A blackout I've always wondered about

45  2015-01-15 by why_the_love

I was in San Diego when this happened. People were out on their lawns, visibly frightened, I saw spot lights being shot into the air. I heard ambulances and police sirens everywhere. It felt like something that would happen before a large assault on the West Coast from the Pacific.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_Southwest_blackout#cite_note-18

On the afternoon of September 8, 2011, an 11-minute system disturbanc eoccurred in the Pacific Southwest, leading to cascading outages and leaving approximately 2.7 million customers without power. The outages affected parts of Arizona, Southern California, and Baja California, Mexico. All of the San Diego area lost power, with nearly one-and-a-half million customers losing power, some for up to 12 hours. The disturbance occurred near rush hour, on a business day, snarling traffic for hours. Schools and businesses closed, some flights and public transportation were disrupted, water and sewage pumping stations lost power, and beaches were closed due to sewage spills. Millions went without air conditioning on a hot day. Homeland Security warned of a possible terror strike in the days leading up to the tenth anniversary of 9/11.

This was the governments answer for why it happened:

http://www.ferc.gov/legal/staff-reports/04-27-2012-ferc-nerc-report.pdf

The loss of a single 500 kilovolt (kV)2 transmission line initiated the event, but was not the sole cause of the widespread outages. The system is designed, and should be operated, to withstand the loss of a single line, even one as large as 500 kV. The affected line—Arizona Public Service’s (APS) Hassayampa-N. Gila 500 kV line (H-NG)—is a segment of the Southwest Power Link (SWPL), a major transmission corridor that transports power in an east-west direction, from generators in Arizona, through the service territory of Imperial Irrigation District (IID), into the San Diego area. It had tripped on multiple occasions, as recently as July 7, 2011, without causing cascading outages.

With the SWPL’s major east-west corridor broken by the loss of H-NG, power flows instantaneously redistributed throughout the system, increasing flows through lower voltage systems to the north of the SWPL, as power continued to flow into San Diego on a hot day during hours of peak demand. Combined with lower than peak generation levels in San Diego and Mexico,3 this instantaneous redistribution of power flows created sizeable voltage deviations and equipment overloads to the north of the SWPL. Significant overloading occurred on three of IID’s 230/92 kV transformers located at the Coachella Valley (CV) and Ramon substations, as well as on Western Electricity Coordinating Council (WECC) Path 44,4 located south of the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station (SONGS) in Southern California.

The flow redistributions, voltage deviations, and resulting overloads had a ripple effect, as transformers, transmission lines, and generating units tripped offline, initiating automatic load shedding throughout the region in a relatively short time span. Just seconds before the blackout, Path 44 carried all flows into the San Diego area as well as parts of Arizona and Mexico. Eventually, the excessive loading on Path 44 initiated an intertie separation scheme at SONGS, designed to separate SDG&E from SCE. The SONGS separation scheme separated SDG&E from Path 44, led to the loss of the SONGS nuclear units, and eventually resulted in the complete blackout of San Diego and Comisión Federal de Electricidad’s (CFE) Baja California Control Area. During the 11 minutes of the event, the WECC Reliability Coordinator (WECC RC) issued no directives and only limited mitigating actions were taken by the Transmission Operators (TOPs) of the affected areas.

I took ~3-4 months to get that answer and I don't believe it. I brought this to r/conspiracy because I want to get more light on it. I think on that day we were attacked by a foreign nation prodding into our electrical infrastructure, and it was successful. This would be an act of war, so I'm cautious, but it just seems like too large of an issue, with too little of a concrete explanation. Note that their explanation explains what happened after the line tripped, it does not explain why the line tripped.

The FBI investigated the incident for terrorism, I think they knew it was, but couldn't prove it, I think they didn't want to admit to the American people that not only was our infrastructure vulnerable, but they don't even know where it came from. I think perhaps the attackers didn't know it would do that much damage.

32 comments

9  an0n9 2015-01-15

I remember this, my buddy works for the electrical company in SD, I asked how one guy could shut down the power to all of so cal. He said there's no way, that story is BS. I believe it was a hack to see how the gov would react, so cal is so dependent on power, and especially water that if tees systems were taken down it would be chaos.

Sorry for typos, on my shitty phone

3  why_the_love 2015-01-15

It was chaos. Imagine every single stop light going out. I'm sure you've seen traffic happen because some stop light goes to blinking red. Imagine tens of thousands of them. The traffic was unheard of, we're talking like freeways backed up, and all minor streets backed up.

People's cell phones were out too.

5  Abroh 2015-01-15

Its because people suck at driving.

4  redditeditard 2015-01-15

Because people don't know how to think or act for themselves. Can't drive a car without stoplights?

I bet no one got out to regulate traffic at intersections either, because that's the authority of the police or city.

5  gogetmugged 2015-01-15

I was working and living in hillcrest/north park area. This was one of the best things I've ever experienced. It was amazing to see people drop every bit of responsibility in those hours. No power and no working cell towers. People resorted to actually socializing with one another.

