florida light and power
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florida light and power
4 million with out power, nuke plant shut down, someone hit the wrong switch???
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IRGUY,
Exactly. Neighbor works as an FPL engineer and also told me the story of a major artery from Miami to Daytona going out was not caused by a sub station problem.
He also suspects a problem at the nuke plant.
Will climb the roof a little later and look to the south to see if there's a green glow from the Miami direction.
Brings a whole new meaning to Florida Plunder and Loot getting a glowing report.
Exactly. Neighbor works as an FPL engineer and also told me the story of a major artery from Miami to Daytona going out was not caused by a sub station problem.
He also suspects a problem at the nuke plant.
Will climb the roof a little later and look to the south to see if there's a green glow from the Miami direction.
Brings a whole new meaning to Florida Plunder and Loot getting a glowing report.
I heard it was a big voltage regulator that failed, and that they had to shut the plants down for safety. But who knows...
Traffic lights were all out around town here in Melbourne today, as was one phase of the power for a lot of areas. No air conditioning without both phases, so lots of people decided to leave work and go home. Of course this only added to the traffic mess. Some areas lost all power completely. Strange how all this stuff is so interconnected. My office never lost anything, so I happily stayed there until all the traffic jams were over. Lights were all working again at 6:30
Traffic lights were all out around town here in Melbourne today, as was one phase of the power for a lot of areas. No air conditioning without both phases, so lots of people decided to leave work and go home. Of course this only added to the traffic mess. Some areas lost all power completely. Strange how all this stuff is so interconnected. My office never lost anything, so I happily stayed there until all the traffic jams were over. Lights were all working again at 6:30
being in the field for 28 years manly distribution some transmision 33k, if a substation went down due to a fire, the load has to go some where, probably to the nuke plant, if not caught in time the nuke plant will exceed there capacity and shut down as it did. now if not caught in time and isolated it will have a dominno efect on the whole grid taking down all the substations due to over loading. this happen real fast. not familar with flp system but i would say it was a combination of eqipment failer, switches, computers, and human error someone fell asleep at the switch or could not isolate the problem quik enough, meaning sheding the load.
CWJ - looks like you nailed it without having the details.
Here is the story today:
Answers sought after power outages across Florida
Dan Tracy | Orlando Sentinel Staff Writer
February 27, 2008
It started with an equipment failure and fire at an obscure electrical substation on the edge of the Biscayne Bay -- not a place electrical customers in Miami think about, let alone people across Florida.
But within minutes, that failure set off a cascade of power outages affecting up to 2.5 million customers statewide, including more than 80,000 in Greater Orlando.
In Central Florida, 260 miles from the problem, traffic signals went blank, more than a dozen schools lost air conditioning and a handful of hotels near the attractions lost their lights. But no injuries or serious problems were reported.
The outages began shortly after 1 p.m. Tuesday when a transmission substation failed during a fire. That forced the automatic shutdown of four generating units -- two of them nuclear-powered -- at the Turkey Point power plant on Biscayne Bay, 24 miles south of Miami.
Blackouts quickly began to appear from Key West to Daytona Beach and farther north.
Officials at Florida Power & Light, owner of Turkey Point, said they need to find out why the problems weren't contained to the single station or two and a much smaller circle of customers.
"These types of fires are initiated by what amounts to a short circuit, not unlike a short circuit you'd see at your own household," FPL President Armando Olivera said. "Typically a disconnect switch failing by itself would not cause these type of widespread problems."
Once everything went haywire, however, all safety systems at Turkey Point and elsewhere functioned perfectly, company officials said.
"If you get a big imbalance between your demand and your ability to meet that demand, computer algorithms kick in and, in our jargon, it begins to shed the load. It began to turn people's lights off," Olivera said. The result was the biggest outage the company has experienced since at least the 1980s.
Power outages in Central Florida were sporadic and typically lasted from five minutes to an hour, although a few continued for more than 90 minutes.
Estimates varied on the numbers of people affected. At one point, state emergency officials said about 3 million people were without power. Later estimates put the total at about 1 million customers of all utilities statewide, which translates to about 2.5 million people.
At FPL, which serves South Florida's and much of the state's East Coast, about 700,000 customers were without electricity at one point.
The two Turkey Point units, opened in 1972 and 1973, generate 1,400 megawatts of electricity, enough power to supply the annual needs of more than 450,000 houses. Two other units, fired by coal, also went down.
Although FPL officials said they were surprised by the mushrooming outages, industry experts said it's common for a shutdown at one power station to ripple to others.
"If you don't, you could have a small problem become a very major problem really quickly," J.R. Kelly, public counsel of the Committee on Public Service Commission Oversight. By shutting down quickly, the substations avert potentially far more lasting damage, he said.
All told, Florida's electric network lost nearly 10 percent of its output at one point, said Sarah Rogers, president of the Florida Reliability Coordinating Council, a Tampa association that tracks power production in the state.
The outages could have been worse if the plant shutdown had occurred during summer, when demand is much greater for power because of the heat and humidity. Winter, with its mild temperatures, often allows utilities to close plants for routine maintenance.
By 3 p.m. most utilities were bringing back generating units that had shut down.
