Causes Of Blackouts Research Articles

Agglomerative Hierarchical Clustering Methodology to Restore Power System considering Reactive Power Balance and Stability Factor Analysis

Despite there are significant advancements in modern power systems, blackouts remain a potential risk, necessitating efficient restoration strategies. This paper introduces an innovative concept for power system restoration, focusing on balancing active and reactive power while ensuring voltage stability. For instance, this paper employs an agglomerative clustering technique, which partitions the power system into segments with balanced reactive power, facilitating swift restoration postblackout. Central to this methodology is the use of the line stability factor, which assesses the voltage stability of individual lines, identifying the system’s stronger and weaker sections based on voltage stability levels. This paper demonstrates the effectiveness of the proposed methodology through case study analysis, comparing voltage stability levels across agglomerative clusters and their geographical locations. The power system is divided into two stable partitions, considering the number of black-start generators, available reactive power, and voltage stability levels. This partitioning reveals that the clusters formed by the agglomerative method are inherently stable, suggesting enhanced system stability, dependability, and availability during the restoration phase following a blackout. In addition, this paper discusses the potential causes of blackouts, offering insights into their prevention, and finishes with a novel clustering methodology for power systems, considering reactive power and voltage stability. This method facilitates the parallel restoration of the system’s independent partitions, significantly reducing restoration time; it addresses critical challenges and outcomes, underscoring the methodology’s potential to revolutionize blackout recovery processes in modern power systems.

Analisis Penyebab Terjadinya Blackout pada KM. Dharma Kartika IX saat Bermanuver

A blackout on a ship is a condition where the main propulsion power source on the ship does not operate due to the lack of electrical supply from the diesel generator, which serves as the primary source of electricity on the ship. Ship maneuvering, on the other hand, refers to the ability to turn and pivot while sailing. This ability is crucial for the safety of the ship, especially when operating in restricted waters or near ports. The blackout occurs as a result of generator overload or the inability of an electrical voltage and current to flow too high or too large. The load is too high because the bow thruster consumes too much electrical voltage. In fact, on KM. Dharma Kartika IX, the generator has already supplied a significant amount of electricity to various parts of the ship, including the lighting system throughout the ship, from the mast to deck 3, the cooling system, and several navigation systems. The aim of this research is to understand and explain the causes of blackouts in the electrical system of KM Dharma Kartika IX during maneuvering and to find solutions that should be implemented in case of problems with the generator unit. The method I used to gather this data is through direct observation during seagoing service on the subjects under examination.

Low-cost real-time internet of things-based monitoring system for power grid transformers

<p><span lang="EN-US">One of the most common causes of blackouts is unexpected failures at power system transformer levels. The purpose of this project is to create a low-cost Internet of things (IoT)-based monitoring system for power grid transformers in order to investigate their working status in real-time. Our monitoring system’s key functions are the gathering and display of many metrics measured at the transformer level (temperature, humidity, oil level, voltage, vibration, and pressure). The data will be collected using various sensors connected to a microcontroller with an embedded Wi-Fi module (DOIT Esp32 DevKit v1), and then supplied to a cloud environment interface with a full display of all the ongoing changes. This technology will provide the power grid maintenance center with a clear image of the transformers’ health, allowing them to intervene at the right time to prevent system breakdown. The method described above would considerably improve the efficiency of a power transformer in a smart grid system by detecting abnormalities before they become critical.</span></p>

Failure Probability Constrained AC Optimal Power Flow

Despite cascading failures being the central cause of blackouts in power transmission systems, existing operational and planning decisions are made largely by ignoring their underlying cascade potential. This paper posits a reliability-aware AC Optimal Power Flow formulation that seeks to design a dispatch point which has a low operator-specified likelihood of triggering a cascade starting from any single component outage. By exploiting a recently developed analytical model of the probability of component failure, our Failure Probability-constrained ACOPF (FP-ACOPF) utilizes the system’s expected first failure time as a smoothly tunable and interpretable signature of cascade risk. We use techniques from bilevel optimization and numerical linear algebra to efficiently formulate and solve the FP-ACOPF using off-the-shelf solvers. Extensive simulations on the IEEE 118-bus case show that, when compared to the unconstrained and N-1 security-constrained ACOPF, our probability-constrained dispatch points can significantly lower the probabilities of long severe cascades and of large demand losses, while incurring only minor increases in total generation costs.