3  an0n9 2015-01-15

Yeah it was crazy and we had no idea when it was coming back on, we had everyone over at my place with candles drinking haha

5  why_the_love 2015-01-15

Its weird the FBI investigated. That makes me think they know something we don't. Even if they were wrong and it was just a fluke, I would really want to know why they felt the need to investigate.

1  ThingsIveSeenandDone 2015-01-15

If it effected multiple states then it's the FBI's domain as far as I know.

1  we_kill_creativity 2015-01-15

If there was a crime committed in several states...

1  ThingsIveSeenandDone 2015-01-15

When an event as large as that happens, they will investigate it to see if there was a crime or not.

The FBI investigates many mundane things, so their involvement alone doesn't amount to much.

1  an0n9 2015-01-15

I agree, I'm driving and am on my mobile but do you know of any press releases on it? As in official FBI ones? After they finished their investion? I'm going to look and see when im on my comp but was wondering if you'd seen anything

2  hippylarvae 2015-01-15

I lived in Spring Valley when this happened. It was extremely surreal seeing Mt Miguel in such darkness.

8  [deleted] 2015-01-15

[deleted]

0  bench-mark 2015-01-15

Google grey terror

6  SkepticalFaceless 2015-01-15

It's also possible that these grids function as distributed systems and calculating all variables 40-50 years in advance isn't really possible. Couldn't it be that we are just broke and have bad infrastructure so we can't audit or change what we have? Isn't that theory just as likely at this point?

3  theobvioussss 2015-01-15

People seem not to realize how much money has been siphoned away, where from, and by whom. The rich cabal that controls the world is profoundly stupid and myopic. The infrastructure of America is crumbling due to an insanely greedy lack of reinvestment in society. Our sewers, roads, electricity, water, basic government bureaucracies are all dramatically reduced in integrity and capacity from where they should be.

2  why_the_love 2015-01-15

Of course, but why did the FBI get involved? Difficult to understand what really happened, because it seems like their own engineers really weren't sure. That's some very complicated engineering.

The fact that the FBI got involved says something. What would make them investigate a power outage? There must have been some detail that got them involved. Also, shortly after this incident, there was a lot of talk from the government about hackers being able to mess with our infrastructure. They've stated before that the Chinese have probably in fact been messing with stuff, as we are probably messing with their stuff.

Its true that our infrastructure is pretty bad, but this also means its vulnerable.

9  disturbed_perturbed 2015-01-15

Maybe the fbi got involved because everything looks like terrorism to them now...and it has to justify its new counterterrorism mission by investigating anything remotely out of the ordinary.

Go ahead...down vote me now.

3  why_the_love 2015-01-15

Naw that makes perfect sense. I could see some engineers being like, dude it was just a malfunction....hrmm malfunction you say? The FBI will the authority on that, and they have no idea how any of it even works.

2  redditeditard 2015-01-15

Because it involved multiple states?

4  theredhandcomic 2015-01-15

IMO, it was the government who either let or initiated this event to test the result and evaluate the costs/ benefits. If an attack on the U.S. were to happen like this that was unexpected, now they have an accurate and average reaction from the general public, which is who they need to control in such a situation. There are the physical ops, the PsyOps come later.

I mean, they tested 9/11-type events before they pulled the trigger on that operation; why not test something like this to see if it is effective as an attack the public will believe and let themselves be scared enough from to justify more relinquishing of privacy and other freedoms?

Is it REALLY outside the realm of possibility?

5  Sabremesh 2015-01-15

For me, the fact that there was no serious investigation into what happened, or apparent repercussions, makes it quite likely that it was a deliberate act involving government agencies - a drill, in other words.

3  strokethekitty 2015-01-15

Ive never heard of this! Its very plausible they never figured it out. I do know there was/is a mexican gang called the knights templar who have been known to knock out power lines in mexico, causing outages and stuff...

Maybe theyre connected?

1  why_the_love 2015-01-15

Thanks

1  BenjaminEsquire 2015-01-15

I think I remember hearing about this. Wasn't it involving a substation that was "shot" at? There were casings found but no prints, no weapons, but there were tracks all around the perimeter?

3  hippylarvae 2015-01-15

No that was later. LINK

1  [deleted] 2015-01-15

I remember this! We couldn't use electronics so we just sat in the living room playing monopoly and sharing stories.

1  Thevents 2015-01-15

A similar blackout happened in the DC metro area too.

There was also that one blackout in NYC that happened very soon after 9/11.

1  strokethekitty 2015-01-15

I wonder whst you woukd find if you scour the internet for any and all legislation thst was passed, federal, state, or local levels, shortly after this event.

1  fiercehummingbird 2015-01-15

For everyone saying why did the FBI investigate, it was the 10th anniversary of 9/11.

1  [deleted] 2015-01-15

This was either a government test or a fake "act of terror." I know the grid pretty well and this simply couldn't happen unless there were about 200 simultaneous failures of protective systems.

1  [deleted] 2015-01-15

That blackout happened on Thursday, September 8th

6 days earlier was Friday, September 2nd

Have you ever heard of the book "77 Days in September"?

0  BenjaminEsquire 2015-01-15

Nevermind, different time.

I was thinking about the http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metcalf_sniper_attack