Score one for small-scale distributed power

[Belinda Wong-Swanson]

Power Outages Hit
New York, Other Cities

NEW YORK -- A massive power blackout hit U.S. and Canadian cities Thursday,
closing nuclear power plants in Ohio and New York state, driving workers in
New York City and Toronto into the streets, and shutting subways in
blistering heat. The blackout apparently was due to natural causes and there
was no sign of terrorism, officials in New York and Washington said.

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg said it was likely the blackout
started in the Niagara Falls area and quickly spread.


Reporting by Stacy Forster and Carl Bialik of The Wall Street Journal
Online, with contributions from the Associated Press and Dow Jones
Newswires.



"It was probably a natural occurrence which disrupted the power system up
there and apparently for reasons we don't know it cascaded down through New
York state over into Connecticut, as far south as New Jersey and as far west
as Ohio," he said.

A senior law enforcement official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said
the Federal Bureau of Investigation had determined the blackout was a
"natural occurrence" and there was no evidence of terrorism, and that the
Homeland Security Department agreed.

Power was slowly returning to New York state by 6 p.m., about two hours
after the outage, Mr. Bloomberg told reporters at City Hall. Still, he said
it would be "hours, not minutes" before power was fully restored to New York
City. In New York, the blackout affected subways, elevators and airports,
including John F. Kennedy and LaGuardia airports.

Many Workers Are Stranded

Thousands of Manhattan workers were sent home early from work into the
90-degree heat, but many had no easy way of getting home.

At the Canal Street subway station downtown, streams of people emerged
covered in grime.

Anthony Daliva, a computer technician from New Jersey who works downtown,
was among them. He described being on the train when it stopped right past
the station. After being trapped for about an hour in what he described as
incredible heat -- and darkness except for emergency lights -- he and others
climbed between the trains and up a ladder on the side of track toward the
street light. His blue shirt and khaki pants were covered in dirt.

Near Canal Street, Erika Pietsch, a TV producer who lives in Astoria,
Queens, across the East River, said she had to evacuate her building. "I'm
trying to figure out my plan of attack to get home," she said.

Traffic lights were out. Mike Greenfield, a construction estimator, was
stuck in traffic on Watts Street near the Holland Tunnel, where police were
directing traffic. Mr. Greenfield was coming back from Queens headed west to
Freehold, N.J., and says he is used to bad traffic. "It's like this
everyday," he said.

Ralph St. Pierre said he was on the subway in between stations when the
power went out and the train stopped. He said he followed the conductor out
of the tunnel. Later, people could be seen streaming out of subway stations.

Several ice-cream stores in Manhattan said they wouldn't be giving away
their goods, which are melting without power for refrigeration. "I don't
want to give it out," said Steven Chan, proprietor of a Baskin Robbins in
the Lower East Side neighborhood. "Otherwise, there would be a riot."

In Toronto, Canada's largest city, workers also fled their buildings after
the blackout hit shortly after 4 p.m. EDT. There also were widespread
outages in Ottawa, the capital.

Traffic lights were out throughout downtown Cleveland and other major
cities, creating havoc at the beginning of rush hour.

There were reports of outages in northern New Jersey and in several Vermont
towns. In Connecticut, Metro-North Railroad service was knocked out. Lights
flickered at state government buildings in Hartford.

Every prison in New York state reported a loss of power and switched to
backup generators, said James Flateau, a spokesman for the state Department
of Corrections.

In Albany, N.Y., several people were trapped in elevators in Empire State
Plaza, but most had been freed by 5 p.m. People in New York City lined up 10
deep or more at pay phones, with cellphone service disrupted in some areas.

Mike Saltzman, a spokesman for New York Power Authority, a state-owned
utility in White Plains, N.Y., said its two largest hydroelectric plants,
including Niagara Falls and St. Lawrence-FDR, were operating. He said he did
not know the status of 18 other smaller plants.

"There is no evidence of any terrorism at this point," said Michael Sheehan,
deputy commissioner for terrorism of New York City's Police Department.
"We've talked to Washington and there are rumors, but none of them pans
out."

Top New York police officers gathered at the department's operations center
downtown where the focus was on the ramifications of the blackout rather
than its cause. "We're more concerned about getting the traffic lights
running and making sure the city is okay than what caused it," a police
spokesman said at the center.

Nuclear Reactors Shut Down

Four nuclear power reactors -- two in New York and two in Ohio -- reported
they were shut down because of the loss of off-site power, according to the
Nuclear Regulatory Commission in Bethesda, Md. They were the two Indian
Point reactors in New York state, and the Perry and Fermi nuclear power
plants in Ohio.

The North American Electric Reliability Council, an industry group
responsible for monitoring the integrity of the system, said the power
outages were "widespread and appear to be centered around Lake Erie,
although they are affecting the entire eastern interconnection."

"We do not know the cause at present but will continue to evaluate the
situation," said Ellen Vancko, speaking for the council.

Planes Are Grounded

The Federal Aviation Administration instituted airport ground stops at
Cleveland, Kennedy, LaGuardia and Newark, N.J. That meant planes from other
cities heading to those four airports could not take off. However, air
traffic control facilities had backup power, and planes already in the air
could land at those airports, said Laura Brown, speaking for the FAA.

At the Homeland Security Department, spokesman Brian Roehrkasse said federal
officials were still gathering information and had not determined a cause.

The department "is working with state and local officials and the energy
sector to determine the cause of the outage as well as what response
measures may be needed to be taken," he said. He said everyone should
"listen and heed the advice of the local authorities."

Verizon Communications Inc., the largest local telephone company in the
northeastern U.S., said its network is operating normally and has not been
affected by a widespread power outage.

Securities regulators were optimistic that U.S. markets would open as
scheduled Friday. "There's no talk about not opening," said Annette
Nazareth, Securities and Exchange Commission market regulation director.
Power was in place through the close of trading Thursday and Mr. Nazareth
said the Depository Trust Co. had cleared trades for the day before power
failed.

The blackouts rivaled those in the West on Aug. 11, 1996, when heat, sagging
power lines and unusually high demand for electricity caused an outage that
affected four million customers in nine states, one of the most severe
outages in U.S. history.

A blackout in New York City in 1977 left some nine million people without
electricity for up to 25 hours.

Updated August 14, 2003 6:08 p.m.






Belinda Wong-Swanson, Principal
Innov8 LLC, 624 Agua Fria, Santa Fe, NM 87501
www.innov8llc.com
email: [hidden email]
tel: [phone]
fax: [phone]

[Robert Holmes]

Small-scale distributed power is OK but has issues of economies of scale
(namely it doesn't have them).

For complexity people like us, the real opportunity lies in distributed
(agent-based) control as a way of identifying cascading outages and
self-repairing them. I know that EPRI were researching this and I believe
they are now (through www.e2i.org) putting together pilot projects.

Robert

-----Original Message-----
From: [hidden email] [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf
Of Belinda Wong-Swanson
Sent: 14 August 2003 16:20
To: [hidden email]; [hidden email]
Subject: [FRIAM] Score one for small-scale distributed power


Power Outages Hit
New York, Other Cities

NEW YORK -- A massive power blackout hit U.S. and Canadian cities Thursday,
closing nuclear power plants in Ohio and New York state, driving workers in
New York City and Toronto into the streets, and shutting subways in
blistering heat. The blackout apparently was due to natural causes and there
was no sign of terrorism, officials in New York and Washington said.

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg said it was likely the blackout
started in the Niagara Falls area and quickly spread.


Reporting by Stacy Forster and Carl Bialik of The Wall Street Journal
Online, with contributions from the Associated Press and Dow Jones
Newswires.



"It was probably a natural occurrence which disrupted the power system up
there and apparently for reasons we don't know it cascaded down through New
York state over into Connecticut, as far south as New Jersey and as far west
as Ohio," he said.

A senior law enforcement official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said
the Federal Bureau of Investigation had determined the blackout was a
"natural occurrence" and there was no evidence of terrorism, and that the
Homeland Security Department agreed.

Power was slowly returning to New York state by 6 p.m., about two hours
after the outage, Mr. Bloomberg told reporters at City Hall. Still, he said
it would be "hours, not minutes" before power was fully restored to New York
City. In New York, the blackout affected subways, elevators and airports,
including John F. Kennedy and LaGuardia airports.

Many Workers Are Stranded

Thousands of Manhattan workers were sent home early from work into the
90-degree heat, but many had no easy way of getting home.

At the Canal Street subway station downtown, streams of people emerged
covered in grime.

Anthony Daliva, a computer technician from New Jersey who works downtown,
was among them. He described being on the train when it stopped right past
the station. After being trapped for about an hour in what he described as
incredible heat -- and darkness except for emergency lights -- he and others
climbed between the trains and up a ladder on the side of track toward the
street light. His blue shirt and khaki pants were covered in dirt.

Near Canal Street, Erika Pietsch, a TV producer who lives in Astoria,
Queens, across the East River, said she had to evacuate her building. "I'm
trying to figure out my plan of attack to get home," she said.

Traffic lights were out. Mike Greenfield, a construction estimator, was
stuck in traffic on Watts Street near the Holland Tunnel, where police were
directing traffic. Mr. Greenfield was coming back from Queens headed west to
Freehold, N.J., and says he is used to bad traffic. "It's like this
everyday," he said.

Ralph St. Pierre said he was on the subway in between stations when the
power went out and the train stopped. He said he followed the conductor out
of the tunnel. Later, people could be seen streaming out of subway stations.

Several ice-cream stores in Manhattan said they wouldn't be giving away
their goods, which are melting without power for refrigeration. "I don't
want to give it out," said Steven Chan, proprietor of a Baskin Robbins in
the Lower East Side neighborhood. "Otherwise, there would be a riot."

In Toronto, Canada's largest city, workers also fled their buildings after
the blackout hit shortly after 4 p.m. EDT. There also were widespread
outages in Ottawa, the capital.

Traffic lights were out throughout downtown Cleveland and other major
cities, creating havoc at the beginning of rush hour.

There were reports of outages in northern New Jersey and in several Vermont
towns. In Connecticut, Metro-North Railroad service was knocked out. Lights
flickered at state government buildings in Hartford.

Every prison in New York state reported a loss of power and switched to
backup generators, said James Flateau, a spokesman for the state Department
of Corrections.

In Albany, N.Y., several people were trapped in elevators in Empire State
Plaza, but most had been freed by 5 p.m. People in New York City lined up 10
deep or more at pay phones, with cellphone service disrupted in some areas.

Mike Saltzman, a spokesman for New York Power Authority, a state-owned
utility in White Plains, N.Y., said its two largest hydroelectric plants,
including Niagara Falls and St. Lawrence-FDR, were operating. He said he did
not know the status of 18 other smaller plants.

"There is no evidence of any terrorism at this point," said Michael Sheehan,
deputy commissioner for terrorism of New York City's Police Department.
"We've talked to Washington and there are rumors, but none of them pans
out."

Top New York police officers gathered at the department's operations center
downtown where the focus was on the ramifications of the blackout rather
than its cause. "We're more concerned about getting the traffic lights
running and making sure the city is okay than what caused it," a police
spokesman said at the center.

Nuclear Reactors Shut Down

Four nuclear power reactors -- two in New York and two in Ohio -- reported
they were shut down because of the loss of off-site power, according to the
Nuclear Regulatory Commission in Bethesda, Md. They were the two Indian
Point reactors in New York state, and the Perry and Fermi nuclear power
plants in Ohio.

The North American Electric Reliability Council, an industry group
responsible for monitoring the integrity of the system, said the power
outages were "widespread and appear to be centered around Lake Erie,
although they are affecting the entire eastern interconnection."

"We do not know the cause at present but will continue to evaluate the
situation," said Ellen Vancko, speaking for the council.

Planes Are Grounded

The Federal Aviation Administration instituted airport ground stops at
Cleveland, Kennedy, LaGuardia and Newark, N.J. That meant planes from other
cities heading to those four airports could not take off. However, air
traffic control facilities had backup power, and planes already in the air
could land at those airports, said Laura Brown, speaking for the FAA.

At the Homeland Security Department, spokesman Brian Roehrkasse said federal
officials were still gathering information and had not determined a cause.

The department "is working with state and local officials and the energy
sector to determine the cause of the outage as well as what response
measures may be needed to be taken," he said. He said everyone should
"listen and heed the advice of the local authorities."

Verizon Communications Inc., the largest local telephone company in the
northeastern U.S., said its network is operating normally and has not been
affected by a widespread power outage.

Securities regulators were optimistic that U.S. markets would open as
scheduled Friday. "There's no talk about not opening," said Annette
Nazareth, Securities and Exchange Commission market regulation director.
Power was in place through the close of trading Thursday and Mr. Nazareth
said the Depository Trust Co. had cleared trades for the day before power
failed.

The blackouts rivaled those in the West on Aug. 11, 1996, when heat, sagging
power lines and unusually high demand for electricity caused an outage that
affected four million customers in nine states, one of the most severe
outages in U.S. history.

A blackout in New York City in 1977 left some nine million people without
electricity for up to 25 hours.

Updated August 14, 2003 6:08 p.m.






Belinda Wong-Swanson, Principal
Innov8 LLC, 624 Agua Fria, Santa Fe, NM 87501
www.innov8llc.com
email: [hidden email]
tel: [phone]
fax: [phone]



============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9AM @ Jane's Cafe
Lecture schedule, archives, unsubscribe, etc.: http://www.redfish.com/friam

[Belinda Wong-Swanson-2]

Economies of scale is really not much an issue if you use small generation
systems and use the power locally. Most small cities in the US have
sufficient population size and activities to make this viable; it is not
because the utility industry prevents it from doing so.

-----Original Message-----
From: [hidden email] [mailto:[hidden email]]On
Behalf Of Robert Holmes
Sent: Thursday, August 14, 2003 4:43 PM
To: [hidden email]; 'The Friday Morning Complexity Coffee Group'
Subject: RE: [FRIAM] Score one for small-scale distributed power


Small-scale distributed power is OK but has issues of economies of scale
(namely it doesn't have them).

For complexity people like us, the real opportunity lies in distributed
(agent-based) control as a way of identifying cascading outages and
self-repairing them. I know that EPRI were researching this and I believe
they are now (through www.e2i.org) putting together pilot projects.

Robert

-----Original Message-----
From: [hidden email] [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf
Of Belinda Wong-Swanson
Sent: 14 August 2003 16:20
To: [hidden email]; [hidden email]
Subject: [FRIAM] Score one for small-scale distributed power


Power Outages Hit
New York, Other Cities

NEW YORK -- A massive power blackout hit U.S. and Canadian cities Thursday,
closing nuclear power plants in Ohio and New York state, driving workers in
New York City and Toronto into the streets, and shutting subways in
blistering heat. The blackout apparently was due to natural causes and there
was no sign of terrorism, officials in New York and Washington said.

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg said it was likely the blackout
started in the Niagara Falls area and quickly spread.


Reporting by Stacy Forster and Carl Bialik of The Wall Street Journal
Online, with contributions from the Associated Press and Dow Jones
Newswires.



"It was probably a natural occurrence which disrupted the power system up
there and apparently for reasons we don't know it cascaded down through New
York state over into Connecticut, as far south as New Jersey and as far west
as Ohio," he said.

A senior law enforcement official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said
the Federal Bureau of Investigation had determined the blackout was a
"natural occurrence" and there was no evidence of terrorism, and that the
Homeland Security Department agreed.

Power was slowly returning to New York state by 6 p.m., about two hours
after the outage, Mr. Bloomberg told reporters at City Hall. Still, he said
it would be "hours, not minutes" before power was fully restored to New York
City. In New York, the blackout affected subways, elevators and airports,
including John F. Kennedy and LaGuardia airports.

Many Workers Are Stranded

Thousands of Manhattan workers were sent home early from work into the
90-degree heat, but many had no easy way of getting home.

At the Canal Street subway station downtown, streams of people emerged
covered in grime.

Anthony Daliva, a computer technician from New Jersey who works downtown,
was among them. He described being on the train when it stopped right past
the station. After being trapped for about an hour in what he described as
incredible heat -- and darkness except for emergency lights -- he and others
climbed between the trains and up a ladder on the side of track toward the
street light. His blue shirt and khaki pants were covered in dirt.

Near Canal Street, Erika Pietsch, a TV producer who lives in Astoria,
Queens, across the East River, said she had to evacuate her building. "I'm
trying to figure out my plan of attack to get home," she said.