MACHINE LEARNING BASED ISLANDING DETECTION DURING BLACKOUT

In modern era, demand of electricity is increasing rapidly due to fast development in industrial sector, communication technologies, commercial and domestic usage. The need of the hour is to protect the power system from blackouts during abnormal conditions, like voltage collapse and frequency disturbance etc between the generation and consumption. The sudden change in weather conditions, loading of power system, and over ageing of transmission and distribution lines becomes the cause of blackouts. Islanding detection and protection is one of the best possible techniques to improve the power quality, reliability, system security, transmission congestion relief and efficient energy utilization. Distribution generators (DGs), if properly placed have many positive impacts on the operation of power system. The islanding can improve the reliability by counting the operation of electrical power to keep the balance between consumption and generation. The main problem is sustained islanding with fast timing. Plant should sustain its island mode condition when fault occurs in transmission lines. Most islanding detection algorithms suffer from large NDZ and Non detection zone must be minimized to protect system properly and avoid blackouts. This study presents a technique to develop a reliable system to prevent complete blackouts, while maintaining the stability of the power system with high variability and uncertainty under the abnormal conditions. It is also needed to present the period all the DGs need to connect and disconnect immediately when the island occurs. For this purpose, each DG must be equipped with islanding detection devices. In this research work the presented system is a two-step process, based on the collection of some of the key characteristics in the current and voltage signals to analyze second harmonic by the Fourier transform (FT).

Analysis on Several Blackouts Caused by Extreme Weather and its Enlightenment

In recent years, blackouts caused by extreme weather show a trend of frequent occurrence. This paper analyses the external causes of blackouts, summarizes the evolution process of blackouts, discusses the internal causes of blackouts in power system, analyses the challenges faced by power system under the superposition of extreme weather and renewable energy, and finally puts forward some suggestions for the planning of high proportion renewable energy power system.

Analysis of the Power Cable Fire Case in Busan-JungKwan Energy

In this paper, the fire cause of blackout occurred in the Busan-JungKwan Energy as a Community Energy System (CES) was analyzed. Through analysis of the data such as burn patterns at the site, melted shape of cable head by the fire, overcurrent relay (OCR) of the control system, and event log, it was confirmed that first ground fault occurred at the termination connection of secondary cable of transformer. It was concluded because the void space of insulation and electrical melting trace conductor were investigated in the cable stress cone by detailed investigation and X-ray inspection for cable termination. In addition, as the damage by the tool on the vertical direction to the conductor was identified, it was presumed that the accident occurred by deterioration progress of insulation which was accelerated than that of the other parts.

A CRITICAL REVIEW ON HYBRID RENEWABLE ENERGY BASED MICRO-GRID SYSTEM FOR SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT

Micro-grid, an innovative area in the power sector, has huge potential to diminish the cause of blackouts, power deficiencies and its independence help to deliver uninterruptable power to the customers. Micro-grids can offer a great choice for integrating localized renewable energy generation. Hybridizing renewable energy sources grant a realistic form of power production. So the reliability and power quality can be insured with energy storage and backup generators to sustain loads for optimizing Renewable Energy usage. Hence, this paper attempts a detailed review of micro-grids for hybrid renewable energy resources. The main challenge in a micro-grid is the prediction of renewable energy availability and load side management. Hybridizing Renewable Energy and conventional energy sources reduce the above issue to a greater extent. Even though the capital cost is considerably large due to the long run and sustainability, this creates a pathway for major challenges in micro-grids.

