How Power Blackouts Work

Exploring the protective systems that keep the power grid from self destructing.

We usually think of the power grid in terms of its visible parts: power plants, high-voltage lines, and substations. But, much of the complexity of power grid comes in how we protect it when things go wrong. When your power goes out, it’s easy to be frustrated at the inconvenience, but consider also being thankful that it probably means things are working as designed to protect the grid as a whole and ensure a speedy and cost-effective repair to the fault.

Writing/Editing/Production: Grady Hillhouse
Director: Wesley Crump

Tonic and Energy by Elexive is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License

This video is sponsored by Hello Fresh.

[ThreePrintCharlie]

Here in South Africa they turn the grid off for fun.

[drtraviscj]

I can simultaneously:

1. definitely respect the engineering aspects of blackouts and the safety it brings
2. be utterly frustrated at the years(/decades?) of mismanagement and shunned preventative maintenance that lead to them being required

[free_spirit]

In 2003 at 3 AM Italy had a serious blackout that involved 56 million people. It was caused by a tree flashover on a 400kV line that supplies power from Switzerland to Northern Italy. The loss of the powerline triggered the two 40kV lines from France to trip as well, due to the sudden increase in demand. In 4 seconds GRTN lost control of the power grid, as a series of cascading events plummeted the entire Italian peninsula and the island of Sicily into darkness. As the grid frequency dropped below 47.5Hz a total of 7.5GW of distributed power plants went offline.
The blackout lasted for 12 hours, though some regions were affected by rolling blackouts for two more days. In Rome people were stuck in underground trains. All flights were cancelled, and a total of 30.000 people were stranded on trains. Police described the situation as 'chaos', though no major incidents occurred.
Though our little power outage was big for Italy it pales in comparison to the 2012 India blackout, which involved 9% of the world population.

[dewiz]

During the North East blackout of November, 1965, the “chichen and egg” issue was addressed by by interconnecting a large group of employees’ cars to provide startup power for a plant in Connecticut (might have been Massachusetts), that plant kickstarted the North East grid back to life. The process was described in an article in Analog Science Fiction/Science Fact,

Sometimes I ride around on my bicycle, trying to figure out where all the interconnections of the local power structures go. Keeping track of that must be a major cartography job!

Thanks fir the great video!

[yusukeshinyama]

Huh, I've never thought of blackout as a safety feature, but it really is. Thanks for an insightful video!

[aianvigare]

Woah! You guys didnt even stretch the video 10 minutes, immense respect for this channel.

[mikeg]

"Idk how much a car that never breaks down would cost" About $1500 on craigslist for a 1994 sayin.

[IstasPumaNevada]

"When the power goes out it probably means things are working as designed to protect the power grid as a whole."

Unless you live in certain areas of California, where it means the power company has neglected maintenance for so long that they don't dare keep the power on because it will start more wildfires.

[devinsiemer]

Never understood cascading failures until now. Suddenly it makes perfect sense. Thanks, Grady!

[ThrakattaK]

Thanks for the video. As a Protection and Control Technician for a large Transmission company, I appreciate the simplified explanation of the "zones of protection", as well as the whole video. I never have a good way to explain what I do for a living to people, and next time that happens I'm going to reference this video!


You've got a new subscriber in me.

[TrueHolarctic]

"Loss of a service at the cost of protecting the rest of the system" well that is a different perspective

[francolarroque]

On June 16 2019, here in Argentina, there was an operational error with a 500kv transmission line wich led into a massive blackout leaving the entire country and parts of Uruguay, Chile, Paraguay and Brazil without electricity for at least 13 hours...

[pBIggZz]

I asked my best friend (an engineering student) why Practical Engineering is such a good youtube channel. He answered: "Because they skip the banging your head on the wall phase".

[oldestnerd]

I enjoyed this video. I spent many years configuring the computer system that monitored a small portion of the grid here in Virginia.

[joshuapatrick]

I’m a kid from Acadiana, the heart of Cajun Louisiana. I was on a subway in Manhattan during the massive east coast blackout in August of 2003…had to walk 20 miles from downtown, across the Queensboro bridge out to Rockaway beach that day. Seeing the night sky over New York and the millions of people thronging the streets, and those who had made it home handing out water to those still trekking was an experience I will never forget.

[Nozomu]

I'm happy in Factorio all I have to do when blackout occurs is to take few stacks of coal to restart it and expand my coal mine.

[OwnerOfOwn]

I have a bunch of lineman friends and wish that more people understood this, "loss of service at the cost of protecting the rest of the system"

[niccatipay]

Blackouts are when the darkness escape the powerplants and cover the cities.

[XEinstein]

As a power protection engineer I can say this was a good ten minute explanation. Well done! You should have been sponsored by a company from the industry though.

[karibemadhura]

My coffee machine: short circuits






Nuclear power plant: *explodes*