lot of people have conjectured that if we
could have seen that the [phase] distance between generators was
increasing [on August 14, 2003], we could have prevented the
blackout," Hines says.
There are currently about 100 PMUs installed in the eastern
interconnection, up from zero in 2003, as part of the North American
SynchroPhasor Initiative based at the Pacific Northwest National
Laboratory in Richland, Wash. "We still need a couple of hundred more
[PMUs] to get a full coverage," Mansoor says, but he adds that they
are already helping local utilities diagnose the causes of blackouts
much faster than they could before.
Another challenge for keeping the grid balanced is the growing demand
for electricity—increasing load, in other words—as consumers buy more
computers, air conditioners and rechargeable handhelds. The U.S.
Department of Energy's Energy Information Administration projects a
load growth of 1.05 percent a year from now until 2030, which means
transmission capacity will have to keep pace.
The main obstacle to building new transmission lines is siting, better
known as the "not in my backyard" effect: Nobody wants power lines
near them. One potential way of getting around that is so-called smart
metering—hourly readouts of electricity usage that allow utilities to
offer price discounts on power during off-peak times. Pilot smart-
metering programs are under way in Idaho, California and other states.
Mansoor notes that advanced metering tools might become useful given
the potential for increasingly intermittent power sources. Wind power,
for example, stops and starts with the breeze, which means system
operators would have to adjust the load to compensate. Although wind
energy accounts for 19.5 gigawatts of power in the U.S., or less than
2 percent of total power generation, it represented 35 percent of new
generating capacity installed in 2007, up from 5 percent in 2003.
An alternative to power lines in cities and other urban areas is power
cables based on high-temperature superconductor (HTS) technology. When
chilled to –321 degrees Fahrenheit (77 kelvins, or –196 degrees
Celsius) the composite material yttrium barium copper oxide begins to
carry a current with almost zero resistance. HTS power cables can
therefore be made smaller than the copper kind.
In a concept called the secure supergrid, would bolster existing
transmission lines and would resist the stresses that can cause
blackouts, because the lines shut down when the current spikes
(reflecting the "almost" in an HTS cable's "almost zero resistance").
Some researchers have proposed combining an HTS supergrid with a coast-
to-coast hydrogen pipeline to suppy fuel cells for cars and homes.
The Long Island Power Authority switched on a $50-million, 69-kilovolt
HTS system in April to supply power to up to 300,000 homes.
Consolidated Edison Company of New York and the U.S. Department of
Homeland Security have commissioned cables for a $40-million supergrid
system in downtown Manhattan known as Project Hydra, scheduled for
operation in 2010.
None of these tools would guarantee the extinction of large blackouts.
When researchers study very complex systems, whether they be power
grids or sandpiles, they often find a simple relationship: The
frequency of larger and larger catastrophes—such as blackouts or
avalanches—remains relatively high. "If you look at all the steps that
have been taken since 2003, I think overall the risk is less today
than it was in 2003," Mansoor says. "But the risk is always there."
*Correction (8/14/08): This article originally stated that FERC has
approved 83 new reliability standards; that number refers to the first
standards to take effect in June 18, 2007.