Optimal Power Flow in Uncertain Power System

Due to the increasing demand of electricity in ever-growing electricity market, it is necessary to observe the nature of load and map the effects of load uncertainties on the operation of power system. These uncertainties have also led to voltage instability which is sooner or later considered to be a fundamental cause of blackouts. The distributed generation sources can also be regarded as the source of uncertainties at the load ends of power systems. Along with the load uncertainties, wind turbine generation (WTG) and solar plants have also been used as a source of uncertainties in this paper. The load uncertainties have been incorporated in the system by designing a dynamic load flow program. Corresponding to all uncertain inputs critical case has been identified by the singularity property of load flow jacobian. For the optimal load flow a multi-objective optimization problem aiming to constrained objective function to enhance voltage stability, improve stability index value, reduce system losses and increase reactive reserve margins at generator buses has been formulated. Black hole algorithm has been used to achieve the optimal values of control variables and hence optimal load flow. The aforementioned problem has been tested on standard IEEE-14 bus system.

Dual Hidden Failure Model for Cyber Physical Power System

With the increasingly close coupling between the cyber network and the physical power grid in Cyber Physical Power System (CPPS), the failure of cyber network has become an important cause of blackout. Equipment failure or abnormal operation state will be appeared without alarm in complex cyber network, which brings hidden failures not been diagnosed and dealt with in time. The invisibility and harmfulness of hidden failures pose a significant threat to the safe, reliable, and stable operation of CPPS. The dual hidden cascading failure model for CPPS is proposed to reveal the failure characteristics of CPPS accurately, considering not only the hidden faults in the power grid, but also the hidden failures in the cyber network. With the different coupled relationships between power systems and cyber networks, the cyber network topology with corresponding failure threshold is obtained according to the simulation of the model with different hidden failure rates of cyber network nodes. When the hidden failure rate is lower than the failure threshold, the scale-free topology cyber network coupled mode is adopted between power grids and cyber networks, otherwise the small-world topology cyber network coupled mode is adopted, which can effectively reduce the risk of power system blackouts. The method proposed in this paper is tested by using IEEE-118 power system and its cyber network. The results show that the method is effective.

Why do satellite transmitters on emperor penguins stop transmitting?

Investigation of early transmission failure from animal-borne, satellite transmitters should reveal vital information about the reliability of the technology, and the risk of application to the animal. Current technology available to the investigator does not provide firm evidence for causes of transmitter blackout. We address the five most likely causes of satellite transmitter failure on 20 adult (10 male and 10 female) emperor penguins tagged near Cape Colbeck, Antarctica, and one near the Drygalski Ice Tongue, Western Ross Sea, during late summer, 2013. They are: 1. Technical failure of the transmitter, 2. Instrument breakage, 3. Instrument loss because of attachment failure, 4. Predation, and 5. Icing of the salt water detection switch. The longest record of 323 days suggests that prior losses were not due to power failure. Various possibilities of transmission blackout are discussed, and we speculate about the most likely causes of termination of transmissions. A loss of transmission from six tags at similar locations early in the deployments suggests predation. Later losses at random times and locations may be because of antenna breakage or attachment failure. Definite conclusions cannot be made because of the indirect assessment of transmission loss. We suggest some changes in deployment procedures to improve our ability to determine cause of satellite transmission termination in the future. Understanding causes of blackout is important both scientifically and ethically in terms of accurate data interpretation and balancing the benefits of scientific gain with the costs of animal disturbance.

Summary of the Stability Chanllenges and Safe Operation of Power Systems in View of Dispatching

The Internet and the gradual implementation of the continuous power grid market in recent years make the power system more complex under different operating environment. Safe and stable operation of power grids have become increasingly important . With the rapidf development of the grid and constant innovation, safe and stable operation also has a new requirement , because the rapid development of the power system brings more This paper analyzes the causes of blackouts and reviews security of the power system stability problems related to measures on the security and stability of the power system operation .