Traffic lights were out. Mike Greenfield, a construction estimator, was
stuck in traffic on Watts Street near the Holland Tunnel, where police were
directing traffic. Mr. Greenfield was coming back from Queens headed west to
Freehold, N.J., and says he is used to bad traffic. "It's like this
everyday," he said.

Ralph St. Pierre said he was on the subway in between stations when the
power went out and the train stopped. He said he followed the conductor out
of the tunnel. Later, people could be seen streaming out of subway stations.

Several ice-cream stores in Manhattan said they wouldn't be giving away
their goods, which are melting without power for refrigeration. "I don't
want to give it out," said Steven Chan, proprietor of a Baskin Robbins in
the Lower East Side neighborhood. "Otherwise, there would be a riot."

In Toronto, Canada's largest city, workers also fled their buildings after
the blackout hit shortly after 4 p.m. EDT. There also were widespread
outages in Ottawa, the capital.

Traffic lights were out throughout downtown Cleveland and other major
cities, creating havoc at the beginning of rush hour.

There were reports of outages in northern New Jersey and in several Vermont
towns. In Connecticut, Metro-North Railroad service was knocked out. Lights
flickered at state government buildings in Hartford.

Every prison in New York state reported a loss of power and switched to
backup generators, said James Flateau, a spokesman for the state Department
of Corrections.

In Albany, N.Y., several people were trapped in elevators in Empire State
Plaza, but most had been freed by 5 p.m. People in New York City lined up 10
deep or more at pay phones, with cellphone service disrupted in some areas.

Mike Saltzman, a spokesman for New York Power Authority, a state-owned
utility in White Plains, N.Y., said its two largest hydroelectric plants,
including Niagara Falls and St. Lawrence-FDR, were operating. He said he did
not know the status of 18 other smaller plants.

"There is no evidence of any terrorism at this point," said Michael Sheehan,
deputy commissioner for terrorism of New York City's Police Department.
"We've talked to Washington and there are rumors, but none of them pans
out."

Top New York police officers gathered at the department's operations center
downtown where the focus was on the ramifications of the blackout rather
than its cause. "We're more concerned about getting the traffic lights
running and making sure the city is okay than what caused it," a police
spokesman said at the center.

Nuclear Reactors Shut Down

Four nuclear power reactors -- two in New York and two in Ohio -- reported
they were shut down because of the loss of off-site power, according to the
Nuclear Regulatory Commission in Bethesda, Md. They were the two Indian
Point reactors in New York state, and the Perry and Fermi nuclear power
plants in Ohio.

The North American Electric Reliability Council, an industry group
responsible for monitoring the integrity of the system, said the power
outages were "widespread and appear to be centered around Lake Erie,
although they are affecting the entire eastern interconnection."

"We do not know the cause at present but will continue to evaluate the
situation," said Ellen Vancko, speaking for the council.

Planes Are Grounded

The Federal Aviation Administration instituted airport ground stops at
Cleveland, Kennedy, LaGuardia and Newark, N.J. That meant planes from other
cities heading to those four airports could not take off. However, air
traffic control facilities had backup power, and planes already in the air
could land at those airports, said Laura Brown, speaking for the FAA.

At the Homeland Security Department, spokesman Brian Roehrkasse said federal
officials were still gathering information and had not determined a cause.

The department "is working with state and local officials and the energy
sector to determine the cause of the outage as well as what response
measures may be needed to be taken," he said. He said everyone should
"listen and heed the advice of the local authorities."

Verizon Communications Inc., the largest local telephone company in the
northeastern U.S., said its network is operating normally and has not been
affected by a widespread power outage.

Securities regulators were optimistic that U.S. markets would open as
scheduled Friday. "There's no talk about not opening," said Annette
Nazareth, Securities and Exchange Commission market regulation director.
Power was in place through the close of trading Thursday and Mr. Nazareth
said the Depository Trust Co. had cleared trades for the day before power
failed.

The blackouts rivaled those in the West on Aug. 11, 1996, when heat, sagging
power lines and unusually high demand for electricity caused an outage that
affected four million customers in nine states, one of the most severe
outages in U.S. history.

A blackout in New York City in 1977 left some nine million people without
electricity for up to 25 hours.

Updated August 14, 2003 6:08 p.m.






Belinda Wong-Swanson, Principal
Innov8 LLC, 624 Agua Fria, Santa Fe, NM 87501
www.innov8llc.com
email: [hidden email]
tel: [phone]
fax: [phone]



============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9AM @ Jane's Cafe
Lecture schedule, archives, unsubscribe, etc.: http://www.redfish.com/friam





====================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9AM @ Jane's Cafe
Lecture schedule, archives, unsubscribe, etc.:
http://www.redfish.com/friam

[Gary Schiltz-5]

Belinda, I was thinking of commenting, but I'm not as knowledgeable as
you about power
generation - I'm just a tree hugging eco-radical who thinks that large
scale power plants
are a bad idea. I would suspect that the generation part would be pretty
efficient, but
even at the high voltages at which power is transmitted over long
distances, I'd think
the loss must be tremendous. My gut feeling is that the large scale
power production
industry is successful because of its powerful lobbying rather than any
inherent
technological advantages.

// Gary

-----Original Message-----
From: [hidden email] [mailto:[hidden email]] On
Behalf Of Belinda Wong-Swanson
Sent: Thursday, August 14, 2003 5:07 PM
To: The Friday Morning Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: RE: [FRIAM] Score one for small-scale distributed power


Economies of scale is really not much an issue if you use small
generation systems and use the power locally. Most small cities in the
US have sufficient population size and activities to make this viable;
it is not because the utility industry prevents it from doing so.

-----Original Message-----
From: [hidden email] [mailto:[hidden email]]On
Behalf Of Robert Holmes
Sent: Thursday, August 14, 2003 4:43 PM
To: [hidden email]; 'The Friday Morning Complexity Coffee Group'
Subject: RE: [FRIAM] Score one for small-scale distributed power


Small-scale distributed power is OK but has issues of economies of scale
(namely it doesn't have them).

For complexity people like us, the real opportunity lies in distributed
(agent-based) control as a way of identifying cascading outages and
self-repairing them. I know that EPRI were researching this and I
believe they are now (through www.e2i.org) putting together pilot
projects.

Robert

[Belinda Wong-Swanson-2]

You are correct all all counts.

-----Original Message-----
From: [hidden email] [mailto:[hidden email]]On
Behalf Of Gary Schiltz
Sent: Thursday, August 14, 2003 5:33 PM
To: 'The Friday Morning Complexity Coffee Group'
Subject: RE: [FRIAM] Score one for small-scale distributed power


Belinda, I was thinking of commenting, but I'm not as knowledgeable as
you about power
generation - I'm just a tree hugging eco-radical who thinks that large
scale power plants
are a bad idea. I would suspect that the generation part would be pretty
efficient, but
even at the high voltages at which power is transmitted over long
distances, I'd think
the loss must be tremendous. My gut feeling is that the large scale
power production
industry is successful because of its powerful lobbying rather than any
inherent
technological advantages.

// Gary

-----Original Message-----
From: [hidden email] [mailto:[hidden email]] On
Behalf Of Belinda Wong-Swanson
Sent: Thursday, August 14, 2003 5:07 PM
To: The Friday Morning Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: RE: [FRIAM] Score one for small-scale distributed power


Economies of scale is really not much an issue if you use small
generation systems and use the power locally. Most small cities in the
US have sufficient population size and activities to make this viable;
it is not because the utility industry prevents it from doing so.

-----Original Message-----
From: [hidden email] [mailto:[hidden email]]On
Behalf Of Robert Holmes
Sent: Thursday, August 14, 2003 4:43 PM
To: [hidden email]; 'The Friday Morning Complexity Coffee Group'
Subject: RE: [FRIAM] Score one for small-scale distributed power


Small-scale distributed power is OK but has issues of economies of scale
(namely it doesn't have them).

For complexity people like us, the real opportunity lies in distributed
(agent-based) control as a way of identifying cascading outages and
self-repairing them. I know that EPRI were researching this and I
believe they are now (through www.e2i.org) putting together pilot
projects.

Robert


============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9AM @ Jane's Cafe
Lecture schedule, archives, unsubscribe, etc.:
http://www.redfish.com/friam

[Belinda Wong-Swanson-2]

I now recognize I left out a crucial comma in my previous message.

The sentence should have read: "It is not, because the utility industry
prevents it from being so".

Sorry for the confusion.

Belinda


-----Original Message-----
From: [hidden email] [mailto:[hidden email]]On
Behalf Of Belinda Wong-Swanson
Sent: Thursday, August 14, 2003 5:07 PM
To: The Friday Morning Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: RE: [FRIAM] Score one for small-scale distributed power


Economies of scale is really not much an issue if you use small generation
systems and use the power locally. Most small cities in the US have
sufficient population size and activities to make this viable; it is not
because the utility industry prevents it from doing so.

-----Original Message-----
From: [hidden email] [mailto:[hidden email]]On
Behalf Of Robert Holmes
Sent: Thursday, August 14, 2003 4:43 PM
To: [hidden email]; 'The Friday Morning Complexity Coffee Group'
Subject: RE: [FRIAM] Score one for small-scale distributed power


Small-scale distributed power is OK but has issues of economies of scale
(namely it doesn't have them).

For complexity people like us, the real opportunity lies in distributed
(agent-based) control as a way of identifying cascading outages and
self-repairing them. I know that EPRI were researching this and I believe
they are now (through www.e2i.org) putting together pilot projects.

Robert

-----Original Message-----
From: [hidden email] [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf
Of Belinda Wong-Swanson
Sent: 14 August 2003 16:20
To: [hidden email]; [hidden email]
Subject: [FRIAM] Score one for small-scale distributed power


Power Outages Hit
New York, Other Cities

NEW YORK -- A massive power blackout hit U.S. and Canadian cities Thursday,
closing nuclear power plants in Ohio and New York state, driving workers in
New York City and Toronto into the streets, and shutting subways in
blistering heat. The blackout apparently was due to natural causes and there
was no sign of terrorism, officials in New York and Washington said.

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg said it was likely the blackout
started in the Niagara Falls area and quickly spread.


Reporting by Stacy Forster and Carl Bialik of The Wall Street Journal
Online, with contributions from the Associated Press and Dow Jones
Newswires.



"It was probably a natural occurrence which disrupted the power system up
there and apparently for reasons we don't know it cascaded down through New
York state over into Connecticut, as far south as New Jersey and as far west
as Ohio," he said.

A senior law enforcement official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said
the Federal Bureau of Investigation had determined the blackout was a
"natural occurrence" and there was no evidence of terrorism, and that the
Homeland Security Department agreed.

Power was slowly returning to New York state by 6 p.m., about two hours
after the outage, Mr. Bloomberg told reporters at City Hall. Still, he said
it would be "hours, not minutes" before power was fully restored to New York
City. In New York, the blackout affected subways, elevators and airports,
including John F. Kennedy and LaGuardia airports.

Many Workers Are Stranded

Thousands of Manhattan workers were sent home early from work into the
90-degree heat, but many had no easy way of getting home.

At the Canal Street subway station downtown, streams of people emerged
covered in grime.

Anthony Daliva, a computer technician from New Jersey who works downtown,
was among them. He described being on the train when it stopped right past
the station. After being trapped for about an hour in what he described as
incredible heat -- and darkness except for emergency lights -- he and others
climbed between the trains and up a ladder on the side of track toward the
street light. His blue shirt and khaki pants were covered in dirt.

Near Canal Street, Erika Pietsch, a TV producer who lives in Astoria,
Queens, across the East River, said she had to evacuate her building. "I'm
trying to figure out my plan of attack to get home," she said.

Traffic lights were out. Mike Greenfield, a construction estimator, was
stuck in traffic on Watts Street near the Holland Tunnel, where police were
directing traffic. Mr. Greenfield was coming back from Queens headed west to
Freehold, N.J., and says he is used to bad traffic. "It's like this
everyday," he said.

Ralph St. Pierre said he was on the subway in between stations when the
power went out and the train stopped. He said he followed the conductor out
of the tunnel. Later, people could be seen streaming out of subway stations.

Several ice-cream stores in Manhattan said they wouldn't be giving away
their goods, which are melting without power for refrigeration. "I don't
want to give it out," said Steven Chan, proprietor of a Baskin Robbins in
the Lower East Side neighborhood. "Otherwise, there would be a riot."

In Toronto, Canada's largest city, workers also fled their buildings after
the blackout hit shortly after 4 p.m. EDT. There also were widespread
outages in Ottawa, the capital.

Traffic lights were out throughout downtown Cleveland and other major
cities, creating havoc at the beginning of rush hour.

There were reports of outages in northern New Jersey and in several Vermont
towns. In Connecticut, Metro-North Railroad service was knocked out. Lights
flickered at state government buildings in Hartford.

Every prison in New York state reported a loss of power and switched to
backup generators, said James Flateau, a spokesman for the state Department
of Corrections.

In Albany, N.Y., several people were trapped in elevators in Empire State
Plaza, but most had been freed by 5 p.m. People in New York City lined up 10
deep or more at pay phones, with cellphone service disrupted in some areas.

Mike Saltzman, a spokesman for New York Power Authority, a state-owned
utility in White Plains, N.Y., said its two largest hydroelectric plants,
including Niagara Falls and St. Lawrence-FDR, were operating. He said he did
not know the status of 18 other smaller plants.

"There is no evidence of any terrorism at this point," said Michael Sheehan,
deputy commissioner for terrorism of New York City's Police Department.
"We've talked to Washington and there are rumors, but none of them pans
out."

Top New York police officers gathered at the department's operations center
downtown where the focus was on the ramifications of the blackout rather
than its cause. "We're more concerned about getting the traffic lights
running and making sure the city is okay than what caused it," a police
spokesman said at the center.

Nuclear Reactors Shut Down

Four nuclear power reactors -- two in New York and two in Ohio -- reported
they were shut down because of the loss of off-site power, according to the
Nuclear Regulatory Commission in Bethesda, Md. They were the two Indian
Point reactors in New York state, and the Perry and Fermi nuclear power
plants in Ohio.

The North American Electric Reliability Council, an industry group
responsible for monitoring the integrity of the system, said the power
outages were "widespread and appear to be centered around Lake Erie,
although they are affecting the entire eastern interconnection."

"We do not know the cause at present but will continue to evaluate the
situation," said Ellen Vancko, speaking for the council.

Planes Are Grounded

The Federal Aviation Administration instituted airport ground stops at
Cleveland, Kennedy, LaGuardia and Newark, N.J. That meant planes from other
cities heading to those four airports could not take off. However, air
traffic control facilities had backup power, and planes already in the air
could land at those airports, said Laura Brown, speaking for the FAA.

At the Homeland Security Department, spokesman Brian Roehrkasse said federal
officials were still gathering information and had not determined a cause.

The department "is working with state and local officials and the energy
sector to determine the cause of the outage as well as what response
measures may be needed to be taken," he said. He said everyone should
"listen and heed the advice of the local authorities."

Verizon Communications Inc., the largest local telephone company in the
northeastern U.S., said its network is operating normally and has not been
affected by a widespread power outage.

Securities regulators were optimistic that U.S. markets would open as
scheduled Friday. "There's no talk about not opening," said Annette
Nazareth, Securities and Exchange Commission market regulation director.
Power was in place through the close of trading Thursday and Mr. Nazareth
said the Depository Trust Co. had cleared trades for the day before power
failed.

The blackouts rivaled those in the West on Aug. 11, 1996, when heat, sagging
power lines and unusually high demand for electricity caused an outage that
affected four million customers in nine states, one of the most severe
outages in U.S. history.

A blackout in New York City in 1977 left some nine million people without
electricity for up to 25 hours.

Updated August 14, 2003 6:08 p.m.






Belinda Wong-Swanson, Principal
Innov8 LLC, 624 Agua Fria, Santa Fe, NM 87501
www.innov8llc.com
email: [hidden email]
tel: [phone]
fax: [phone]



============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9AM @ Jane's Cafe
Lecture schedule, archives, unsubscribe, etc.: http://www.redfish.com/friam





====================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9AM @ Jane's Cafe
Lecture schedule, archives, unsubscribe, etc.:
http://www.redfish.com/friam



============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9AM @ Jane's Cafe
Lecture schedule, archives, unsubscribe, etc.:
http://www.redfish.com/friam

[Carl Tollander-2]

"due to natural causes"
Once again, the invisible hand presents us with an invisible finger.

