Energy Efficiency Experts

Anyone who lives in San Diego California, Yuma Arizona and Tijuana Mexico and regions around it can now appreciate the complexity and importance of the power grid. With two major lines down the lights were shut off to over 2.5 million customers of electricity at 3:30 pm.  

The grid failed due to a planned maintenance event, replacing a capacitor at a substation near Yuma Arizona that went bad. This started a chain of events and turned the switch off in two countries, two states and an rough estimate of 5 million people.

How could this happen? This question is not easy to answer but I have scratched the surface to try to understand the grid over the years. It has been often called the eighth wonder of the world. Many would contend that much of the wonder is that it works and does not fail more often.

The general idea is very high voltage central power stations feeding into sub stations that feed a maze of transformers that  feed power  to metered individual users. This is maintained, delivered and billed from one company. Electricity can then be pushed over long distances providing service to a broad group. This keeps cost down and responsibility for delivery clear.

The centralized grid is like a spider web using multiple power stations to meet demand. Like a spider web if there is a break in one of the center parts of the web it only effects the surrounding strands. We have seen these substation blackouts where Chula Vista loses power but San Diego is still online or our typical blackout. However if the anchor web is severed which hold the web up in the wind the entire web collapses. We had two anchor web breaks, Yuma and San Onofre with the result of total grid failure.

The first was due to the Yuma maintenance. This caused and immediate and major line and voltage loss to the system which of course was during peak hours at one of our hotter days when the grid is most strained to deliver product.  San Onofre then sensed this shut down and automatically shut down its major line.

While inconvenient this is a safety protocol in place which is a good thing. What was certainly bad could have been worse. Imagine a chain of substations blowing up in a chain reaction of because being overloaded. This would cause fires that would lack sufficient water to put out because our water is pumped by electricity. This could have been a full scale disaster of epic proportions.

Most of us went to bed with the lights out and woke in the morning with the lights back on. The grid is being livened up and tested by professionals as I type. They will study the event and look for ways to prevent it in the future.It will be the subject of conversation for about a week amongst most of us and then we will forget it and simply expect it to work as it always has and usually does.