Improving the calibration of the best member method using quantile regression to forecast extreme temperatures

Abstract. Temperature influences both the demand and supply of electricity and is therefore a potential cause of blackouts. Like any electricity provider, Electricité de France (EDF) has strong incentives to model the uncertainty in future temperatures using ensemble prediction systems (EPSs). However, the probabilistic representations of the future temperatures provided by EPSs are not reliable enough for electricity generation management. This lack of reliability becomes crucial for extreme temperatures, as these extreme temperatures can result in blackouts. A proven method to solve this problem is the best member method (BMM). This method improves the representation as a whole, but there is still room for improvement in the tails of the distribution. The idea of the BMM is to model the probability distribution of the difference between the forecast and realization. We improve the error modeling in BMM using quantile regression, which is more efficient than the usual two-stage ordinary least squares (OLS) regression. To achieve further improvement, the probability that a given forecast is the best one can be modeled using exogenous variables.

A hierarchically distributed non-intrusive agent aided distance relaying protection scheme to supervise Zone 3

The post-mortem analysis of few blackouts in US and Europe has revealed that the Zone 3 of step-distance protection is one of the primary causes of blackouts in power systems. In order to provide the Zone 3 relays with situational awareness and prevent its undesirable tripping, we propose a non-intrusive agent based relay supervised distance protection scheme. In the proposed scheme, every relay protecting a transmission line is associated with an agent that has the ability to sense and communicate with the other agents in the network. Based on the responsibilities assigned to them, the agents are hierarchically distinguished as master and slave agents. Whenever a relay senses a fault, its associated slave agent communicates with the master agent to distinguish a fault as a real fault or unreal fault and respectively to trip or not to trip. Distance relay protection scheme is a time critical application. Therefore OPNET simulations are performed to evaluate different communication and networking topologies, physical media of communication, networking protocols to ascertain the topology that meets the timing requirements of the protection scheme. The problem of adapting the proposed scheme to a larger power grid is modeled as an integer programming Multiple Facility Location (MFL) problem.

The importance of structured history-taking for blackouts

In clinical practice some patients who present as ‘collapse, ?cause’ will have had an episode of transient loss of consciousness (TLoC). This article will examine the terms used relating to TLoC (referred to in the article by the lay term ‘blackout’), and explore the rationale relating to comprehensive and systematic history taking in this patient group. Cardiac, neurological and psychogenic causes of blackout will also be considered.

Analysis of the structural vulnerability of the interconnected power grid of continental Europe with the Integrated Power System and Unified Power System based on extended topological approach

SUMMARY Power systems as one of the key infrastructures play a crucial role in any country's economy and social life. A large-scale blackout can affect all sectors in a society such as industrial, commercial, residential, and essential public services. However, the frequency of large-scale blackouts across the world is not being reduced, although advanced technology and huge investment have been applied into power systems. Given a single blackout, it is possible to analyze the causes with the traditional engineering methods. What we want to do is not to explain the causes of blackouts but to find what are the most critical elements of the power system to improve the resilience of the system itself. As blackout can happen in different load conditions, we do not want a method that depends on the load/generation level. We want a method independent from these factors: This is the structural perspective. When the interconnection between European and Russian power grids will create the largest interconnected power grid throughout the world in terms of the scale, transmission distance, and involved countries, analyzing the vulnerability of a large-scale power grid will be useful to maintain its reliable and secure operation. To analyze the vulnerability of the interconnected power grid, in this article, we first created the interconnected transmission network between continental Europe and the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) and Baltic countries; then, the structural vulnerability of the interconnected power grid was analyzed from a topological point of view using our proposed extended topological method, which incorporates some electrical engineering characteristics into complex network methodology. We found that these power grids of continental Europe, the Baltic states, and the CIS countries can benefit from the interconnection because the interconnected power grid can not only improve the overall network performance of these power grids in the Baltic states and the CIS countries but also increase their structural robustness. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

When the Lights Went Out: A History of Blackouts in America (review)