I would think that small-scale power (neighborhood microturbines or
constellations thereof) might damp out the effects of the large scale
failures (and associated grime-waves), not get rid of them entirely.

-----Original Message-----
From: [hidden email] [mailto:[hidden email]]On
Behalf Of Belinda Wong-Swanson
Sent: Thursday, August 14, 2003 4:20 PM
To: [hidden email]; [hidden email]
Subject: [FRIAM] Score one for small-scale distributed power


Power Outages Hit
New York, Other Cities

NEW YORK -- A massive power blackout hit U.S. and Canadian cities Thursday,
closing nuclear power plants in Ohio and New York state, driving workers in
New York City and Toronto into the streets, and shutting subways in
blistering heat. The blackout apparently was due to natural causes and there
was no sign of terrorism, officials in New York and Washington said.

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg said it was likely the blackout
started in the Niagara Falls area and quickly spread.


Reporting by Stacy Forster and Carl Bialik of The Wall Street Journal
Online, with contributions from the Associated Press and Dow Jones
Newswires.



"It was probably a natural occurrence which disrupted the power system up
there and apparently for reasons we don't know it cascaded down through New
York state over into Connecticut, as far south as New Jersey and as far west
as Ohio," he said.

A senior law enforcement official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said
the Federal Bureau of Investigation had determined the blackout was a
"natural occurrence" and there was no evidence of terrorism, and that the
Homeland Security Department agreed.

Power was slowly returning to New York state by 6 p.m., about two hours
after the outage, Mr. Bloomberg told reporters at City Hall. Still, he said
it would be "hours, not minutes" before power was fully restored to New York
City. In New York, the blackout affected subways, elevators and airports,
including John F. Kennedy and LaGuardia airports.

Many Workers Are Stranded

Thousands of Manhattan workers were sent home early from work into the
90-degree heat, but many had no easy way of getting home.

At the Canal Street subway station downtown, streams of people emerged
covered in grime.

Anthony Daliva, a computer technician from New Jersey who works downtown,
was among them. He described being on the train when it stopped right past
the station. After being trapped for about an hour in what he described as
incredible heat -- and darkness except for emergency lights -- he and others
climbed between the trains and up a ladder on the side of track toward the
street light. His blue shirt and khaki pants were covered in dirt.

Near Canal Street, Erika Pietsch, a TV producer who lives in Astoria,
Queens, across the East River, said she had to evacuate her building. "I'm
trying to figure out my plan of attack to get home," she said.

Traffic lights were out. Mike Greenfield, a construction estimator, was
stuck in traffic on Watts Street near the Holland Tunnel, where police were
directing traffic. Mr. Greenfield was coming back from Queens headed west to
Freehold, N.J., and says he is used to bad traffic. "It's like this
everyday," he said.

Ralph St. Pierre said he was on the subway in between stations when the
power went out and the train stopped. He said he followed the conductor out
of the tunnel. Later, people could be seen streaming out of subway stations.

Several ice-cream stores in Manhattan said they wouldn't be giving away
their goods, which are melting without power for refrigeration. "I don't
want to give it out," said Steven Chan, proprietor of a Baskin Robbins in
the Lower East Side neighborhood. "Otherwise, there would be a riot."

In Toronto, Canada's largest city, workers also fled their buildings after
the blackout hit shortly after 4 p.m. EDT. There also were widespread
outages in Ottawa, the capital.

Traffic lights were out throughout downtown Cleveland and other major
cities, creating havoc at the beginning of rush hour.

There were reports of outages in northern New Jersey and in several Vermont
towns. In Connecticut, Metro-North Railroad service was knocked out. Lights
flickered at state government buildings in Hartford.

Every prison in New York state reported a loss of power and switched to
backup generators, said James Flateau, a spokesman for the state Department
of Corrections.

In Albany, N.Y., several people were trapped in elevators in Empire State
Plaza, but most had been freed by 5 p.m. People in New York City lined up 10
deep or more at pay phones, with cellphone service disrupted in some areas.

Mike Saltzman, a spokesman for New York Power Authority, a state-owned
utility in White Plains, N.Y., said its two largest hydroelectric plants,
including Niagara Falls and St. Lawrence-FDR, were operating. He said he did
not know the status of 18 other smaller plants.

"There is no evidence of any terrorism at this point," said Michael Sheehan,
deputy commissioner for terrorism of New York City's Police Department.
"We've talked to Washington and there are rumors, but none of them pans
out."

Top New York police officers gathered at the department's operations center
downtown where the focus was on the ramifications of the blackout rather
than its cause. "We're more concerned about getting the traffic lights
running and making sure the city is okay than what caused it," a police
spokesman said at the center.

Nuclear Reactors Shut Down

Four nuclear power reactors -- two in New York and two in Ohio -- reported
they were shut down because of the loss of off-site power, according to the
Nuclear Regulatory Commission in Bethesda, Md. They were the two Indian
Point reactors in New York state, and the Perry and Fermi nuclear power
plants in Ohio.

The North American Electric Reliability Council, an industry group
responsible for monitoring the integrity of the system, said the power
outages were "widespread and appear to be centered around Lake Erie,
although they are affecting the entire eastern interconnection."

"We do not know the cause at present but will continue to evaluate the
situation," said Ellen Vancko, speaking for the council.

Planes Are Grounded

The Federal Aviation Administration instituted airport ground stops at
Cleveland, Kennedy, LaGuardia and Newark, N.J. That meant planes from other
cities heading to those four airports could not take off. However, air
traffic control facilities had backup power, and planes already in the air
could land at those airports, said Laura Brown, speaking for the FAA.

At the Homeland Security Department, spokesman Brian Roehrkasse said federal
officials were still gathering information and had not determined a cause.

The department "is working with state and local officials and the energy
sector to determine the cause of the outage as well as what response
measures may be needed to be taken," he said. He said everyone should
"listen and heed the advice of the local authorities."

Verizon Communications Inc., the largest local telephone company in the
northeastern U.S., said its network is operating normally and has not been
affected by a widespread power outage.

Securities regulators were optimistic that U.S. markets would open as
scheduled Friday. "There's no talk about not opening," said Annette
Nazareth, Securities and Exchange Commission market regulation director.
Power was in place through the close of trading Thursday and Mr. Nazareth
said the Depository Trust Co. had cleared trades for the day before power
failed.

The blackouts rivaled those in the West on Aug. 11, 1996, when heat, sagging
power lines and unusually high demand for electricity caused an outage that
affected four million customers in nine states, one of the most severe
outages in U.S. history.

A blackout in New York City in 1977 left some nine million people without
electricity for up to 25 hours.

Updated August 14, 2003 6:08 p.m.






Belinda Wong-Swanson, Principal
Innov8 LLC, 624 Agua Fria, Santa Fe, NM 87501
www.innov8llc.com
email: [hidden email]
tel: [phone]
fax: [phone]



============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9AM @ Jane's Cafe
Lecture schedule, archives, unsubscribe, etc.:
http://www.redfish.com/friam

[Bruce Sawhill]

There's a local angle:

Thinning of "noneconomical" (small diameter) timber from National
Forests could be made economical by burning it on-site with small,
efficient wood fired power plants. (hundreds of kW) Imagine them in
places like Truchas, etc.  all throughout the intermountain West.  
Provide local work, too.  And save the large diameter timber.

Cheers,

Bruce Sawhill


On Thursday, August 14, 2003, at 04:32 PM, Gary Schiltz wrote:

> Belinda, I was thinking of commenting, but I'm not as knowledgeable as
> you about power
> generation - I'm just a tree hugging eco-radical who thinks that large
> scale power plants
> are a bad idea. I would suspect that the generation part would be
> pretty
> efficient, but
> even at the high voltages at which power is transmitted over long
> distances, I'd think
> the loss must be tremendous. My gut feeling is that the large scale
> power production
> industry is successful because of its powerful lobbying rather than any
> inherent
> technological advantages.
>
> // Gary
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: [hidden email] [mailto:[hidden email]] On
> Behalf Of Belinda Wong-Swanson
> Sent: Thursday, August 14, 2003 5:07 PM
> To: The Friday Morning Complexity Coffee Group
> Subject: RE: [FRIAM] Score one for small-scale distributed power
>
>
> Economies of scale is really not much an issue if you use small
> generation systems and use the power locally. Most small cities in the
> US have sufficient population size and activities to make this viable;
> it is not because the utility industry prevents it from doing so.
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: [hidden email] [mailto:[hidden email]]On
> Behalf Of Robert Holmes
> Sent: Thursday, August 14, 2003 4:43 PM
> To: [hidden email]; 'The Friday Morning Complexity Coffee Group'
> Subject: RE: [FRIAM] Score one for small-scale distributed power
>
>
> Small-scale distributed power is OK but has issues of economies of
> scale
> (namely it doesn't have them).
>
> For complexity people like us, the real opportunity lies in distributed
> (agent-based) control as a way of identifying cascading outages and
> self-repairing them. I know that EPRI were researching this and I
> believe they are now (through www.e2i.org) putting together pilot
> projects.
>
> Robert
>
>
> ============================================================
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> Meets Fridays 9AM @ Jane's Cafe
> Lecture schedule, archives, unsubscribe, etc.:
> http://www.redfish.com/friam
>

[Roger Critchlow-2]

My own latest theory, based on no more than coincidence, is that some
distribution line/interconnect controller was running a variant of
Windows that was taken down by the LoveSan worm.

-- rec --

[Robert Holmes]

Power loss in a transmission line, P(loss) is given by P(loss) = R.I^2 (R =
resistance of transmission line, I = current down it). I can be calculated
from the power P that is extracted at the end of the transmission line (at a
substation for example), P = IV. Get rid of the I from the equations and you
get

P(loss) = R.P^2/V^2

i.e line loss decreases dramatically with increasing voltage. If you're
delivering a certain amount of power down a line you want to get the current
as low as possible and the voltage as high as possible.

I suspect that the driver of big vs. small generation lies in the free
market and shareholders' desire for a *quick* return on investment (I don't
think it's the evil power industry lobbyists: GE would be quite as happy to
sell you 100 small gas turbines as one big one). The lifetime generation
costs for a 2000MW plant (about 25 years) is generally much lower than for
the equivalent ten 200MW plants, but it's heavily back-loaded: you need to
wait 10 years to recover your investment rather than 3 years for the smaller
plants. Private investors are just not interested in that sort of time
horizon. Case in point: when the UK privatised its electricity industry in
the early 90s all the 2000MW power plant projects were dropped in favour of
<500MW ones, even though the former had lower lifetime costs. Why? Because
the old projects' customer was the government, which was happy to think in
the long term and the the new projects' customer was the stock market, which
wasn't. (Of course, there was the dash-for-gas too, but that's a whole
nother story...)

Robert


-----Original Message-----
From: [hidden email] [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf
Of Gary Schiltz
Sent: 14 August 2003 17:33
To: 'The Friday Morning Complexity Coffee Group'
Subject: RE: [FRIAM] Score one for small-scale distributed power


Belinda, I was thinking of commenting, but I'm not as knowledgeable as you
about power generation - I'm just a tree hugging eco-radical who thinks that
large scale power plants are a bad idea. I would suspect that the generation
part would be pretty efficient, but even at the high voltages at which power
is transmitted over long distances, I'd think the loss must be tremendous.
My gut feeling is that the large scale power production industry is
successful because of its powerful lobbying rather than any inherent
technological advantages.

// Gary

-----Original Message-----
From: [hidden email] [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf
Of Belinda Wong-Swanson
Sent: Thursday, August 14, 2003 5:07 PM
To: The Friday Morning Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: RE: [FRIAM] Score one for small-scale distributed power


Economies of scale is really not much an issue if you use small generation
systems and use the power locally. Most small cities in the US have
sufficient population size and activities to make this viable; it is not
because the utility industry prevents it from doing so.

-----Original Message-----
From: [hidden email] [mailto:[hidden email]]On
Behalf Of Robert Holmes
Sent: Thursday, August 14, 2003 4:43 PM
To: [hidden email]; 'The Friday Morning Complexity Coffee Group'
Subject: RE: [FRIAM] Score one for small-scale distributed power


Small-scale distributed power is OK but has issues of economies of scale
(namely it doesn't have them).

For complexity people like us, the real opportunity lies in distributed
(agent-based) control as a way of identifying cascading outages and
self-repairing them. I know that EPRI were researching this and I believe
they are now (through www.e2i.org) putting together pilot projects.

Robert


============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9AM @ Jane's Cafe
Lecture schedule, archives, unsubscribe, etc.: http://www.redfish.com/friam

[Belinda Wong-Swanson-2]

If anyone is interested, the following links provide background information
not only on advantages and issues associated with distributed energy but
also the current power distribution grid networks, origins of power crisis,
etc.

http://www.eere.energy.gov/der/basics.html

Belinda



-----Original Message-----
From: [hidden email] [mailto:[hidden email]]On
Behalf Of Robert Holmes
Sent: Friday, August 15, 2003 3:18 PM
To: [hidden email]; 'The Friday Morning Complexity Coffee Group'
Subject: RE: [FRIAM] Score one for small-scale distributed power


Power loss in a transmission line, P(loss) is given by P(loss) = R.I^2 (R =
resistance of transmission line, I = current down it). I can be calculated
from the power P that is extracted at the end of the transmission line (at a
substation for example), P = IV. Get rid of the I from the equations and you
get

P(loss) = R.P^2/V^2

i.e line loss decreases dramatically with increasing voltage. If you're
delivering a certain amount of power down a line you want to get the current
as low as possible and the voltage as high as possible.

I suspect that the driver of big vs. small generation lies in the free
market and shareholders' desire for a *quick* return on investment (I don't
think it's the evil power industry lobbyists: GE would be quite as happy to
sell you 100 small gas turbines as one big one). The lifetime generation
costs for a 2000MW plant (about 25 years) is generally much lower than for
the equivalent ten 200MW plants, but it's heavily back-loaded: you need to
wait 10 years to recover your investment rather than 3 years for the smaller
plants. Private investors are just not interested in that sort of time
horizon. Case in point: when the UK privatised its electricity industry in
the early 90s all the 2000MW power plant projects were dropped in favour of
<500MW ones, even though the former had lower lifetime costs. Why? Because
the old projects' customer was the government, which was happy to think in
the long term and the the new projects' customer was the stock market, which
wasn't. (Of course, there was the dash-for-gas too, but that's a whole
nother story...)

Robert


-----Original Message-----
From: [hidden email] [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf
Of Gary Schiltz
Sent: 14 August 2003 17:33
To: 'The Friday Morning Complexity Coffee Group'
Subject: RE: [FRIAM] Score one for small-scale distributed power


Belinda, I was thinking of commenting, but I'm not as knowledgeable as you
about power generation - I'm just a tree hugging eco-radical who thinks that
large scale power plants are a bad idea. I would suspect that the generation
part would be pretty efficient, but even at the high voltages at which power
is transmitted over long distances, I'd think the loss must be tremendous.
My gut feeling is that the large scale power production industry is
successful because of its powerful lobbying rather than any inherent
technological advantages.

// Gary

-----Original Message-----
From: [hidden email] [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf
Of Belinda Wong-Swanson
Sent: Thursday, August 14, 2003 5:07 PM
To: The Friday Morning Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: RE: [FRIAM] Score one for small-scale distributed power


Economies of scale is really not much an issue if you use small generation
systems and use the power locally. Most small cities in the US have
sufficient population size and activities to make this viable; it is not
because the utility industry prevents it from doing so.

-----Original Message-----
From: [hidden email] [mailto:[hidden email]]On
Behalf Of Robert Holmes
Sent: Thursday, August 14, 2003 4:43 PM
To: [hidden email]; 'The Friday Morning Complexity Coffee Group'
Subject: RE: [FRIAM] Score one for small-scale distributed power


Small-scale distributed power is OK but has issues of economies of scale
(namely it doesn't have them).

For complexity people like us, the real opportunity lies in distributed
(agent-based) control as a way of identifying cascading outages and
self-repairing them. I know that EPRI were researching this and I believe
they are now (through www.e2i.org) putting together pilot projects.

Robert


============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9AM @ Jane's Cafe
Lecture schedule, archives, unsubscribe, etc.: http://www.redfish.com/friam





====================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9AM @ Jane's Cafe
Lecture schedule, archives, unsubscribe, etc.:
http://www.redfish.com/friam

[Frank Wimberly]

One advantage of the current approach is that if some component goes down
the grid is still there (usually!) and end users may never even know there
was a problem.  Does this scale down?  If Truchas' turbine stripped its
gears could the one at Trampas provide backup?

