
Power Outages Coincide in LA, New York, and San Francisco - blawson
https://www.inverse.com/article/30631-lax-sf-ny-power-outages
======
Animats
LA's outages are widely scattered, and are being blamed on high winds.[1]
Crews are fixing distribution lines and transformers. Probably unrelated.

The NYC subway outages may have originated at two locations. The MTA says they
lost signal power at 42nd/Grand Central, and utility power from Con Ed at 7th
Avenue. Trains can run through the 7th Avenue station but the station is out
of action. (The NYC subway system has three separate power systems - traction,
signal, and utility.) No info on cause yet, but the problems are mostly fixed
or bypassed now.

SF's outage is still vague, but is being blamed on a fire at the big
substation on Larkin. SFFD says they've been using large amounts of CO2 to put
out smoldering insulation. SFFD also says they're caught up after getting 20
people out of stuck elevators. PG&E isn't saying much.[2] They list "cause" as
"unknown". They probably can't even get into the Larkin substation yet.

[1] [https://www.sce.com/wps/portal/home/outage-center/check-
outa...](https://www.sce.com/wps/portal/home/outage-center/check-outage-
status) [2] [https://m.pge.com/#outages](https://m.pge.com/#outages)

------
flowersoldier
Hmmmm...I'm trying to verify the outage in LA. The tweet about the power
outage at LAX is from today, but the other tweet in the example is from
2/22/17\. No articles about a power outage in LA are popping up on google.
Something about this article feels a bit click-baity.

~~~
xer0x
Seems like something is going on in LA:
[https://m.sce.com/outage/OutageMap.html](https://m.sce.com/outage/OutageMap.html)

~~~
Rebelgecko
Unless a bunch of outages have cleared up, looks pretty typical to me. The
biggest outage I'm seeing on that map is labelled as planned maintenance,
affecting 66 people. Nothing major on the LADWP map either.

------
Theodores
It could be worse, from the Wikipedia page of notable power outages (yes there
is such a page):

"On 7 June (2016), about 100% of Kenya went without power for over 4 hours.
The nationwide blackout was caused after a rogue monkey got into a power
station and triggered a nationwide blackout. However, it is notable that only
about 1 million citizens were affected by the outage as the World Bank
estimates that only 23% of the country's population have access to
electricity."

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_major_power_outages](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_major_power_outages)

I am not seeing any of these power outages being due to crazy al-qaeda
terrorists or any of the other bad guys our government clowns get excitable
about. It's the rogue monkeys and Enrons I fear.

~~~
flowersoldier
Let's not forget Cybersquirrel1. #cyberwar4ever

[http://cybersquirrel1.com/](http://cybersquirrel1.com/)

------
tyingq
Search "power outages" in Google news and scroll through a few days worth.
They happen all the time, everywhere. I would be very surprised if there's any
correlation across events here.

------
eip
The outage in SF shutdown the company I work at for most of the day. I work
remote so was unaffected but everyone else ended up being unable to work.

This was an outage of one substation for less than 12 hours. Now imagine an
8.0+ earthquake anywhere in the bay area. The whole city could be shutdown for
prolonged periods.

You don't put all your servers in one datacenter so why would you put all of
your employees in one building? I am not sure why companies don't encourage at
least 50% of their employees to be remote. Seems like basic DR planning to me.

~~~
zachlatta
Risk.

------
rjbwork
The seeming reluctance to spend lots of money on infrastructure maintenance
and modernization really worries me, especially when I read these kinds of
stories.

~~~
beamatronic
Isn't this a self-correcting problem? The grid will become more robust when
there is an economic need to do so.

~~~
groby_b
Alas, the "economic need" will be immediate when the outage happens, and the
damage will be substantial because it hasn't been updated yet. Possibly
expensive enough to make an update unlikely.

The "move fast and break things" attitude does not work for infrastructure.
And no, the market will not magically correct all things. Major infrastructure
problems are expensive enough that damage to them causes feedback loops.

------
flowersoldier
I lived in NYC during the 2001 blackout. It was the first power outage since
1977. The lights don't go out in NYC...it's a really big deal when they do.

~~~
snowwindwaves
you mean 2003

~~~
flowersoldier
You're right, it was 2003. I was only 21 when I moved there and it was all a
bit of a blur.

