Blackouts: The Power
Causes fascinate us. But secondary effects can be more important. The ongoing studies of last year's NE power black out may indicate that the second or third chain in that chain reaction were more virulent than the first, at least in the sense that the systems worked as they were programmed to work. The network was viruently doomed by design, if this is the case, because certain system elements were built to grade or degrade, but not degrade gracefully. That the power net is an assortment of local formerly automonmous - and still somewhat automomous - nets is a factor. We'd assume it was like the Internet, which, we assume so far degrades gracefully. Writes Mathhew Wald: "The disturbance spread so quickly ... largely because hundreds of components acted exactly as they had been programmed to do."
Read: The Power Grid Is Too Sensitive for Its Own Good - NYT, Aug 10, 2004 [Arc -fee]
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