Frank
---
Frank C. Wimberly                                   505 995-8715 or 505
670-9918 (mobile)
140 Calle Ojo Feliz                                  [hidden email]
or [hidden email]
Santa Fe, NM 87505
http://www.andrew.cmu.edu/user/wimberly

----- Original Message -----
From: Carl Tollander
To: [hidden email] ; The Friday Morning Complexity Coffee Group
Sent: Thursday, August 14, 2003 7:11 PM
Subject: RE: [FRIAM] Score one for small-scale distributed power


"due to natural causes"
Once again, the invisible hand presents us with an invisible finger.

I would think that small-scale power (neighborhood microturbines or
constellations thereof) might damp out the effects of the large scale
failures (and associated grime-waves), not get rid of them entirely.

-----Original Message-----
From: [hidden email] [mailto:[hidden email]]On
Behalf Of Belinda Wong-Swanson
Sent: Thursday, August 14, 2003 4:20 PM
To: [hidden email]; [hidden email]
Subject: [FRIAM] Score one for small-scale distributed power


Power Outages Hit
New York, Other Cities

NEW YORK -- A massive power blackout hit U.S. and Canadian cities Thursday,
closing nuclear power plants in Ohio and New York state, driving workers in
New York City and Toronto into the streets, and shutting subways in
blistering heat. The blackout apparently was due to natural causes and there
was no sign of terrorism, officials in New York and Washington said.

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg said it was likely the blackout
started in the Niagara Falls area and quickly spread.


Reporting by Stacy Forster and Carl Bialik of The Wall Street Journal
Online, with contributions from the Associated Press and Dow Jones
Newswires.



"It was probably a natural occurrence which disrupted the power system up
there and apparently for reasons we don't know it cascaded down through New
York state over into Connecticut, as far south as New Jersey and as far west
as Ohio," he said.

A senior law enforcement official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said
the Federal Bureau of Investigation had determined the blackout was a
"natural occurrence" and there was no evidence of terrorism, and that the
Homeland Security Department agreed.

Power was slowly returning to New York state by 6 p.m., about two hours
after the outage, Mr. Bloomberg told reporters at City Hall. Still, he said
it would be "hours, not minutes" before power was fully restored to New York
City. In New York, the blackout affected subways, elevators and airports,
including John F. Kennedy and LaGuardia airports.

Many Workers Are Stranded

Thousands of Manhattan workers were sent home early from work into the
90-degree heat, but many had no easy way of getting home.

At the Canal Street subway station downtown, streams of people emerged
covered in grime.

Anthony Daliva, a computer technician from New Jersey who works downtown,
was among them. He described being on the train when it stopped right past
the station. After being trapped for about an hour in what he described as
incredible heat -- and darkness except for emergency lights -- he and others
climbed between the trains and up a ladder on the side of track toward the
street light. His blue shirt and khaki pants were covered in dirt.

Near Canal Street, Erika Pietsch, a TV producer who lives in Astoria,
Queens, across the East River, said she had to evacuate her building. "I'm
trying to figure out my plan of attack to get home," she said.

Traffic lights were out. Mike Greenfield, a construction estimator, was
stuck in traffic on Watts Street near the Holland Tunnel, where police were
directing traffic. Mr. Greenfield was coming back from Queens headed west to
Freehold, N.J., and says he is used to bad traffic. "It's like this
everyday," he said.

Ralph St. Pierre said he was on the subway in between stations when the
power went out and the train stopped. He said he followed the conductor out
of the tunnel. Later, people could be seen streaming out of subway stations.

Several ice-cream stores in Manhattan said they wouldn't be giving away
their goods, which are melting without power for refrigeration. "I don't
want to give it out," said Steven Chan, proprietor of a Baskin Robbins in
the Lower East Side neighborhood. "Otherwise, there would be a riot."

In Toronto, Canada's largest city, workers also fled their buildings after
the blackout hit shortly after 4 p.m. EDT. There also were widespread
outages in Ottawa, the capital.

Traffic lights were out throughout downtown Cleveland and other major
cities, creating havoc at the beginning of rush hour.

There were reports of outages in northern New Jersey and in several Vermont
towns. In Connecticut, Metro-North Railroad service was knocked out. Lights
flickered at state government buildings in Hartford.

Every prison in New York state reported a loss of power and switched to
backup generators, said James Flateau, a spokesman for the state Department
of Corrections.

In Albany, N.Y., several people were trapped in elevators in Empire State
Plaza, but most had been freed by 5 p.m. People in New York City lined up 10
deep or more at pay phones, with cellphone service disrupted in some areas.

Mike Saltzman, a spokesman for New York Power Authority, a state-owned
utility in White Plains, N.Y., said its two largest hydroelectric plants,
including Niagara Falls and St. Lawrence-FDR, were operating. He said he did
not know the status of 18 other smaller plants.

"There is no evidence of any terrorism at this point," said Michael Sheehan,
deputy commissioner for terrorism of New York City's Police Department.
"We've talked to Washington and there are rumors, but none of them pans
out."

Top New York police officers gathered at the department's operations center
downtown where the focus was on the ramifications of the blackout rather
than its cause. "We're more concerned about getting the traffic lights
running and making sure the city is okay than what caused it," a police
spokesman said at the center.

Nuclear Reactors Shut Down

Four nuclear power reactors -- two in New York and two in Ohio -- reported
they were shut down because of the loss of off-site power, according to the
Nuclear Regulatory Commission in Bethesda, Md. They were the two Indian
Point reactors in New York state, and the Perry and Fermi nuclear power
plants in Ohio.

The North American Electric Reliability Council, an industry group
responsible for monitoring the integrity of the system, said the power
outages were "widespread and appear to be centered around Lake Erie,
although they are affecting the entire eastern interconnection."

"We do not know the cause at present but will continue to evaluate the
situation," said Ellen Vancko, speaking for the council.

Planes Are Grounded

The Federal Aviation Administration instituted airport ground stops at
Cleveland, Kennedy, LaGuardia and Newark, N.J. That meant planes from other
cities heading to those four airports could not take off. However, air
traffic control facilities had backup power, and planes already in the air
could land at those airports, said Laura Brown, speaking for the FAA.

At the Homeland Security Department, spokesman Brian Roehrkasse said federal
officials were still gathering information and had not determined a cause.

The department "is working with state and local officials and the energy
sector to determine the cause of the outage as well as what response
measures may be needed to be taken," he said. He said everyone should
"listen and heed the advice of the local authorities."

Verizon Communications Inc., the largest local telephone company in the
northeastern U.S., said its network is operating normally and has not been
affected by a widespread power outage.

Securities regulators were optimistic that U.S. markets would open as
scheduled Friday. "There's no talk about not opening," said Annette
Nazareth, Securities and Exchange Commission market regulation director.
Power was in place through the close of trading Thursday and Mr. Nazareth
said the Depository Trust Co. had cleared trades for the day before power
failed.

The blackouts rivaled those in the West on Aug. 11, 1996, when heat, sagging
power lines and unusually high demand for electricity caused an outage that
affected four million customers in nine states, one of the most severe
outages in U.S. history.

A blackout in New York City in 1977 left some nine million people without
electricity for up to 25 hours.

Updated August 14, 2003 6:08 p.m.






Belinda Wong-Swanson, Principal
Innov8 LLC, 624 Agua Fria, Santa Fe, NM 87501
www.innov8llc.com
email: [hidden email]
tel: [phone]
fax: [phone]



============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9AM @ Jane's Cafe
Lecture schedule, archives, unsubscribe, etc.:
http://www.redfish.com/friam


============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9AM @ Jane's Cafe
Lecture schedule, archives, unsubscribe, etc.:
http://www.redfish.com/friam

[Bruce Sawhill]

In the latest IEEE magazine, there's an interesting article about
absorbing fluctuations in wind power on the big island of Hawai'i.  
Could also apply to many small wood fired plants, though the
fluctuations shouldn't be so large.

Bruce

On Friday, August 15, 2003, at 02:43 PM, Frank Wimberly wrote:

> One advantage of the current approach is that if some component goes
> down
> the grid is still there (usually!) and end users may never even know
> there
> was a problem.  Does this scale down?  If Truchas' turbine stripped its
> gears could the one at Trampas provide backup?
>
> Frank
> ---
> Frank C. Wimberly                                   505 995-8715 or 505
> 670-9918 (mobile)
> 140 Calle Ojo Feliz                                  
> [hidden email]
> or [hidden email]
> Santa Fe, NM 87505
> http://www.andrew.cmu.edu/user/wimberly
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: Carl Tollander
> To: [hidden email] ; The Friday Morning Complexity Coffee Group
> Sent: Thursday, August 14, 2003 7:11 PM
> Subject: RE: [FRIAM] Score one for small-scale distributed power
>
>
> "due to natural causes"
> Once again, the invisible hand presents us with an invisible finger.
>
> I would think that small-scale power (neighborhood microturbines or
> constellations thereof) might damp out the effects of the large scale
> failures (and associated grime-waves), not get rid of them entirely.
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: [hidden email] [mailto:[hidden email]]On
> Behalf Of Belinda Wong-Swanson
> Sent: Thursday, August 14, 2003 4:20 PM
> To: [hidden email]; [hidden email]
> Subject: [FRIAM] Score one for small-scale distributed power
>
>
> Power Outages Hit
> New York, Other Cities
>
> NEW YORK -- A massive power blackout hit U.S. and Canadian cities
> Thursday,
> closing nuclear power plants in Ohio and New York state, driving
> workers in
> New York City and Toronto into the streets, and shutting subways in
> blistering heat. The blackout apparently was due to natural causes and
> there
> was no sign of terrorism, officials in New York and Washington said.
>
> New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg said it was likely the blackout
> started in the Niagara Falls area and quickly spread.
>
>
> Reporting by Stacy Forster and Carl Bialik of The Wall Street Journal
> Online, with contributions from the Associated Press and Dow Jones
> Newswires.
>
>
>
> "It was probably a natural occurrence which disrupted the power system
> up
> there and apparently for reasons we don't know it cascaded down
> through New
> York state over into Connecticut, as far south as New Jersey and as
> far west
> as Ohio," he said.
>
> A senior law enforcement official, speaking on condition of anonymity,
> said
> the Federal Bureau of Investigation had determined the blackout was a
> "natural occurrence" and there was no evidence of terrorism, and that
> the
> Homeland Security Department agreed.
>
> Power was slowly returning to New York state by 6 p.m., about two hours
> after the outage, Mr. Bloomberg told reporters at City Hall. Still, he
> said
> it would be "hours, not minutes" before power was fully restored to
> New York
> City. In New York, the blackout affected subways, elevators and
> airports,
> including John F. Kennedy and LaGuardia airports.
>
> Many Workers Are Stranded
>
> Thousands of Manhattan workers were sent home early from work into the
> 90-degree heat, but many had no easy way of getting home.
>
> At the Canal Street subway station downtown, streams of people emerged
> covered in grime.
>
> Anthony Daliva, a computer technician from New Jersey who works
> downtown,
> was among them. He described being on the train when it stopped right
> past
> the station. After being trapped for about an hour in what he
> described as
> incredible heat -- and darkness except for emergency lights -- he and
> others
> climbed between the trains and up a ladder on the side of track toward
> the
> street light. His blue shirt and khaki pants were covered in dirt.
>
> Near Canal Street, Erika Pietsch, a TV producer who lives in Astoria,
> Queens, across the East River, said she had to evacuate her building.
> "I'm
> trying to figure out my plan of attack to get home," she said.
>
> Traffic lights were out. Mike Greenfield, a construction estimator, was
> stuck in traffic on Watts Street near the Holland Tunnel, where police
> were
> directing traffic. Mr. Greenfield was coming back from Queens headed
> west to
> Freehold, N.J., and says he is used to bad traffic. "It's like this
> everyday," he said.
>
> Ralph St. Pierre said he was on the subway in between stations when the
> power went out and the train stopped. He said he followed the
> conductor out
> of the tunnel. Later, people could be seen streaming out of subway
> stations.
>
> Several ice-cream stores in Manhattan said they wouldn't be giving away
> their goods, which are melting without power for refrigeration. "I
> don't
> want to give it out," said Steven Chan, proprietor of a Baskin Robbins
> in
> the Lower East Side neighborhood. "Otherwise, there would be a riot."
>
> In Toronto, Canada's largest city, workers also fled their buildings
> after
> the blackout hit shortly after 4 p.m. EDT. There also were widespread
> outages in Ottawa, the capital.
>
> Traffic lights were out throughout downtown Cleveland and other major
> cities, creating havoc at the beginning of rush hour.
>
> There were reports of outages in northern New Jersey and in several
> Vermont
> towns. In Connecticut, Metro-North Railroad service was knocked out.
> Lights
> flickered at state government buildings in Hartford.
>
> Every prison in New York state reported a loss of power and switched to
> backup generators, said James Flateau, a spokesman for the state
> Department
> of Corrections.
>
> In Albany, N.Y., several people were trapped in elevators in Empire
> State
> Plaza, but most had been freed by 5 p.m. People in New York City lined
> up 10
> deep or more at pay phones, with cellphone service disrupted in some
> areas.
>
> Mike Saltzman, a spokesman for New York Power Authority, a state-owned
> utility in White Plains, N.Y., said its two largest hydroelectric
> plants,
> including Niagara Falls and St. Lawrence-FDR, were operating. He said
> he did
> not know the status of 18 other smaller plants.
>
> "There is no evidence of any terrorism at this point," said Michael
> Sheehan,
> deputy commissioner for terrorism of New York City's Police Department.
> "We've talked to Washington and there are rumors, but none of them pans
> out."
>
> Top New York police officers gathered at the department's operations
> center
> downtown where the focus was on the ramifications of the blackout
> rather
> than its cause. "We're more concerned about getting the traffic lights
> running and making sure the city is okay than what caused it," a police
> spokesman said at the center.
>
> Nuclear Reactors Shut Down
>
> Four nuclear power reactors -- two in New York and two in Ohio --
> reported
> they were shut down because of the loss of off-site power, according
> to the
> Nuclear Regulatory Commission in Bethesda, Md. They were the two Indian
> Point reactors in New York state, and the Perry and Fermi nuclear power
> plants in Ohio.
>
> The North American Electric Reliability Council, an industry group
> responsible for monitoring the integrity of the system, said the power
> outages were "widespread and appear to be centered around Lake Erie,
> although they are affecting the entire eastern interconnection."
>
> "We do not know the cause at present but will continue to evaluate the
> situation," said Ellen Vancko, speaking for the council.
>
> Planes Are Grounded
>
> The Federal Aviation Administration instituted airport ground stops at
> Cleveland, Kennedy, LaGuardia and Newark, N.J. That meant planes from
> other
> cities heading to those four airports could not take off. However, air
> traffic control facilities had backup power, and planes already in the
> air
> could land at those airports, said Laura Brown, speaking for the FAA.
>
> At the Homeland Security Department, spokesman Brian Roehrkasse said
> federal
> officials were still gathering information and had not determined a
> cause.
>
> The department "is working with state and local officials and the
> energy
> sector to determine the cause of the outage as well as what response
> measures may be needed to be taken," he said. He said everyone should
> "listen and heed the advice of the local authorities."
>
> Verizon Communications Inc., the largest local telephone company in the
> northeastern U.S., said its network is operating normally and has not
> been
> affected by a widespread power outage.
>
> Securities regulators were optimistic that U.S. markets would open as
> scheduled Friday. "There's no talk about not opening," said Annette
> Nazareth, Securities and Exchange Commission market regulation
> director.
> Power was in place through the close of trading Thursday and Mr.
> Nazareth
> said the Depository Trust Co. had cleared trades for the day before
> power
> failed.
>
> The blackouts rivaled those in the West on Aug. 11, 1996, when heat,
> sagging
> power lines and unusually high demand for electricity caused an outage
> that
> affected four million customers in nine states, one of the most severe
> outages in U.S. history.
>
> A blackout in New York City in 1977 left some nine million people
> without
> electricity for up to 25 hours.
>
> Updated August 14, 2003 6:08 p.m.
>
>
>
>
>
>
> Belinda Wong-Swanson, Principal
> Innov8 LLC, 624 Agua Fria, Santa Fe, NM 87501
> www.innov8llc.com
> email: [hidden email]
> tel: [phone]
> fax: [phone]
>
>
>
> ============================================================
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> Meets Fridays 9AM @ Jane's Cafe
> Lecture schedule, archives, unsubscribe, etc.:
> http://www.redfish.com/friam
>
>
> ============================================================
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> Meets Fridays 9AM @ Jane's Cafe
> Lecture schedule, archives, unsubscribe, etc.:
> http://www.redfish.com/friam
>
>
> ============================================================
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> Meets Fridays 9AM @ Jane's Cafe
> Lecture schedule, archives, unsubscribe, etc.:
> http://www.redfish.com/friam
>

[Frank Wimberly]

My impression is that burning wood (esp. pine tar) causes noxious air
pollution.  Anyone know for sure?  It smells good around here in December
but...  How long would it take before the unwanted wood, say pinions killed
by bark beetles, runs out?  Would "we" be able to resist burning good
timber?  In the lobby of the First National Bank of Santa Fe there are
photos of the hills around Santa Fe taken in the late 1800's.  The density
of the pinion and juniper was much less than it is today.  My friend Tom
Noble thinks that's because everyone burned those trees for heat.  I am more
inclined to believe that there was something like a bark beetle infestation
before that time.