Reviewed by: When the Lights Went Out: A History of Blackouts in America Thomas J. Misa (bio) When the Lights Went Out: A History of Blackouts in America. By David E. Nye. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2010. Pp. x+291. $27.95. David Nye provides us a much-needed historical review and cultural appraisal of “blackouts” in twentieth-century America, focused on the notable New York City experiences with the blackouts of 1965 and 1977 as well as the great Northeast blackout of 2003. Complementing his numerous earlier books on the presence of technologies in American culture, including his prizewinning Electrifying America: Social Meanings of a New Technology, 1880–1940 (1990), this book considers the punctuated absence of electricity. Since blackouts are “breaks in the flow of social time,” as he suggests, [End Page 404] examining a series of them “reveals much about the trajectory of history” (p. 3). He uses these notable and unpredictable events, much like a succession of world’s fairs, as a lens to consider the taken-for-granted quality of electricity in modern American society. Unplanned disruptions to electricity service were common in the pioneering Edison era, as Nye reminds us. The construction of large, regional electricity grids created the possibility of a widespread, geographically extended, abrupt “blackout” (the term originated in 1947). Over time, Americans became more and more dependent on the reliable and continuous supply of electricity delivered at affordable prices. At the core of this technological vulnerability, then, rests Samuel Insull’s engineering and economic logic of wiring together diverse users and far-flung regions to counterbalance distinct load profiles and offset financial risks. Through the very process that enhanced operating and financial efficiencies, the electric grid also created the possibility of large-scale failures. Charles Perrow’s notion of “normal accidents” lurks in the text (pp. 32, 208). For the most part, Nye structures his material chronologically, emphasizing the distinct experiences and varied causes of blackouts during World War II, the accident of the 1965 Northeast regional blackout, the ominous breakdown of social order during the 1977 New York City blackout, the rise of rolling blackouts during the 1990s, the troubled deregulation of California’s power system (which led Enron’s energy traders to great heights of shenanigans), and the rare instances of terrorists targeting electric grids since the 1990s. Indeed, at least initially, many people in the dark presumed that terrorists were behind the 2003 blackout that plunged much of the eastern third of the United States and Canada (linked by the Eastern Interconnection). Instead, mundane errors in equipment and management were the root cause of this latter failure. His final chapter—“Greenout?”—explores environmentalists’ strategic use of shutting off electricity. But he does not much consider the recent “smart grid” discussion that aims to dodge his “unavoidable choice” between blackout and greenout (p. 232). Several of these episodes are treated in Richard Hirsh’s Power Loss: The Origins of Deregulation and Restructuring in the American Electric Utility System (1999) and Phillip F. Schewe’s The Grid (2006). Nye summarizes the complex “causes” for the key blackouts, but he does not attempt anything like the detailed technical and political analysis for the Europe-spanning November 2006 blackout presented by Erik van der Vleuten and Vincent Lagendijk in Energy Policy 38 (2010): 2042–62. What really distinguishes Nye’s book is his deep, yet never heavy-handed, engagement with cultural analysis and cultural theory. Nye’s earlier books, especially Narratives and Spaces: Technology and the Construction of American Culture (1997), are justly acclaimed for mingling cultural theory with rigorous historical research. The same is true here. Neither does he mechanically “apply” theory nor simply use historical [End Page 405] “examples” to support theory. Rather, he tells multilayered stories, first adding some wrinkle that challenges preconceptions, then deftly dropping in a nugget of Victor Turner on “liminal” space and time (pp. 82–84) or Michel Foucault on “heterotopia” (pp. 95–97) or J. B. Jackson on “vernacular landscapes” as the human-made spaces that serve as “infrastructure or background for our collective existence” (p. 130) that helps you think through the puzzle. There are also apposite quotations from films and works of...

Diagnosing the cause of blackouts.

About half of the UK population will experience blackouts, or transient loss of consciousness (TLoC), at some point in their lives, and some will attend emergency departments as a result, according to the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE).

Making the diagnosis in patients with blackouts: it’s all in the history

The distinction between the different causes of blackouts is an important and challenging clinical task. Given that treatment is very diagnosis-specific, therapeutic success depends entirely on the correct categorisation of...

Investigating possible causes of blackouts and collapses

Blackouts or collapses are distressing for patients. A thorough investigation is essential to pinpoint any specific cause.