Nuclear Plant Shutdown Causes Massive Florida Power Outages

[Holden McGroin]

Nuclear Plant Shutdown Causes Massive Florida Power Outages
MIAMI (AP)--A problem with the electrical grid in Florida caused power outages stretching from Miami up almost to Jacksonville that affected as many as 3 million people Tuesday and caused a nuclear plant to automatically shut down, officials with the state's largest utility said.

Dow Jones Newswires reported that Stan Johnson, manager of situation awareness at the North American Electric Reliability Corporation, or NERC, said the failure of a substation set off the outage. NERC oversees the reliability of the U.S. electric grid.

Substations convert the high-voltage electricity in transmission lines to lower-voltage power that can be used in homes.

[head-scratch]So the substation somehow knew the nuke plant was going to shut down in response to the substation, so the nuke plant shutdown was the reason for the substations pre-emtive response...[/headscratch]

Remember this when you read political coverage from the media.

source

[Donzo]

Originally posted by Holden McGroin
[head-scratch]So the substation somehow knew the nuke plant was going to shut down in response to the substation, so the nuke plant shutdown was the reason for the substations pre-emtive response...[/headscratch]

Remember this when you read political coverage from the media.

source

How did you come to that conclusion based on the link?

[Holden McGroin]

The headline says the nuke plant shutdown was the cause, the text says the substation was the cause.

The nuke plant safely shut down in response to grid problems as it was designed to do.

[Donzo]

The problem at the substation triggered the nuke plant to shut down.

The headline said the nuke plant shutdown caused massive power outages.  The nuke plant shutdown was caused by the equipment problems at the substation.

Makes sense to me.

[Holden McGroin]

It was not the fault of the equipment that worked correctly.

[Donzo]

Originally posted by Holden McGroin
It was not the fault of the equipment that worked correctly.

[crockett]

Strange my power never went out.

[Holden McGroin]

Originally posted by Donzo

Why are you confused?

If everything worked correctly, power would have continued to flow to all customers.

Something worked incorrectly:  something broke and caused a power failure.

The something that failed was not the nuke plant.

Had the nuke plant been instead a coal fired power plant, I believe that the headline would not have been, "Coal Fired Plant Shutdown Causes Massive Florida Power Outages"

When a bridge fails and a bus falls into a river killing all the passengers, usually the blame is not centered on the bus.

[MORAY37]

Originally posted by Holden McGroin
[head-scratch]So the substation somehow knew the nuke plant was going to shut down in response to the substation, so the nuke plant shutdown was the reason for the substations pre-emtive response...[/headscratch]

Remember this when you read political coverage from the media.

source

Yeah I was astonished to see that headline.  Going for the sensational in the headline... then actually telling the story (which refuted the headline).

News needs to get out of the entertainment industry.  Americans need to get over the "follow the ambulance" mentality.  It's getting out of control.

[Nilsen]

There are only a handful of reporters left in the world. All the news stations and papers buy their stories from that handful and puts their own spin on it. They save money by not emplying and moving reporters around and they can focus on maximizing the ammount of commercial minutes and pages.

This is ofcourse taking it abit far but i did see a story awhile back about this trend and its real and been going on for a long time.

[Maverick]

The headline is bogus based on the information and the editor that let it pass should be looking for a new career with a tabloid.

Holden I don't understand why you are confused about the nuke plant shutdown. The electrical grid is already taxed to a substantial portion of it's capacity. When you take down a portion of it there may not be enough reserve to allow it all to function. Trying to ramp up the plant immediately may have caused severe damage to it's components. Once the demand peaked beyond its ability to respond it shut down to keep itself from being damaged. That includes the transformers, switches and lines not just the nuke reactor.

A similar situation happened with the NE blackout several years ago. One part of the grid dropped offline causing a cascade failure as other power producing plants shut down to keep from being burned out. As long as we maintain the grid at a subsistence lever rather than build up a surplus supply capacity this kind of situation will continue to happen.

[Holden McGroin]

Originally posted by Maverick
Holden I don't understand why you are confused about the nuke plant shutdown.

I am not confused about this at all.

The grid had an upset caused by a failure at the substation.  The grid can store no power so when the grid is upset, by design power plants shut down.

The nuke plant shut down was a consequence of the problem, not the cause.

[rpm]

Originally posted by crockett
Strange my power never went out.

You must be on FP&L's windgen grid.