Frank
----- Original Message -----
From: "Bruce Sawhill" <[hidden email]>
To: "The Friday Morning Complexity Coffee Group" <[hidden email]>
Cc: "Bruce Sawhill" <[hidden email]>
Sent: Friday, August 15, 2003 7:02 PM
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Score one for small-scale distributed power

> In the latest IEEE magazine, there's an interesting article about
> absorbing fluctuations in wind power on the big island of Hawai'i.
> Could also apply to many small wood fired plants, though the
> fluctuations shouldn't be so large.
>
> Bruce
>
> On Friday, August 15, 2003, at 02:43 PM, Frank Wimberly wrote:
>
> > One advantage of the current approach is that if some component goes
> > down
> > the grid is still there (usually!) and end users may never even know
> > there
> > was a problem.  Does this scale down?  If Truchas' turbine stripped its
> > gears could the one at Trampas provide backup?
> >
> > Frank
> > ---
> > Frank C. Wimberly                                   505 995-8715 or 505
> > 670-9918 (mobile)
> > 140 Calle Ojo Feliz
> > [hidden email]
> > or [hidden email]
> > Santa Fe, NM 87505
> > http://www.andrew.cmu.edu/user/wimberly
> >
> > ----- Original Message -----
> > From: Carl Tollander
> > To: [hidden email] ; The Friday Morning Complexity Coffee Group
> > Sent: Thursday, August 14, 2003 7:11 PM
> > Subject: RE: [FRIAM] Score one for small-scale distributed power
> >
> >
> > "due to natural causes"
> > Once again, the invisible hand presents us with an invisible finger.
> >
> > I would think that small-scale power (neighborhood microturbines or
> > constellations thereof) might damp out the effects of the large scale
> > failures (and associated grime-waves), not get rid of them entirely.
> >
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: [hidden email] [mailto:[hidden email]]On
> > Behalf Of Belinda Wong-Swanson
> > Sent: Thursday, August 14, 2003 4:20 PM
> > To: [hidden email]; [hidden email]
> > Subject: [FRIAM] Score one for small-scale distributed power
> >
> >
> > Power Outages Hit
> > New York, Other Cities
> >
> > NEW YORK -- A massive power blackout hit U.S. and Canadian cities
> > Thursday,
> > closing nuclear power plants in Ohio and New York state, driving
> > workers in
> > New York City and Toronto into the streets, and shutting subways in
> > blistering heat. The blackout apparently was due to natural causes and
> > there
> > was no sign of terrorism, officials in New York and Washington said.
> >
> > New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg said it was likely the blackout
> > started in the Niagara Falls area and quickly spread.
> >
> >
> > Reporting by Stacy Forster and Carl Bialik of The Wall Street Journal
> > Online, with contributions from the Associated Press and Dow Jones
> > Newswires.
> >
> >
> >
> > "It was probably a natural occurrence which disrupted the power system
> > up
> > there and apparently for reasons we don't know it cascaded down
> > through New
> > York state over into Connecticut, as far south as New Jersey and as
> > far west
> > as Ohio," he said.
> >
> > A senior law enforcement official, speaking on condition of anonymity,
> > said
> > the Federal Bureau of Investigation had determined the blackout was a
> > "natural occurrence" and there was no evidence of terrorism, and that
> > the
> > Homeland Security Department agreed.
> >
> > Power was slowly returning to New York state by 6 p.m., about two hours
> > after the outage, Mr. Bloomberg told reporters at City Hall. Still, he
> > said
> > it would be "hours, not minutes" before power was fully restored to
> > New York
> > City. In New York, the blackout affected subways, elevators and
> > airports,
> > including John F. Kennedy and LaGuardia airports.
> >
> > Many Workers Are Stranded
> >
> > Thousands of Manhattan workers were sent home early from work into the
> > 90-degree heat, but many had no easy way of getting home.
> >
> > At the Canal Street subway station downtown, streams of people emerged
> > covered in grime.
> >
> > Anthony Daliva, a computer technician from New Jersey who works
> > downtown,
> > was among them. He described being on the train when it stopped right
> > past
> > the station. After being trapped for about an hour in what he
> > described as
> > incredible heat -- and darkness except for emergency lights -- he and
> > others
> > climbed between the trains and up a ladder on the side of track toward
> > the
> > street light. His blue shirt and khaki pants were covered in dirt.
> >
> > Near Canal Street, Erika Pietsch, a TV producer who lives in Astoria,
> > Queens, across the East River, said she had to evacuate her building.
> > "I'm
> > trying to figure out my plan of attack to get home," she said.
> >
> > Traffic lights were out. Mike Greenfield, a construction estimator, was
> > stuck in traffic on Watts Street near the Holland Tunnel, where police
> > were
> > directing traffic. Mr. Greenfield was coming back from Queens headed
> > west to
> > Freehold, N.J., and says he is used to bad traffic. "It's like this
> > everyday," he said.
> >
> > Ralph St. Pierre said he was on the subway in between stations when the
> > power went out and the train stopped. He said he followed the
> > conductor out
> > of the tunnel. Later, people could be seen streaming out of subway
> > stations.
> >
> > Several ice-cream stores in Manhattan said they wouldn't be giving away
> > their goods, which are melting without power for refrigeration. "I
> > don't
> > want to give it out," said Steven Chan, proprietor of a Baskin Robbins
> > in
> > the Lower East Side neighborhood. "Otherwise, there would be a riot."
> >
> > In Toronto, Canada's largest city, workers also fled their buildings
> > after
> > the blackout hit shortly after 4 p.m. EDT. There also were widespread
> > outages in Ottawa, the capital.
> >
> > Traffic lights were out throughout downtown Cleveland and other major
> > cities, creating havoc at the beginning of rush hour.
> >
> > There were reports of outages in northern New Jersey and in several
> > Vermont
> > towns. In Connecticut, Metro-North Railroad service was knocked out.
> > Lights
> > flickered at state government buildings in Hartford.
> >
> > Every prison in New York state reported a loss of power and switched to
> > backup generators, said James Flateau, a spokesman for the state
> > Department
> > of Corrections.
> >
> > In Albany, N.Y., several people were trapped in elevators in Empire
> > State
> > Plaza, but most had been freed by 5 p.m. People in New York City lined
> > up 10
> > deep or more at pay phones, with cellphone service disrupted in some
> > areas.
> >
> > Mike Saltzman, a spokesman for New York Power Authority, a state-owned
> > utility in White Plains, N.Y., said its two largest hydroelectric
> > plants,
> > including Niagara Falls and St. Lawrence-FDR, were operating. He said
> > he did
> > not know the status of 18 other smaller plants.
> >
> > "There is no evidence of any terrorism at this point," said Michael
> > Sheehan,
> > deputy commissioner for terrorism of New York City's Police Department.
> > "We've talked to Washington and there are rumors, but none of them pans
> > out."
> >
> > Top New York police officers gathered at the department's operations
> > center
> > downtown where the focus was on the ramifications of the blackout
> > rather
> > than its cause. "We're more concerned about getting the traffic lights
> > running and making sure the city is okay than what caused it," a police
> > spokesman said at the center.
> >
> > Nuclear Reactors Shut Down
> >
> > Four nuclear power reactors -- two in New York and two in Ohio --
> > reported
> > they were shut down because of the loss of off-site power, according
> > to the
> > Nuclear Regulatory Commission in Bethesda, Md. They were the two Indian
> > Point reactors in New York state, and the Perry and Fermi nuclear power
> > plants in Ohio.
> >
> > The North American Electric Reliability Council, an industry group
> > responsible for monitoring the integrity of the system, said the power
> > outages were "widespread and appear to be centered around Lake Erie,
> > although they are affecting the entire eastern interconnection."
> >
> > "We do not know the cause at present but will continue to evaluate the
> > situation," said Ellen Vancko, speaking for the council.
> >
> > Planes Are Grounded
> >
> > The Federal Aviation Administration instituted airport ground stops at
> > Cleveland, Kennedy, LaGuardia and Newark, N.J. That meant planes from
> > other
> > cities heading to those four airports could not take off. However, air
> > traffic control facilities had backup power, and planes already in the
> > air
> > could land at those airports, said Laura Brown, speaking for the FAA.
> >
> > At the Homeland Security Department, spokesman Brian Roehrkasse said
> > federal
> > officials were still gathering information and had not determined a
> > cause.
> >
> > The department "is working with state and local officials and the
> > energy
> > sector to determine the cause of the outage as well as what response
> > measures may be needed to be taken," he said. He said everyone should
> > "listen and heed the advice of the local authorities."
> >
> > Verizon Communications Inc., the largest local telephone company in the
> > northeastern U.S., said its network is operating normally and has not
> > been
> > affected by a widespread power outage.
> >
> > Securities regulators were optimistic that U.S. markets would open as
> > scheduled Friday. "There's no talk about not opening," said Annette
> > Nazareth, Securities and Exchange Commission market regulation
> > director.
> > Power was in place through the close of trading Thursday and Mr.
> > Nazareth
> > said the Depository Trust Co. had cleared trades for the day before
> > power
> > failed.
> >
> > The blackouts rivaled those in the West on Aug. 11, 1996, when heat,
> > sagging
> > power lines and unusually high demand for electricity caused an outage
> > that
> > affected four million customers in nine states, one of the most severe
> > outages in U.S. history.
> >
> > A blackout in New York City in 1977 left some nine million people
> > without
> > electricity for up to 25 hours.
> >
> > Updated August 14, 2003 6:08 p.m.
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > Belinda Wong-Swanson, Principal
> > Innov8 LLC, 624 Agua Fria, Santa Fe, NM 87501
> > www.innov8llc.com
> > email: [hidden email]
> > tel: [phone]
> > fax: [phone]
> >
> >
> >
> > ============================================================
> > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> > Meets Fridays 9AM @ Jane's Cafe
> > Lecture schedule, archives, unsubscribe, etc.:
> > http://www.redfish.com/friam
> >
> >
> > ============================================================
> > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> > Meets Fridays 9AM @ Jane's Cafe
> > Lecture schedule, archives, unsubscribe, etc.:
> > http://www.redfish.com/friam
> >
> >
> > ============================================================
> > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> > Meets Fridays 9AM @ Jane's Cafe
> > Lecture schedule, archives, unsubscribe, etc.:
> > http://www.redfish.com/friam
> >
>
>
> ============================================================
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> Meets Fridays 9AM @ Jane's Cafe
> Lecture schedule, archives, unsubscribe, etc.:
> http://www.redfish.com/friam

[Bruce Sawhill]

I think there's enough wood for a few hundred MW for about 50 years in
the intermountain West.  Hopefully by then the forests will be thinner
and we'll have Mr. Fusion, or at least Mr. Wind and Mrs. Solar.  I
think clean burning microturbines exist now.

Bruce\

On Saturday, August 16, 2003, at 02:20 AM, Frank Wimberly wrote:

