This didn't make it to the list the first time. Doh!

-----Original Message----- From: jzeeff@verio.net [SMTP:jzeeff@verio.net] Sent: Wednesday, December 09, 1998 9:04 AM To: SEAN@SDG.DRA.COM Cc: nanog@merit.edu Subject: Re: POWER: San Mateo/San Francisco power outage report

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breakers on the substation. It also caused a cascade effect, tripping the Hunters Point and Potrero power plants.

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grid primary power sources. Aside from the human error, the system worked "as designed to protect the rest of the grid."

I suggest that causing a cascade effect and increasing the area of an outage isn't a good way to design a system.

If you're interested in finding our more about how the power grid is operated, my company has a lot of operational info documented on the web. It's scope is the operation of the interconnected grid in the mid-Atlantic region of the US (PA-NJ-DE-MD-DC-VA). The concepts and procedures documented there are probably very similar to the ones used on the west coast (YMMV, I'm a networking tech not a power systems engineer).

All of our Operations Manuals are available at: http://pubs.pjm.com

Of specific interest might be: Emergency Operations http://pubs.pjm.com:80/dynaweb/PJMpubs/m13/@Generic__BookView and Transmission Operations http://pubs.pjm.com:80/dynaweb/PJMpubs/m03/@Generic__BookView

Chuck Conway Network Management PJM Interconnection, LLC conway@pjm.com