------
peterwwillis
I was once informed by someone working at a major energy company that if the
utility frequency dropped to a certain specific value it could cause
uncontrollable systemwide cascading blackouts. I don't remember the value, but
I wish I did.

A large outage like SF, if it wasn't done in a controlled manner, could be
grid overload. Or to prevent grid overload, utilities might need to shut down
a regular on a high voltage supply line, which causes an overload somewhere
else in the system, and automatic cutoff switches force a blackout.

Similar events have happened over the years starting in a remote state and
ending in a California blackout. Often it's due to aging infrastructure which
goes down unexpectedly, which then causes a chain reaction that hits other
parts of the grid. If winds took down power lines in LA, this could cause a
backup which could take out SF. It's possible that either LA or New York could
have caused the SF blackout, or vice versa. If one part of the grid starts to
go down it puts pressure on the rest, and things start to pop.

Note: I'm talking out my ass here, but it's based on news reports of previous
outages.

~~~
Animats
The power grid does not work like that. See this tutorial, "PJM 101" for
background.[1] All of today's events are in distribution, not the HV
transmission network. The NYC event involves tiny loads by grid standards. PJM
isn't reporting any major emergencies today. Neither is CAISO.

[1] [http://pjm.com/Globals/Training/Courses/ol-
pjm-101.aspx](http://pjm.com/Globals/Training/Courses/ol-pjm-101.aspx)

------
olivermarks
Could be another warning shot from someone - 2013 silicon valley substation
sniper attack [http://money.cnn.com/2015/10/16/technology/sniper-power-
grid...](http://money.cnn.com/2015/10/16/technology/sniper-power-grid/)

------
hendzen
North Korean retaliation for us hacking their missile launch last week?

~~~
Zaak
North Korea doesn't exactly have a large pool of technically skilled people
available.

~~~
hendzen
What makes you think that?

~~~
Zaak
It's a country where only top level officials have access to the internet,
most places don't have working electricity, and there's virtually no
interaction with the rest of the world.

------
pavement
Hasn't there been increased electromagnetic activity on the surface of the sun
throughout the week?

[http://www.solarham.net/older.htm](http://www.solarham.net/older.htm)

Is the interference causing unexpected surges in old, unshielded equipment and
infrastructure?

------
aaronblohowiak
Anyone else read ted koppel's book?

~~~
gdubs
Yea, came here to post about it. Was a riveting read with some great
interviews. It being Ted Koppel, he got access to some really high placed
people. [1]

1: [https://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/22/books/review/lights-
out-b...](https://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/22/books/review/lights-out-by-ted-
koppel.html?_r=0)

~~~
aaronblohowiak
One thing I liked about it was how he dove into how the incentives and limits
on federal authority combine to make it very hard to get the power industries
more tightly regulated wrt security/resilience

------
perlin
Crazy conspiracy theory: the Chinese and/or Russians have most likely already
compromised our power grid and other infrastructure control systems and are
waging covert economical war by disrupting important services.

~~~
cylinder
The biggest part of that economic war would be letting everyone know the grid
has been compromised, not the actual outage, there's no advantage to keeping
it secret.

~~~
drspacemonkey
I'd argue that taking out the power in three major economic centers at the
same time would be the opposite of keeping it secret. But I completely agree
with your reasoning.

------
gumby
I have a friend with a very important deliverable due today and he was not
ready. I'm not saying he's responsible, but in the realm of things that make
you go hmm...

------
sandGorgon
Interestingly, in India this would have close to zero impact. Because of the
rate of industrial growth combined with a massive shortfall of energy - almost
everyone in urban India has private diesel-fueled electrical generators (yes -
including individual homes and small startups).

Plus as a cultural thing, Indians have designed power failure into their daily
lives. Interestingly trivia - the most popular Nokia phone in India was the
one that had a dedicated torch.

------
JustSomeNobody
Coincidence.

------
belovedeagle
It's impressive how the article is reporting "as of 1pm" in SF, at 12:30
PDT...