> My impression is that burning wood (esp. pine tar) causes noxious air
> pollution.  Anyone know for sure?  It smells good around here in
> December
> but...  How long would it take before the unwanted wood, say pinions
> killed
> by bark beetles, runs out?  Would "we" be able to resist burning good
> timber?  In the lobby of the First National Bank of Santa Fe there are
> photos of the hills around Santa Fe taken in the late 1800's.  The
> density
> of the pinion and juniper was much less than it is today.  My friend
> Tom
> Noble thinks that's because everyone burned those trees for heat.  I
> am more
> inclined to believe that there was something like a bark beetle
> infestation
> before that time.
>
> Frank
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Bruce Sawhill" <[hidden email]>
> To: "The Friday Morning Complexity Coffee Group" <[hidden email]>
> Cc: "Bruce Sawhill" <[hidden email]>
> Sent: Friday, August 15, 2003 7:02 PM
> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Score one for small-scale distributed power
>
>
>> In the latest IEEE magazine, there's an interesting article about
>> absorbing fluctuations in wind power on the big island of Hawai'i.
>> Could also apply to many small wood fired plants, though the
>> fluctuations shouldn't be so large.
>>
>> Bruce
>>
>> On Friday, August 15, 2003, at 02:43 PM, Frank Wimberly wrote:
>>
>>> One advantage of the current approach is that if some component goes
>>> down
>>> the grid is still there (usually!) and end users may never even know
>>> there
>>> was a problem.  Does this scale down?  If Truchas' turbine stripped
>>> its
>>> gears could the one at Trampas provide backup?
>>>
>>> Frank
>>> ---
>>> Frank C. Wimberly                                   505 995-8715 or
>>> 505
>>> 670-9918 (mobile)
>>> 140 Calle Ojo Feliz
>>> [hidden email]
>>> or [hidden email]
>>> Santa Fe, NM 87505
>>> http://www.andrew.cmu.edu/user/wimberly
>>>
>>> ----- Original Message -----
>>> From: Carl Tollander
>>> To: [hidden email] ; The Friday Morning Complexity Coffee Group
>>> Sent: Thursday, August 14, 2003 7:11 PM
>>> Subject: RE: [FRIAM] Score one for small-scale distributed power
>>>
>>>
>>> "due to natural causes"
>>> Once again, the invisible hand presents us with an invisible finger.
>>>
>>> I would think that small-scale power (neighborhood microturbines or
>>> constellations thereof) might damp out the effects of the large scale
>>> failures (and associated grime-waves), not get rid of them entirely.
>>>
>>> -----Original Message-----
>>> From: [hidden email] [mailto:[hidden email]]On
>>> Behalf Of Belinda Wong-Swanson
>>> Sent: Thursday, August 14, 2003 4:20 PM
>>> To: [hidden email]; [hidden email]
>>> Subject: [FRIAM] Score one for small-scale distributed power
>>>
>>>
>>> Power Outages Hit
>>> New York, Other Cities
>>>
>>> NEW YORK -- A massive power blackout hit U.S. and Canadian cities
>>> Thursday,
>>> closing nuclear power plants in Ohio and New York state, driving
>>> workers in
>>> New York City and Toronto into the streets, and shutting subways in
>>> blistering heat. The blackout apparently was due to natural causes
>>> and
>>> there
>>> was no sign of terrorism, officials in New York and Washington said.
>>>
>>> New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg said it was likely the blackout
>>> started in the Niagara Falls area and quickly spread.
>>>
>>>
>>> Reporting by Stacy Forster and Carl Bialik of The Wall Street Journal
>>> Online, with contributions from the Associated Press and Dow Jones
>>> Newswires.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> "It was probably a natural occurrence which disrupted the power
>>> system
>>> up
>>> there and apparently for reasons we don't know it cascaded down
>>> through New
>>> York state over into Connecticut, as far south as New Jersey and as
>>> far west
>>> as Ohio," he said.
>>>
>>> A senior law enforcement official, speaking on condition of
>>> anonymity,
>>> said
>>> the Federal Bureau of Investigation had determined the blackout was a
>>> "natural occurrence" and there was no evidence of terrorism, and that
>>> the
>>> Homeland Security Department agreed.
>>>
>>> Power was slowly returning to New York state by 6 p.m., about two
>>> hours
>>> after the outage, Mr. Bloomberg told reporters at City Hall. Still,
>>> he
>>> said
>>> it would be "hours, not minutes" before power was fully restored to
>>> New York
>>> City. In New York, the blackout affected subways, elevators and
>>> airports,
>>> including John F. Kennedy and LaGuardia airports.
>>>
>>> Many Workers Are Stranded
>>>
>>> Thousands of Manhattan workers were sent home early from work into
>>> the
>>> 90-degree heat, but many had no easy way of getting home.
>>>
>>> At the Canal Street subway station downtown, streams of people
>>> emerged
>>> covered in grime.
>>>
>>> Anthony Daliva, a computer technician from New Jersey who works
>>> downtown,
>>> was among them. He described being on the train when it stopped right
>>> past
>>> the station. After being trapped for about an hour in what he
>>> described as
>>> incredible heat -- and darkness except for emergency lights -- he and
>>> others
>>> climbed between the trains and up a ladder on the side of track
>>> toward
>>> the
>>> street light. His blue shirt and khaki pants were covered in dirt.
>>>
>>> Near Canal Street, Erika Pietsch, a TV producer who lives in Astoria,
>>> Queens, across the East River, said she had to evacuate her building.
>>> "I'm
>>> trying to figure out my plan of attack to get home," she said.
>>>
>>> Traffic lights were out. Mike Greenfield, a construction estimator,
>>> was
>>> stuck in traffic on Watts Street near the Holland Tunnel, where
>>> police
>>> were
>>> directing traffic. Mr. Greenfield was coming back from Queens headed
>>> west to
>>> Freehold, N.J., and says he is used to bad traffic. "It's like this
>>> everyday," he said.
>>>
>>> Ralph St. Pierre said he was on the subway in between stations when
>>> the
>>> power went out and the train stopped. He said he followed the
>>> conductor out
>>> of the tunnel. Later, people could be seen streaming out of subway
>>> stations.
>>>
>>> Several ice-cream stores in Manhattan said they wouldn't be giving
>>> away
>>> their goods, which are melting without power for refrigeration. "I
>>> don't
>>> want to give it out," said Steven Chan, proprietor of a Baskin
>>> Robbins
>>> in
>>> the Lower East Side neighborhood. "Otherwise, there would be a riot."
>>>
>>> In Toronto, Canada's largest city, workers also fled their buildings
>>> after
>>> the blackout hit shortly after 4 p.m. EDT. There also were widespread
>>> outages in Ottawa, the capital.
>>>
>>> Traffic lights were out throughout downtown Cleveland and other major
>>> cities, creating havoc at the beginning of rush hour.
>>>
>>> There were reports of outages in northern New Jersey and in several
>>> Vermont
>>> towns. In Connecticut, Metro-North Railroad service was knocked out.
>>> Lights
>>> flickered at state government buildings in Hartford.
>>>
>>> Every prison in New York state reported a loss of power and switched
>>> to
>>> backup generators, said James Flateau, a spokesman for the state
>>> Department
>>> of Corrections.
>>>
>>> In Albany, N.Y., several people were trapped in elevators in Empire
>>> State
>>> Plaza, but most had been freed by 5 p.m. People in New York City
>>> lined
>>> up 10
>>> deep or more at pay phones, with cellphone service disrupted in some
>>> areas.
>>>
>>> Mike Saltzman, a spokesman for New York Power Authority, a
>>> state-owned
>>> utility in White Plains, N.Y., said its two largest hydroelectric
>>> plants,
>>> including Niagara Falls and St. Lawrence-FDR, were operating. He said
>>> he did
>>> not know the status of 18 other smaller plants.
>>>
>>> "There is no evidence of any terrorism at this point," said Michael
>>> Sheehan,
>>> deputy commissioner for terrorism of New York City's Police
>>> Department.
>>> "We've talked to Washington and there are rumors, but none of them
>>> pans
>>> out."
>>>
>>> Top New York police officers gathered at the department's operations
>>> center
>>> downtown where the focus was on the ramifications of the blackout
>>> rather
>>> than its cause. "We're more concerned about getting the traffic
>>> lights
>>> running and making sure the city is okay than what caused it," a
>>> police
>>> spokesman said at the center.
>>>
>>> Nuclear Reactors Shut Down
>>>
>>> Four nuclear power reactors -- two in New York and two in Ohio --
>>> reported
>>> they were shut down because of the loss of off-site power, according
>>> to the
>>> Nuclear Regulatory Commission in Bethesda, Md. They were the two
>>> Indian
>>> Point reactors in New York state, and the Perry and Fermi nuclear
>>> power
>>> plants in Ohio.
>>>
>>> The North American Electric Reliability Council, an industry group
>>> responsible for monitoring the integrity of the system, said the
>>> power
>>> outages were "widespread and appear to be centered around Lake Erie,
>>> although they are affecting the entire eastern interconnection."
>>>
>>> "We do not know the cause at present but will continue to evaluate
>>> the
>>> situation," said Ellen Vancko, speaking for the council.
>>>
>>> Planes Are Grounded
>>>
>>> The Federal Aviation Administration instituted airport ground stops
>>> at
>>> Cleveland, Kennedy, LaGuardia and Newark, N.J. That meant planes from
>>> other
>>> cities heading to those four airports could not take off. However,
>>> air
>>> traffic control facilities had backup power, and planes already in
>>> the
>>> air
>>> could land at those airports, said Laura Brown, speaking for the FAA.
>>>
>>> At the Homeland Security Department, spokesman Brian Roehrkasse said
>>> federal
>>> officials were still gathering information and had not determined a
>>> cause.
>>>
>>> The department "is working with state and local officials and the
>>> energy
>>> sector to determine the cause of the outage as well as what response
>>> measures may be needed to be taken," he said. He said everyone should
>>> "listen and heed the advice of the local authorities."
>>>
>>> Verizon Communications Inc., the largest local telephone company in
>>> the
>>> northeastern U.S., said its network is operating normally and has not
>>> been
>>> affected by a widespread power outage.
>>>
>>> Securities regulators were optimistic that U.S. markets would open as
>>> scheduled Friday. "There's no talk about not opening," said Annette
>>> Nazareth, Securities and Exchange Commission market regulation
>>> director.
>>> Power was in place through the close of trading Thursday and Mr.
>>> Nazareth
>>> said the Depository Trust Co. had cleared trades for the day before
>>> power
>>> failed.
>>>
>>> The blackouts rivaled those in the West on Aug. 11, 1996, when heat,
>>> sagging
>>> power lines and unusually high demand for electricity caused an
>>> outage
>>> that
>>> affected four million customers in nine states, one of the most
>>> severe
>>> outages in U.S. history.
>>>
>>> A blackout in New York City in 1977 left some nine million people
>>> without
>>> electricity for up to 25 hours.
>>>
>>> Updated August 14, 2003 6:08 p.m.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Belinda Wong-Swanson, Principal
>>> Innov8 LLC, 624 Agua Fria, Santa Fe, NM 87501
>>> www.innov8llc.com
>>> email: [hidden email]
>>> tel: [phone]
>>> fax: [phone]
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> ============================================================
>>> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
>>> Meets Fridays 9AM @ Jane's Cafe
>>> Lecture schedule, archives, unsubscribe, etc.:
>>> http://www.redfish.com/friam
>>>
>>>
>>> ============================================================
>>> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
>>> Meets Fridays 9AM @ Jane's Cafe
>>> Lecture schedule, archives, unsubscribe, etc.:
>>> http://www.redfish.com/friam
>>>
>>>
>>> ============================================================
>>> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
>>> Meets Fridays 9AM @ Jane's Cafe
>>> Lecture schedule, archives, unsubscribe, etc.:
>>> http://www.redfish.com/friam
>>>
>>
>>
>> ============================================================
>> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
>> Meets Fridays 9AM @ Jane's Cafe
>> Lecture schedule, archives, unsubscribe, etc.:
>> http://www.redfish.com/friam
>
>
> ============================================================
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> Meets Fridays 9AM @ Jane's Cafe
> Lecture schedule, archives, unsubscribe, etc.:
> http://www.redfish.com/friam
>

[Owen Densmore]

This reminds me of the Palo Alto, CA subsidy for solar panels.  The
city, county, state subsidies were impressive enough that most folks
working on their houses took seriously converting to solar.

Are there subsidies like that here?

Sorta like shared WiFi, it might be nifty for some of us to have
interesting new power supplements .. probably solar.  Is anyone looking
into alternatives for their home?

On Friday, August 15, 2003, at 09:15  PM, Bruce Sawhill wrote:

> I think there's enough wood for a few hundred MW for about 50 years in
> the intermountain West.  Hopefully by then the forests will be thinner
> and we'll have Mr. Fusion, or at least Mr. Wind and Mrs. Solar.  I
> think clean burning microturbines exist now.
>
> Bruce\

Owen Densmore           451 Camino Don Miguel     Santa Fe, NM 87505
Work: 505-983-6305      Cell: 505-570-0168        Home: 505-988-3787
[hidden email] http://complexityworkshop.com http://backspaces.net

[Dede Densmore]

score one for complexity? it seems to me that the issue is not only the scale
of power distribution but, perhaps more importantly, the diversity (or lack
thereof) of sources of power generation at whatever scale. every source of
power has disadvantages. the trick is to minimize the impact of any one set of
disadvantages while still providing sufficient power. and yes, we all need to
put or heads together to deal with the issue of "sufficient" power. we all
would like to feel virtuous, but none of us wants to have to choose between
coffee and internet access or refrigeration and hot water.

dede

Frank Wimberly wrote:

> My impression is that burning wood (esp. pine tar) causes noxious air
> pollution.  Anyone know for sure?  It smells good around here in December
> but...  How long would it take before the unwanted wood, say pinions killed
> by bark beetles, runs out?  Would "we" be able to resist burning good
> timber?  In the lobby of the First National Bank of Santa Fe there are
> photos of the hills around Santa Fe taken in the late 1800's.  The density
> of the pinion and juniper was much less than it is today.  My friend Tom
> Noble thinks that's because everyone burned those trees for heat.  I am more
> inclined to believe that there was something like a bark beetle infestation
> before that time.
>
> Frank
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Bruce Sawhill" <[hidden email]>
> To: "The Friday Morning Complexity Coffee Group" <[hidden email]>
> Cc: "Bruce Sawhill" <[hidden email]>
> Sent: Friday, August 15, 2003 7:02 PM
> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Score one for small-scale distributed power
>
> > In the latest IEEE magazine, there's an interesting article about
> > absorbing fluctuations in wind power on the big island of Hawai'i.
> > Could also apply to many small wood fired plants, though the
> > fluctuations shouldn't be so large.
> >
> > Bruce
> >
> > On Friday, August 15, 2003, at 02:43 PM, Frank Wimberly wrote:
> >
> > > One advantage of the current approach is that if some component goes
> > > down
> > > the grid is still there (usually!) and end users may never even know
> > > there
> > > was a problem.  Does this scale down?  If Truchas' turbine stripped its
> > > gears could the one at Trampas provide backup?
> > >
> > > Frank
> > > ---
> > > Frank C. Wimberly                                   505 995-8715 or 505
> > > 670-9918 (mobile)
> > > 140 Calle Ojo Feliz
> > > [hidden email]
> > > or [hidden email]
> > > Santa Fe, NM 87505
> > > http://www.andrew.cmu.edu/user/wimberly
> > >
> > > ----- Original Message -----
> > > From: Carl Tollander
> > > To: [hidden email] ; The Friday Morning Complexity Coffee Group
> > > Sent: Thursday, August 14, 2003 7:11 PM
> > > Subject: RE: [FRIAM] Score one for small-scale distributed power
> > >
> > >
> > > "due to natural causes"
> > > Once again, the invisible hand presents us with an invisible finger.
> > >
> > > I would think that small-scale power (neighborhood microturbines or
> > > constellations thereof) might damp out the effects of the large scale
> > > failures (and associated grime-waves), not get rid of them entirely.
> > >
> > > -----Original Message-----
> > > From: [hidden email] [mailto:[hidden email]]On
> > > Behalf Of Belinda Wong-Swanson
> > > Sent: Thursday, August 14, 2003 4:20 PM
> > > To: [hidden email]; [hidden email]
> > > Subject: [FRIAM] Score one for small-scale distributed power
> > >
> > >
> > > Power Outages Hit
> > > New York, Other Cities
> > >
> > > NEW YORK -- A massive power blackout hit U.S. and Canadian cities
> > > Thursday,
> > > closing nuclear power plants in Ohio and New York state, driving
> > > workers in
> > > New York City and Toronto into the streets, and shutting subways in
> > > blistering heat. The blackout apparently was due to natural causes and
> > > there
> > > was no sign of terrorism, officials in New York and Washington said.
> > >
> > > New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg said it was likely the blackout
> > > started in the Niagara Falls area and quickly spread.
> > >
> > >
> > > Reporting by Stacy Forster and Carl Bialik of The Wall Street Journal
> > > Online, with contributions from the Associated Press and Dow Jones
> > > Newswires.
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > "It was probably a natural occurrence which disrupted the power system
> > > up
> > > there and apparently for reasons we don't know it cascaded down
> > > through New
> > > York state over into Connecticut, as far south as New Jersey and as
> > > far west
> > > as Ohio," he said.
> > >
> > > A senior law enforcement official, speaking on condition of anonymity,
> > > said
> > > the Federal Bureau of Investigation had determined the blackout was a
> > > "natural occurrence" and there was no evidence of terrorism, and that
> > > the
> > > Homeland Security Department agreed.
> > >
> > > Power was slowly returning to New York state by 6 p.m., about two hours
> > > after the outage, Mr. Bloomberg told reporters at City Hall. Still, he
> > > said
> > > it would be "hours, not minutes" before power was fully restored to
> > > New York
> > > City. In New York, the blackout affected subways, elevators and
> > > airports,
> > > including John F. Kennedy and LaGuardia airports.
> > >
> > > Many Workers Are Stranded
> > >
> > > Thousands of Manhattan workers were sent home early from work into the
> > > 90-degree heat, but many had no easy way of getting home.
> > >
> > > At the Canal Street subway station downtown, streams of people emerged
> > > covered in grime.
> > >
> > > Anthony Daliva, a computer technician from New Jersey who works
> > > downtown,
> > > was among them. He described being on the train when it stopped right
> > > past
> > > the station. After being trapped for about an hour in what he
> > > described as
> > > incredible heat -- and darkness except for emergency lights -- he and
> > > others
> > > climbed between the trains and up a ladder on the side of track toward
> > > the
> > > street light. His blue shirt and khaki pants were covered in dirt.
> > >
> > > Near Canal Street, Erika Pietsch, a TV producer who lives in Astoria,
> > > Queens, across the East River, said she had to evacuate her building.
> > > "I'm
> > > trying to figure out my plan of attack to get home," she said.
> > >
> > > Traffic lights were out. Mike Greenfield, a construction estimator, was
> > > stuck in traffic on Watts Street near the Holland Tunnel, where police
> > > were
> > > directing traffic. Mr. Greenfield was coming back from Queens headed
> > > west to
> > > Freehold, N.J., and says he is used to bad traffic. "It's like this
> > > everyday," he said.
> > >
> > > Ralph St. Pierre said he was on the subway in between stations when the
> > > power went out and the train stopped. He said he followed the
> > > conductor out
> > > of the tunnel. Later, people could be seen streaming out of subway
> > > stations.
> > >
> > > Several ice-cream stores in Manhattan said they wouldn't be giving away
> > > their goods, which are melting without power for refrigeration. "I
> > > don't
> > > want to give it out," said Steven Chan, proprietor of a Baskin Robbins
> > > in
> > > the Lower East Side neighborhood. "Otherwise, there would be a riot."
> > >
> > > In Toronto, Canada's largest city, workers also fled their buildings
> > > after
> > > the blackout hit shortly after 4 p.m. EDT. There also were widespread
> > > outages in Ottawa, the capital.
> > >
> > > Traffic lights were out throughout downtown Cleveland and other major
> > > cities, creating havoc at the beginning of rush hour.
> > >
> > > There were reports of outages in northern New Jersey and in several
> > > Vermont
> > > towns. In Connecticut, Metro-North Railroad service was knocked out.
> > > Lights
> > > flickered at state government buildings in Hartford.
> > >
> > > Every prison in New York state reported a loss of power and switched to
> > > backup generators, said James Flateau, a spokesman for the state
> > > Department
> > > of Corrections.
> > >
> > > In Albany, N.Y., several people were trapped in elevators in Empire
> > > State
> > > Plaza, but most had been freed by 5 p.m. People in New York City lined
> > > up 10
> > > deep or more at pay phones, with cellphone service disrupted in some
> > > areas.
> > >
> > > Mike Saltzman, a spokesman for New York Power Authority, a state-owned
> > > utility in White Plains, N.Y., said its two largest hydroelectric
> > > plants,
> > > including Niagara Falls and St. Lawrence-FDR, were operating. He said
> > > he did
> > > not know the status of 18 other smaller plants.
> > >
> > > "There is no evidence of any terrorism at this point," said Michael
> > > Sheehan,
> > > deputy commissioner for terrorism of New York City's Police Department.
> > > "We've talked to Washington and there are rumors, but none of them pans
> > > out."
> > >
> > > Top New York police officers gathered at the department's operations
> > > center
> > > downtown where the focus was on the ramifications of the blackout
> > > rather
> > > than its cause. "We're more concerned about getting the traffic lights
> > > running and making sure the city is okay than what caused it," a police
> > > spokesman said at the center.
> > >
> > > Nuclear Reactors Shut Down
> > >
> > > Four nuclear power reactors -- two in New York and two in Ohio --
> > > reported
> > > they were shut down because of the loss of off-site power, according
> > > to the
> > > Nuclear Regulatory Commission in Bethesda, Md. They were the two Indian
> > > Point reactors in New York state, and the Perry and Fermi nuclear power
> > > plants in Ohio.
> > >
> > > The North American Electric Reliability Council, an industry group
> > > responsible for monitoring the integrity of the system, said the power
> > > outages were "widespread and appear to be centered around Lake Erie,
> > > although they are affecting the entire eastern interconnection."
> > >
> > > "We do not know the cause at present but will continue to evaluate the
> > > situation," said Ellen Vancko, speaking for the council.
> > >
> > > Planes Are Grounded
> > >
> > > The Federal Aviation Administration instituted airport ground stops at
> > > Cleveland, Kennedy, LaGuardia and Newark, N.J. That meant planes from
> > > other
> > > cities heading to those four airports could not take off. However, air
> > > traffic control facilities had backup power, and planes already in the
> > > air
> > > could land at those airports, said Laura Brown, speaking for the FAA.
> > >
> > > At the Homeland Security Department, spokesman Brian Roehrkasse said
> > > federal
> > > officials were still gathering information and had not determined a
> > > cause.
> > >
> > > The department "is working with state and local officials and the
> > > energy
> > > sector to determine the cause of the outage as well as what response
> > > measures may be needed to be taken," he said. He said everyone should
> > > "listen and heed the advice of the local authorities."
> > >
> > > Verizon Communications Inc., the largest local telephone company in the
> > > northeastern U.S., said its network is operating normally and has not
> > > been
> > > affected by a widespread power outage.
> > >
> > > Securities regulators were optimistic that U.S. markets would open as
> > > scheduled Friday. "There's no talk about not opening," said Annette
> > > Nazareth, Securities and Exchange Commission market regulation
> > > director.
> > > Power was in place through the close of trading Thursday and Mr.
> > > Nazareth
> > > said the Depository Trust Co. had cleared trades for the day before
> > > power
> > > failed.
> > >
> > > The blackouts rivaled those in the West on Aug. 11, 1996, when heat,
> > > sagging
> > > power lines and unusually high demand for electricity caused an outage
> > > that
> > > affected four million customers in nine states, one of the most severe
> > > outages in U.S. history.
> > >
> > > A blackout in New York City in 1977 left some nine million people
> > > without
> > > electricity for up to 25 hours.
> > >
> > > Updated August 14, 2003 6:08 p.m.
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > Belinda Wong-Swanson, Principal
> > > Innov8 LLC, 624 Agua Fria, Santa Fe, NM 87501
> > > www.innov8llc.com
> > > email: [hidden email]
> > > tel: [phone]
> > > fax: [phone]
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > ============================================================
> > > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> > > Meets Fridays 9AM @ Jane's Cafe
> > > Lecture schedule, archives, unsubscribe, etc.:
> > > http://www.redfish.com/friam
> > >
> > >
> > > ============================================================
> > > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> > > Meets Fridays 9AM @ Jane's Cafe
> > > Lecture schedule, archives, unsubscribe, etc.:
> > > http://www.redfish.com/friam
> > >
> > >
> > > ============================================================
> > > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> > > Meets Fridays 9AM @ Jane's Cafe
> > > Lecture schedule, archives, unsubscribe, etc.:
> > > http://www.redfish.com/friam
> > >
> >
> >
> > ============================================================
> > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> > Meets Fridays 9AM @ Jane's Cafe
> > Lecture schedule, archives, unsubscribe, etc.:
> > http://www.redfish.com/friam
>
> ============================================================
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> Meets Fridays 9AM @ Jane's Cafe
> Lecture schedule, archives, unsubscribe, etc.:
> http://www.redfish.com/friam

