Enhancing the Resilience of the Nation's Electricity System (2017) / Chapter Skim
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3 The Many Causes of Grid Failure
3 The Many Causes of Grid Failure
Pages 50-69
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actions impact planning, operation, and restoration over the entire life cycle of different kinds of grid failures. Strategies REVIEWING THE CAUSES OF OUTAGES must be crafted with awareness and understanding of the temporal arc of a major outage, as well as how this differs Earthquake from one type of event to another.
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earthquake in Virginia in 2011 and remained off-line for Physical Attack more than 10 weeks as the owner and operator conducted A physical attack, denoted by point P, could occur withthorough damage assessments and the Nuclear Regulatory out warning or with only limited warning. Physical attacks Commission granted approval for restart (Vastag, 2011; Pel on major system components could cause serious physical tier, 2012)
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. While it is possible to do physical damage with a cyber attack, many cyber attacks would not give rise to physical damage but could cause considerable disruption in the ability to monitor and control the power system (case 2)
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Hence, disruption of GPS by space weather, In April 2013, the Pacific Gas and Electric-owned Metcalf or through cyber attack, could cause disruption in the bulk Transmission Substation outside of San Jose, California, was power system. attacked by one or more gunmen.
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With advance warnage can occur, cascading blackouts typically do not cause ing, critical facilities can be shut down to reduce amage. d serious physical damage to system components beyond the Although the best way to reduce the risks to the power initiating failure.
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. In Figure 3.1, point R denotes regional weather events such as intense convective storms and tornadoes that are capable of widespread damage, especially to distribution systems.
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reporting requireis evident from the experience in 1998 in Québec, Ontario, ments and might be exempt from the system average interand in upstate New York, ice storms (freezing rain) can result ruption duration index and the system average interruption in very widespread damage after which full recovery may frequency index reliability metric reporting.
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THE MANY CAUSES OF GRID FAILURE 57 (A) Tornado Time of Occurrence - Entire United States (A)
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shed ice, and disconnecting wires that fall to the ground fifth assessment report anticipates that, in light of climate without damaging poles. change, North America will experience "an increase in the number of heavy precipitation events" and "increased dam ages from river and coastal urban floods" (IPCC, 2014)
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(B) Average Freezing Rain Frequency 1975 1985 1995 2005 2015 Year (C)
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FIGURE 3.10 (A) Ice accumulation of several inches on distribution lines caused these poles to collapse, and (B)
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would help operators minimize damage. Such real-time monitoring could be combined with automated protection schemes that Space Weather and Other Electromagnetic Threats prevent transformer damage from geomagnetic disturbances.
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. While most critical satellites have been "hardened," a Hurricanes or Tropical Cyclones large enough space weather event could cause damage to As we have learned repeatedly, tropical cyclones can creearth-orbiting satellites including those used for communica- ate enormous havoc in power systems.
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. tropical cyclones are projected to become more less confidence in this conclusion than in the expectation intense as the climate warms.
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. While fire typically does not cause widespread damage to power systems, it can have major impacts Finding: The United States has been fortunate that none of on specific substations and transmission systems, and opera- the cyber attacks that are being mounted against the power tors may have to re-route power flows to avoid affected areas.
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THE MANY CAUSES OF GRID FAILURE 65 FIGURE 3.13 Volcanic hazard map for the region around Mount Rainier. A "lahar" is a mud and debris flow that can bury everything in its path such as the communities marked as "hazard zones." SOURCE: USGS (2008)
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An attack on the power system undertaken in conjunction with other terrorist action could be especially harmful. THE LIFE CYCLE OF A POWER OUTAGE Recommendation 3.1: To better protect the grid from Although the type and extent of damage varies among the physical and cyber attacks, the intelligence communities, different threats previously described, a notional time-series the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of model of a power outage is shown in Figure 3.14, which proEnergy, and operating utilities should sustain and enhance vides elaboration of some of the key steps in the four-stage their monitoring and information-sharing activities and con process of resilience displayed in Figure 1.2A.
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Utilities must also engage and maintain strong relationships Event with local emergency management agencies to integrate their own planning into local and national efforts, as discussed in The duration of disruptive events varies significantly, as greater detail in Chapters 5 and 6. Additionally, there is a do the capabilities and resources of different utilities.
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In many cases crews (either boots on the ground or manned or unmanned (excluding cyber attacks and cascading failures) the comaerial vehicles)
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2008. Severe Space Weather Events -- Understanding Societal and files/2016/07/f33/DOE_EMPStrategy_July2016_0.pdf.
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