The only company experiencing problems after that was FPL, which was handicapped because a number of large utility lines feeding its system were not in use because of routine maintenance, Rogers said.
Orlando Utilities Commission spokesman Sheridan Becht said his agency's generating system automatically began at 1:09 p.m. to shut down 13 circuits at 11 substations across the metro area. That left 11,438 customers, mostly residential, without power for two to 20 minutes, Becht said. The utility has about 250,000 customers.
About 7,600 customers of Kissimmee Utility Authority lost power for about 20 minutes Tuesday afternoon. Spokesman Chris Gent said the system, sensing a blackout, shut itself down to protect the equipment and then went back online. The largest generating unit at the utility's Cane Island Power Park tripped offline.
Sumter Electric Cooperative Inc. said that 15,000 customers in Marion, Sumter, Lake and Citrus counties lost power briefly but were back in 38 minutes.
"Which is incredibly fast," said Barry Bowman, director of corporate communications and energy services.
More than 150,000 customers served by Progress Energy, which operates in parts of Central Florida, lost power, said company spokesman C.J. Drake.
Here is the story today:
Answers sought after power outages across Florida
Dan Tracy | Orlando Sentinel Staff Writer
February 27, 2008
It started with an equipment failure and fire at an obscure electrical substation on the edge of the Biscayne Bay -- not a place electrical customers in Miami think about, let alone people across Florida.
But within minutes, that failure set off a cascade of power outages affecting up to 2.5 million customers statewide, including more than 80,000 in Greater Orlando.
In Central Florida, 260 miles from the problem, traffic signals went blank, more than a dozen schools lost air conditioning and a handful of hotels near the attractions lost their lights. But no injuries or serious problems were reported.
The outages began shortly after 1 p.m. Tuesday when a transmission substation failed during a fire. That forced the automatic shutdown of four generating units -- two of them nuclear-powered -- at the Turkey Point power plant on Biscayne Bay, 24 miles south of Miami.
Blackouts quickly began to appear from Key West to Daytona Beach and farther north.
Officials at Florida Power & Light, owner of Turkey Point, said they need to find out why the problems weren't contained to the single station or two and a much smaller circle of customers.
"These types of fires are initiated by what amounts to a short circuit, not unlike a short circuit you'd see at your own household," FPL President Armando Olivera said. "Typically a disconnect switch failing by itself would not cause these type of widespread problems."
Once everything went haywire, however, all safety systems at Turkey Point and elsewhere functioned perfectly, company officials said.
"If you get a big imbalance between your demand and your ability to meet that demand, computer algorithms kick in and, in our jargon, it begins to shed the load. It began to turn people's lights off," Olivera said. The result was the biggest outage the company has experienced since at least the 1980s.
Power outages in Central Florida were sporadic and typically lasted from five minutes to an hour, although a few continued for more than 90 minutes.
Estimates varied on the numbers of people affected. At one point, state emergency officials said about 3 million people were without power. Later estimates put the total at about 1 million customers of all utilities statewide, which translates to about 2.5 million people.
At FPL, which serves South Florida's and much of the state's East Coast, about 700,000 customers were without electricity at one point.
The two Turkey Point units, opened in 1972 and 1973, generate 1,400 megawatts of electricity, enough power to supply the annual needs of more than 450,000 houses. Two other units, fired by coal, also went down.
Although FPL officials said they were surprised by the mushrooming outages, industry experts said it's common for a shutdown at one power station to ripple to others.
"If you don't, you could have a small problem become a very major problem really quickly," J.R. Kelly, public counsel of the Committee on Public Service Commission Oversight. By shutting down quickly, the substations avert potentially far more lasting damage, he said.
All told, Florida's electric network lost nearly 10 percent of its output at one point, said Sarah Rogers, president of the Florida Reliability Coordinating Council, a Tampa association that tracks power production in the state.
The outages could have been worse if the plant shutdown had occurred during summer, when demand is much greater for power because of the heat and humidity. Winter, with its mild temperatures, often allows utilities to close plants for routine maintenance.
By 3 p.m. most utilities were bringing back generating units that had shut down.
The only company experiencing problems after that was FPL, which was handicapped because a number of large utility lines feeding its system were not in use because of routine maintenance, Rogers said.
Orlando Utilities Commission spokesman Sheridan Becht said his agency's generating system automatically began at 1:09 p.m. to shut down 13 circuits at 11 substations across the metro area. That left 11,438 customers, mostly residential, without power for two to 20 minutes, Becht said. The utility has about 250,000 customers.
About 7,600 customers of Kissimmee Utility Authority lost power for about 20 minutes Tuesday afternoon. Spokesman Chris Gent said the system, sensing a blackout, shut itself down to protect the equipment and then went back online. The largest generating unit at the utility's Cane Island Power Park tripped offline.
Sumter Electric Cooperative Inc. said that 15,000 customers in Marion, Sumter, Lake and Citrus counties lost power briefly but were back in 38 minutes.
"Which is incredibly fast," said Barry Bowman, director of corporate communications and energy services.
More than 150,000 customers served by Progress Energy, which operates in parts of Central Florida, lost power, said company spokesman C.J. Drake.
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