[Carl Tollander-2]

I seem to remember that in CA, setting your house up to be partially
off-grid (your "cogeneration" efforts run the meter backward) involves
an odd pricing scheme where your peak hour use actually costs more
than it would if you actually did not have the setup.  I believe
the purpose of that is to smooth out any sudden popularity of cogeneration,
which would make it more difficult for the utility to plan future
capacity, as well as encourage only people who were serious about
maintaining their equipment to take the plunge.

This looks economically feasible (at least) for smaller remote communities
that would otherwise have to pay big bux to get their collective line
capacity increased.

Another thought is to model community (peer) microturbine networks.  For
example,
what would be the right match of microturbine size to number of households?
What would be a good group size for locally interconnected microturbines?

-----Original Message-----
From: [hidden email] [mailto:[hidden email]]On
Behalf Of Owen Densmore
Sent: Friday, August 15, 2003 9:51 PM
To: The Friday Morning Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Score one for small-scale distributed power


This reminds me of the Palo Alto, CA subsidy for solar panels.  The
city, county, state subsidies were impressive enough that most folks
working on their houses took seriously converting to solar.

Are there subsidies like that here?

Sorta like shared WiFi, it might be nifty for some of us to have
interesting new power supplements .. probably solar.  Is anyone looking
into alternatives for their home?

On Friday, August 15, 2003, at 09:15  PM, Bruce Sawhill wrote:

> I think there's enough wood for a few hundred MW for about 50 years in
> the intermountain West.  Hopefully by then the forests will be thinner
> and we'll have Mr. Fusion, or at least Mr. Wind and Mrs. Solar.  I
> think clean burning microturbines exist now.
>
> Bruce\

Owen Densmore           451 Camino Don Miguel     Santa Fe, NM 87505
Work: 505-983-6305      Cell: 505-570-0168        Home: 505-988-3787
[hidden email] http://complexityworkshop.com http://backspaces.net


============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9AM @ Jane's Cafe
Lecture schedule, archives, unsubscribe, etc.:
http://www.redfish.com/friam

[Robert Holmes]

In Europe, wood-fired projects have always come unstuck on the issue of
transportation. Getting sufficient wood to run even something as small as a
50 MW unit is costly and polluting. There might be a case for using it on
micro-projects (<1 MW) but I don't think that will help the US energy
situation too much.

-----Original Message-----
From: [hidden email] [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf
Of Bruce Sawhill
Sent: 15 August 2003 21:16
To: The Friday Morning Complexity Coffee Group
Cc: Bruce Sawhill
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Score one for small-scale distributed power


I think there's enough wood for a few hundred MW for about 50 years in
the intermountain West.  Hopefully by then the forests will be thinner
and we'll have Mr. Fusion, or at least Mr. Wind and Mrs. Solar.  I
think clean burning microturbines exist now.

Bruce\

On Saturday, August 16, 2003, at 02:20 AM, Frank Wimberly wrote:

> My impression is that burning wood (esp. pine tar) causes noxious air
> pollution.  Anyone know for sure?  It smells good around here in
> December but...  How long would it take before the unwanted wood, say
> pinions killed
> by bark beetles, runs out?  Would "we" be able to resist burning good
> timber?  In the lobby of the First National Bank of Santa Fe there are
> photos of the hills around Santa Fe taken in the late 1800's.  The
> density
> of the pinion and juniper was much less than it is today.  My friend
> Tom
> Noble thinks that's because everyone burned those trees for heat.  I
> am more
> inclined to believe that there was something like a bark beetle
> infestation
> before that time.
>
> Frank
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Bruce Sawhill" <[hidden email]>
> To: "The Friday Morning Complexity Coffee Group" <[hidden email]>
> Cc: "Bruce Sawhill" <[hidden email]>
> Sent: Friday, August 15, 2003 7:02 PM
> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Score one for small-scale distributed power
>
>
>> In the latest IEEE magazine, there's an interesting article about
>> absorbing fluctuations in wind power on the big island of Hawai'i.
>> Could also apply to many small wood fired plants, though the
>> fluctuations shouldn't be so large.
>>
>> Bruce
>>
>> On Friday, August 15, 2003, at 02:43 PM, Frank Wimberly wrote:
>>
>>> One advantage of the current approach is that if some component goes
>>> down the grid is still there (usually!) and end users may never even
>>> know there
>>> was a problem.  Does this scale down?  If Truchas' turbine stripped
>>> its
>>> gears could the one at Trampas provide backup?
>>>
>>> Frank
>>> ---
>>> Frank C. Wimberly                                   505 995-8715 or
>>> 505
>>> 670-9918 (mobile)
>>> 140 Calle Ojo Feliz
>>> [hidden email]
>>> or [hidden email]
>>> Santa Fe, NM 87505
>>> http://www.andrew.cmu.edu/user/wimberly
>>>
>>> ----- Original Message -----
>>> From: Carl Tollander
>>> To: [hidden email] ; The Friday Morning Complexity Coffee Group
>>> Sent: Thursday, August 14, 2003 7:11 PM
>>> Subject: RE: [FRIAM] Score one for small-scale distributed power
>>>
>>>
>>> "due to natural causes"
>>> Once again, the invisible hand presents us with an invisible finger.
>>>
>>> I would think that small-scale power (neighborhood microturbines or
>>> constellations thereof) might damp out the effects of the large
>>> scale failures (and associated grime-waves), not get rid of them
>>> entirely.
>>>
>>> -----Original Message-----
>>> From: [hidden email] [mailto:[hidden email]]On
>>> Behalf Of Belinda Wong-Swanson
>>> Sent: Thursday, August 14, 2003 4:20 PM
>>> To: [hidden email]; [hidden email]
>>> Subject: [FRIAM] Score one for small-scale distributed power
>>>
>>>
>>> Power Outages Hit
>>> New York, Other Cities
>>>
>>> NEW YORK -- A massive power blackout hit U.S. and Canadian cities
>>> Thursday, closing nuclear power plants in Ohio and New York state,
>>> driving workers in
>>> New York City and Toronto into the streets, and shutting subways in
>>> blistering heat. The blackout apparently was due to natural causes
>>> and
>>> there
>>> was no sign of terrorism, officials in New York and Washington said.
>>>
>>> New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg said it was likely the
>>> blackout started in the Niagara Falls area and quickly spread.
>>>
>>>
>>> Reporting by Stacy Forster and Carl Bialik of The Wall Street
>>> Journal Online, with contributions from the Associated Press and Dow
>>> Jones Newswires.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> "It was probably a natural occurrence which disrupted the power
>>> system
>>> up
>>> there and apparently for reasons we don't know it cascaded down
>>> through New
>>> York state over into Connecticut, as far south as New Jersey and as
>>> far west
>>> as Ohio," he said.
>>>
>>> A senior law enforcement official, speaking on condition of
>>> anonymity,
>>> said
>>> the Federal Bureau of Investigation had determined the blackout was a
>>> "natural occurrence" and there was no evidence of terrorism, and that
>>> the
>>> Homeland Security Department agreed.
>>>
>>> Power was slowly returning to New York state by 6 p.m., about two
>>> hours
>>> after the outage, Mr. Bloomberg told reporters at City Hall. Still,
>>> he
>>> said
>>> it would be "hours, not minutes" before power was fully restored to
>>> New York
>>> City. In New York, the blackout affected subways, elevators and
>>> airports,
>>> including John F. Kennedy and LaGuardia airports.
>>>
>>> Many Workers Are Stranded
>>>
>>> Thousands of Manhattan workers were sent home early from work into
>>> the
>>> 90-degree heat, but many had no easy way of getting home.
>>>
>>> At the Canal Street subway station downtown, streams of people
>>> emerged
>>> covered in grime.
>>>
>>> Anthony Daliva, a computer technician from New Jersey who works
>>> downtown, was among them. He described being on the train when it
>>> stopped right past
>>> the station. After being trapped for about an hour in what he
>>> described as
>>> incredible heat -- and darkness except for emergency lights -- he and
>>> others
>>> climbed between the trains and up a ladder on the side of track
>>> toward
>>> the
>>> street light. His blue shirt and khaki pants were covered in dirt.
>>>
>>> Near Canal Street, Erika Pietsch, a TV producer who lives in
>>> Astoria, Queens, across the East River, said she had to evacuate her
>>> building. "I'm trying to figure out my plan of attack to get home,"
>>> she said.
>>>
>>> Traffic lights were out. Mike Greenfield, a construction estimator,
>>> was
>>> stuck in traffic on Watts Street near the Holland Tunnel, where
>>> police
>>> were
>>> directing traffic. Mr. Greenfield was coming back from Queens headed
>>> west to
>>> Freehold, N.J., and says he is used to bad traffic. "It's like this
>>> everyday," he said.
>>>
>>> Ralph St. Pierre said he was on the subway in between stations when
>>> the
>>> power went out and the train stopped. He said he followed the
>>> conductor out
>>> of the tunnel. Later, people could be seen streaming out of subway
>>> stations.
>>>
>>> Several ice-cream stores in Manhattan said they wouldn't be giving
>>> away
>>> their goods, which are melting without power for refrigeration. "I
>>> don't
>>> want to give it out," said Steven Chan, proprietor of a Baskin
>>> Robbins
>>> in
>>> the Lower East Side neighborhood. "Otherwise, there would be a riot."
>>>
>>> In Toronto, Canada's largest city, workers also fled their buildings
>>> after the blackout hit shortly after 4 p.m. EDT. There also were
>>> widespread outages in Ottawa, the capital.
>>>
>>> Traffic lights were out throughout downtown Cleveland and other
>>> major cities, creating havoc at the beginning of rush hour.
>>>
>>> There were reports of outages in northern New Jersey and in several
>>> Vermont towns. In Connecticut, Metro-North Railroad service was
>>> knocked out. Lights
>>> flickered at state government buildings in Hartford.
>>>
>>> Every prison in New York state reported a loss of power and switched
>>> to
>>> backup generators, said James Flateau, a spokesman for the state
>>> Department
>>> of Corrections.
>>>
>>> In Albany, N.Y., several people were trapped in elevators in Empire
>>> State Plaza, but most had been freed by 5 p.m. People in New York
>>> City lined
>>> up 10
>>> deep or more at pay phones, with cellphone service disrupted in some
>>> areas.
>>>
>>> Mike Saltzman, a spokesman for New York Power Authority, a
>>> state-owned
>>> utility in White Plains, N.Y., said its two largest hydroelectric
>>> plants,
>>> including Niagara Falls and St. Lawrence-FDR, were operating. He said
>>> he did
>>> not know the status of 18 other smaller plants.
>>>
>>> "There is no evidence of any terrorism at this point," said Michael
>>> Sheehan, deputy commissioner for terrorism of New York City's Police
>>> Department.
>>> "We've talked to Washington and there are rumors, but none of them
>>> pans
>>> out."
>>>
>>> Top New York police officers gathered at the department's operations
>>> center downtown where the focus was on the ramifications of the
>>> blackout rather
>>> than its cause. "We're more concerned about getting the traffic
>>> lights
>>> running and making sure the city is okay than what caused it," a
>>> police
>>> spokesman said at the center.
>>>
>>> Nuclear Reactors Shut Down
>>>
>>> Four nuclear power reactors -- two in New York and two in Ohio --
>>> reported they were shut down because of the loss of off-site power,
>>> according to the
>>> Nuclear Regulatory Commission in Bethesda, Md. They were the two
>>> Indian
>>> Point reactors in New York state, and the Perry and Fermi nuclear
>>> power
>>> plants in Ohio.
>>>
>>> The North American Electric Reliability Council, an industry group
>>> responsible for monitoring the integrity of the system, said the
>>> power outages were "widespread and appear to be centered around Lake
>>> Erie, although they are affecting the entire eastern
>>> interconnection."
>>>
>>> "We do not know the cause at present but will continue to evaluate
>>> the
>>> situation," said Ellen Vancko, speaking for the council.
>>>
>>> Planes Are Grounded
>>>
>>> The Federal Aviation Administration instituted airport ground stops
>>> at
>>> Cleveland, Kennedy, LaGuardia and Newark, N.J. That meant planes from
>>> other
>>> cities heading to those four airports could not take off. However,
>>> air
>>> traffic control facilities had backup power, and planes already in
>>> the
>>> air
>>> could land at those airports, said Laura Brown, speaking for the FAA.
>>>
>>> At the Homeland Security Department, spokesman Brian Roehrkasse said
>>> federal officials were still gathering information and had not
>>> determined a cause.
>>>
>>> The department "is working with state and local officials and the
>>> energy sector to determine the cause of the outage as well as what
>>> response measures may be needed to be taken," he said. He said
>>> everyone should "listen and heed the advice of the local
>>> authorities."
>>>
>>> Verizon Communications Inc., the largest local telephone company in
>>> the
>>> northeastern U.S., said its network is operating normally and has not
>>> been
>>> affected by a widespread power outage.
>>>
>>> Securities regulators were optimistic that U.S. markets would open
>>> as scheduled Friday. "There's no talk about not opening," said
>>> Annette Nazareth, Securities and Exchange Commission market
>>> regulation director. Power was in place through the close of trading
>>> Thursday and Mr. Nazareth
>>> said the Depository Trust Co. had cleared trades for the day before
>>> power
>>> failed.
>>>
>>> The blackouts rivaled those in the West on Aug. 11, 1996, when heat,
>>> sagging power lines and unusually high demand for electricity caused
>>> an outage
>>> that
>>> affected four million customers in nine states, one of the most
>>> severe
>>> outages in U.S. history.
>>>
>>> A blackout in New York City in 1977 left some nine million people
>>> without electricity for up to 25 hours.
>>>
>>> Updated August 14, 2003 6:08 p.m.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Belinda Wong-Swanson, Principal
>>> Innov8 LLC, 624 Agua Fria, Santa Fe, NM 87501 www.innov8llc.com
>>> email: [hidden email]
>>> tel: [phone]
>>> fax: [phone]
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> ============================================================
>>> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
>>> Meets Fridays 9AM @ Jane's Cafe
>>> Lecture schedule, archives, unsubscribe, etc.:
>>> http://www.redfish.com/friam
>>>
>>>
>>> ============================================================
>>> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
>>> Meets Fridays 9AM @ Jane's Cafe
>>> Lecture schedule, archives, unsubscribe, etc.:
>>> http://www.redfish.com/friam
>>>
>>>
>>> ============================================================
>>> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
>>> Meets Fridays 9AM @ Jane's Cafe
>>> Lecture schedule, archives, unsubscribe, etc.:
>>> http://www.redfish.com/friam
>>>
>>
>>
>> ============================================================
>> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
>> Meets Fridays 9AM @ Jane's Cafe
>> Lecture schedule, archives, unsubscribe, etc.:
>> http://www.redfish.com/friam
>
>
> ============================================================
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> Meets Fridays 9AM @ Jane's Cafe
> Lecture schedule, archives, unsubscribe, etc.:
> http://www.redfish.com/friam
>

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9AM @ Jane's Cafe
Lecture schedule, archives, unsubscribe, etc.:
http://www.redfish.com/friam

[Robert Holmes]

You've hit the nail on the head Dede. From a purely insular view we use too
much energy: the US grid is carrying about as much energy it can, as demand
increases the margins of avaailable line capacity decrease and cascading
failures become ever more likely.

And of course from a global view, we use too much energy. We use a heck of a
lot more energy per capita than the rest of the world and it's not because
we're busy making the world a better place (least ways not for anyone but
ourselves). This also illustrates why energy efficiency programs aren't much
use: reductions of 10% or so are superficial when we're all consuming about
500% more than the rest of the world. IMHO, the main effect of efficiency
programs is indeed to make us feel virtuous and help us feel we've done our
bit. As such it diverts us from taking any actions that might have a real
effect (and I've no idea what those actions are, as I'm as guilty of this
false virtue as anyone).

Robert



-----Original Message-----
From: [hidden email] [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf
Of Dede Densmore
Sent: 15 August 2003 22:20
To: The Friday Morning Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Score one for small-scale distributed power


score one for complexity? it seems to me that the issue is not only the
scale of power distribution but, perhaps more importantly, the diversity (or
lack
thereof) of sources of power generation at whatever scale. every source of
power has disadvantages. the trick is to minimize the impact of any one set
of disadvantages while still providing sufficient power. and yes, we all
need to put or heads together to deal with the issue of "sufficient" power.
we all would like to feel virtuous, but none of us wants to have to choose
between coffee and internet access or refrigeration and hot water.

dede

Frank Wimberly wrote:

> My impression is that burning wood (esp. pine tar) causes noxious air
> pollution.  Anyone know for sure?  It smells good around here in
> December but...  How long would it take before the unwanted wood, say
> pinions killed by bark beetles, runs out?  Would "we" be able to
> resist burning good timber?  In the lobby of the First National Bank
> of Santa Fe there are photos of the hills around Santa Fe taken in the
> late 1800's.  The density of the pinion and juniper was much less than
> it is today.  My friend Tom Noble thinks that's because everyone
> burned those trees for heat.  I am more inclined to believe that there
> was something like a bark beetle infestation before that time.
>
> Frank
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Bruce Sawhill" <[hidden email]>
> To: "The Friday Morning Complexity Coffee Group" <[hidden email]>
> Cc: "Bruce Sawhill" <[hidden email]>
> Sent: Friday, August 15, 2003 7:02 PM
> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Score one for small-scale distributed power
>
> > In the latest IEEE magazine, there's an interesting article about
> > absorbing fluctuations in wind power on the big island of Hawai'i.
> > Could also apply to many small wood fired plants, though the
> > fluctuations shouldn't be so large.
> >
> > Bruce
> >
> > On Friday, August 15, 2003, at 02:43 PM, Frank Wimberly wrote:
> >
> > > One advantage of the current approach is that if some component
> > > goes down the grid is still there (usually!) and end users may
> > > never even know there
> > > was a problem.  Does this scale down?  If Truchas' turbine stripped

its
> > > gears could the one at Trampas provide backup?
> > >
> > > Frank
> > > ---
> > > Frank C. Wimberly                                   505 995-8715 or
505

> > > 670-9918 (mobile)
> > > 140 Calle Ojo Feliz
> > > [hidden email]
> > > or [hidden email]
> > > Santa Fe, NM 87505 http://www.andrew.cmu.edu/user/wimberly
> > >
> > > ----- Original Message -----
> > > From: Carl Tollander
> > > To: [hidden email] ; The Friday Morning Complexity Coffee Group
> > > Sent: Thursday, August 14, 2003 7:11 PM
> > > Subject: RE: [FRIAM] Score one for small-scale distributed power
> > >
> > >
> > > "due to natural causes"
> > > Once again, the invisible hand presents us with an invisible
> > > finger.
> > >
> > > I would think that small-scale power (neighborhood microturbines
> > > or constellations thereof) might damp out the effects of the large
> > > scale failures (and associated grime-waves), not get rid of them
> > > entirely.
> > >
> > > -----Original Message-----
> > > From: [hidden email]
> > > [mailto:[hidden email]]On
> > > Behalf Of Belinda Wong-Swanson
> > > Sent: Thursday, August 14, 2003 4:20 PM
> > > To: [hidden email]; [hidden email]
> > > Subject: [FRIAM] Score one for small-scale distributed power
> > >
> > >
> > > Power Outages Hit
> > > New York, Other Cities
> > >
> > > NEW YORK -- A massive power blackout hit U.S. and Canadian cities
> > > Thursday, closing nuclear power plants in Ohio and New York state,
> > > driving workers in
> > > New York City and Toronto into the streets, and shutting subways in
> > > blistering heat. The blackout apparently was due to natural causes and
> > > there
> > > was no sign of terrorism, officials in New York and Washington said.
> > >
> > > New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg said it was likely the
> > > blackout started in the Niagara Falls area and quickly spread.
> > >
> > >
> > > Reporting by Stacy Forster and Carl Bialik of The Wall Street
> > > Journal Online, with contributions from the Associated Press and
> > > Dow Jones Newswires.
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > "It was probably a natural occurrence which disrupted the power
> > > system up there and apparently for reasons we don't know it
> > > cascaded down through New
> > > York state over into Connecticut, as far south as New Jersey and as
> > > far west
> > > as Ohio," he said.
> > >
> > > A senior law enforcement official, speaking on condition of
> > > anonymity, said the Federal Bureau of Investigation had determined
> > > the blackout was a "natural occurrence" and there was no evidence
> > > of terrorism, and that the
> > > Homeland Security Department agreed.
> > >
> > > Power was slowly returning to New York state by 6 p.m., about two
> > > hours after the outage, Mr. Bloomberg told reporters at City Hall.
> > > Still, he said it would be "hours, not minutes" before power was
> > > fully restored to New York
> > > City. In New York, the blackout affected subways, elevators and
> > > airports,
> > > including John F. Kennedy and LaGuardia airports.
> > >
> > > Many Workers Are Stranded
> > >
> > > Thousands of Manhattan workers were sent home early from work into
> > > the 90-degree heat, but many had no easy way of getting home.
> > >
> > > At the Canal Street subway station downtown, streams of people
> > > emerged covered in grime.
> > >
> > > Anthony Daliva, a computer technician from New Jersey who works
> > > downtown, was among them. He described being on the train when it
> > > stopped right past
> > > the station. After being trapped for about an hour in what he
> > > described as
> > > incredible heat -- and darkness except for emergency lights -- he and
> > > others
> > > climbed between the trains and up a ladder on the side of track toward
> > > the
> > > street light. His blue shirt and khaki pants were covered in dirt.
> > >
> > > Near Canal Street, Erika Pietsch, a TV producer who lives in
> > > Astoria, Queens, across the East River, said she had to evacuate
> > > her building. "I'm trying to figure out my plan of attack to get
> > > home," she said.
> > >
> > > Traffic lights were out. Mike Greenfield, a construction
> > > estimator, was stuck in traffic on Watts Street near the Holland
> > > Tunnel, where police were directing traffic. Mr. Greenfield was
> > > coming back from Queens headed west to
> > > Freehold, N.J., and says he is used to bad traffic. "It's like this
> > > everyday," he said.
> > >
> > > Ralph St. Pierre said he was on the subway in between stations
> > > when the power went out and the train stopped. He said he followed
> > > the conductor out of the tunnel. Later, people could be seen
> > > streaming out of subway stations.
> > >
> > > Several ice-cream stores in Manhattan said they wouldn't be giving
> > > away their goods, which are melting without power for
> > > refrigeration. "I don't want to give it out," said Steven Chan,
> > > proprietor of a Baskin Robbins in
> > > the Lower East Side neighborhood. "Otherwise, there would be a riot."
> > >
> > > In Toronto, Canada's largest city, workers also fled their
> > > buildings after the blackout hit shortly after 4 p.m. EDT. There
> > > also were widespread outages in Ottawa, the capital.
> > >
> > > Traffic lights were out throughout downtown Cleveland and other
> > > major cities, creating havoc at the beginning of rush hour.
> > >
> > > There were reports of outages in northern New Jersey and in
> > > several Vermont towns. In Connecticut, Metro-North Railroad
> > > service was knocked out. Lights
> > > flickered at state government buildings in Hartford.
> > >
> > > Every prison in New York state reported a loss of power and
> > > switched to backup generators, said James Flateau, a spokesman for
> > > the state Department of Corrections.
> > >
> > > In Albany, N.Y., several people were trapped in elevators in
> > > Empire State Plaza, but most had been freed by 5 p.m. People in
> > > New York City lined up 10
> > > deep or more at pay phones, with cellphone service disrupted in some
> > > areas.
> > >
> > > Mike Saltzman, a spokesman for New York Power Authority, a
> > > state-owned utility in White Plains, N.Y., said its two largest
> > > hydroelectric plants, including Niagara Falls and St.
> > > Lawrence-FDR, were operating. He said he did
> > > not know the status of 18 other smaller plants.
> > >
> > > "There is no evidence of any terrorism at this point," said
> > > Michael Sheehan, deputy commissioner for terrorism of New York
> > > City's Police Department. "We've talked to Washington and there
> > > are rumors, but none of them pans out."
> > >
> > > Top New York police officers gathered at the department's
> > > operations center downtown where the focus was on the
> > > ramifications of the blackout rather
> > > than its cause. "We're more concerned about getting the traffic lights
> > > running and making sure the city is okay than what caused it," a

police
> > > spokesman said at the center.
> > >
> > > Nuclear Reactors Shut Down
> > >
> > > Four nuclear power reactors -- two in New York and two in Ohio --
> > > reported they were shut down because of the loss of off-site
> > > power, according to the
> > > Nuclear Regulatory Commission in Bethesda, Md. They were the two
Indian
> > > Point reactors in New York state, and the Perry and Fermi nuclear
power

> > > plants in Ohio.
> > >
> > > The North American Electric Reliability Council, an industry group
> > > responsible for monitoring the integrity of the system, said the
> > > power outages were "widespread and appear to be centered around
> > > Lake Erie, although they are affecting the entire eastern
> > > interconnection."
> > >
> > > "We do not know the cause at present but will continue to evaluate
> > > the situation," said Ellen Vancko, speaking for the council.
> > >
> > > Planes Are Grounded
> > >
> > > The Federal Aviation Administration instituted airport ground
> > > stops at Cleveland, Kennedy, LaGuardia and Newark, N.J. That meant
> > > planes from other cities heading to those four airports could not
> > > take off. However, air traffic control facilities had backup
> > > power, and planes already in the air
> > > could land at those airports, said Laura Brown, speaking for the FAA.
> > >
> > > At the Homeland Security Department, spokesman Brian Roehrkasse
> > > said federal officials were still gathering information and had
> > > not determined a cause.
> > >
> > > The department "is working with state and local officials and the
> > > energy sector to determine the cause of the outage as well as what
> > > response measures may be needed to be taken," he said. He said
> > > everyone should "listen and heed the advice of the local
> > > authorities."
> > >
> > > Verizon Communications Inc., the largest local telephone company
> > > in the northeastern U.S., said its network is operating normally
> > > and has not been affected by a widespread power outage.
> > >
> > > Securities regulators were optimistic that U.S. markets would open
> > > as scheduled Friday. "There's no talk about not opening," said
> > > Annette Nazareth, Securities and Exchange Commission market
> > > regulation director. Power was in place through the close of
> > > trading Thursday and Mr. Nazareth
> > > said the Depository Trust Co. had cleared trades for the day before
> > > power
> > > failed.
> > >
> > > The blackouts rivaled those in the West on Aug. 11, 1996, when
> > > heat, sagging power lines and unusually high demand for
> > > electricity caused an outage that
> > > affected four million customers in nine states, one of the most severe
> > > outages in U.S. history.
> > >
> > > A blackout in New York City in 1977 left some nine million people
> > > without electricity for up to 25 hours.
> > >
> > > Updated August 14, 2003 6:08 p.m.
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > Belinda Wong-Swanson, Principal
> > > Innov8 LLC, 624 Agua Fria, Santa Fe, NM 87501 www.innov8llc.com
> > > email: [hidden email]
> > > tel: [phone]
> > > fax: [phone]
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > ============================================================
> > > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> > > Meets Fridays 9AM @ Jane's Cafe
> > > Lecture schedule, archives, unsubscribe, etc.:
> > > http://www.redfish.com/friam
> > >
> > >
> > > ============================================================
> > > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> > > Meets Fridays 9AM @ Jane's Cafe
> > > Lecture schedule, archives, unsubscribe, etc.:
> > > http://www.redfish.com/friam
> > >
> > >
> > > ============================================================
> > > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> > > Meets Fridays 9AM @ Jane's Cafe
> > > Lecture schedule, archives, unsubscribe, etc.:
> > > http://www.redfish.com/friam
> > >
> >
> >
> > ============================================================
> > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> > Meets Fridays 9AM @ Jane's Cafe
> > Lecture schedule, archives, unsubscribe, etc.:
> > http://www.redfish.com/friam
>
> ============================================================
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> Meets Fridays 9AM @ Jane's Cafe
> Lecture schedule, archives, unsubscribe, etc.:
> http://www.redfish.com/friam

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9AM @ Jane's Cafe
Lecture schedule, archives, unsubscribe, etc.:
http://www.redfish.com/friam