Power outage

A power outage (also called a powercut, a power out, a

power blackout, a power failure, a power loss, or a
blackout) is the loss of the electrical power network
supply to an end user.

There are many causes of power failures in an electricity

network. Examples of these causes include faults at
power stations, damage to electric transmission lines,
substations or other parts of the distribution system, a
short circuit, cascading failure, fuse or circuit breaker
operation.

Power failures are particularly critical at sites where the Vehicle lights provided the only illumination
environment and public safety are at risk. Institutions such during the 2009 Ecuador electricity crisis
as hospitals, sewage treatment plants, and mines will
usually have backup power sources such as standby
generators, which will automatically start up when electrical power is lost. Other critical systems, such as
telecommunication, are also required to have emergency power. The battery room of a telephone exchange
usually has arrays of lead–acid batteries for backup and also a socket for connecting a generator during
extended periods of outage.

Contents
Types
Protecting the power system from outages
Protecting computer systems from power outages
Restoring power after a wide-area outage
Blackout inevitability and electric sustainability
Self-organized criticality
OPA model
Mitigation of power outage frequency
Key performance indicators
See also
References
External links

Types
Power outages are categorized into three different phenomena, relating to the duration and effect of the
outage:
 A transient fault is a loss of power typically caused by a
fault on a power line. Power is automatically restored
once the fault is cleared.
A brownout is a drop in voltage in an electrical power
supply. The term brownout comes from the dimming
experienced by lighting when the voltage sags.
Brownouts can cause poor performance of equipment or
even incorrect operation.
A blackout is the total loss of power to an area and is the
most severe form of power outage that can occur.
Blackouts which result from or result in power stations Blackout
tripping are particularly difficult to recover from quickly.
Outages may last from a few minutes to a few weeks
depending on the nature of the blackout and the
configuration of the electrical network.

Rolling blackouts occur when demand for electricity exceeds

supply, and allow some customers to receive power at the required
voltage at the expense of other customers who get no power at all.
They are a common occurrence in developing countries, and may
be scheduled in advance or occur without warning. They have also
occurred in developed countries, for example in the California
electricity crisis of 2000–2001, when government deregulation
Transient fault
destabilized the wholesale electricity market. Blackouts are also
used as a public safety measure, such as to prevent a gas leak from
catching fire (for example, power was cut to several towns in
response to the Merrimack Valley gas explosions), or to prevent wildfires around poorly maintained
transmission lines (such as during the 2019 California power shutoffs).

Protecting the power system from outages

In power supply networks, the power generation and the electrical
load (demand) must be very close to equal every second to avoid
overloading of network components, which can severely damage
them. Protective relays and fuses are used to automatically detect
overloads and to disconnect circuits at risk of damage.

Under certain conditions, a network component shutting down can

cause current fluctuations in neighboring segments of the network
leading to a cascading failure of a larger section of the network. Tree limbs creating a short circuit in
This may range from a building, to a block, to an entire city, to an power lines during a storm. This
entire electrical grid. typically results in a power outage in
the area supplied by these lines
Modern power systems are designed to be resistant to this sort of
cascading failure, but it may be unavoidable (see below).
Moreover, since there is no short-term economic benefit to preventing rare large-scale failures, researchers
have expressed concern that there is a tendency to erode the resilience of the network over time, which is
only corrected after a major failure occurs. In a 2003 publication, Carreras and co-authors claimed that
reducing the likelihood of small outages only increases the likelihood of larger ones.[1] In that case, the
short-term economic benefit of keeping the individual customer happy increases the likelihood of large-
scale blackouts.
The Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources held a hearing in October 2018 to examine
"black start", the process of restoring electricity after a system-wide power loss. The hearing's purpose was
for Congress to learn about what the backup plans are in the electric utility industry in the case that the
electric grid is damaged. Threats to the electrical grid include cyberattacks, solar storms, and severe
weather, among others. For example, the "Northeast Blackout of 2003" was caused when overgrown trees
touched high-voltage power lines. Around 55 million people in the U.S. and Canada lost power, and
restoring it cost around $6 billion.[2]

Protecting computer systems from power outages

Computer systems and other electronic devices containing logic circuitry are susceptible to data loss or
hardware damage that can be caused by the sudden loss of power. These can include data networking
equipment, video projectors, alarm systems as well as computers. To protect computer systems against this,
the use of an uninterruptible power supply or 'UPS' can provide a constant flow of electricity if a primary
power supply becomes unavailable for a short period of time. To protect against surges (events where
voltages increase for a few seconds), which can damage hardware when power is restored, a special device
called a surge protector that absorbs the excess voltage can be used.

Restoring power after a wide-area outage

Restoring power after a wide-area outage can be difficult, as power stations need to be brought back online.
Normally, this is done with the help of power from the rest of the grid. In the total absence of grid power, a
so-called black start needs to be performed to bootstrap the power grid into operation. The means of doing
so will depend greatly on local circumstances and operational policies, but typically transmission utilities
will establish localized 'power islands' which are then progressively coupled together. To maintain supply
frequencies within tolerable limits during this process, demand must be reconnected at the same pace that
generation is restored, requiring close coordination between power stations, transmission and distribution
organizations.

Blackout inevitability and electric sustainability

Self-organized criticality

It has been argued on the basis of historical data[3] and computer

modeling[4][5] that power grids are self-organized critical systems.
These systems exhibit unavoidable[6] disturbances of all sizes, up to
the size of the entire system. This phenomenon has been attributed
to steadily increasing demand/load, the economics of running a
power company, and the limits of modern engineering.[7]

While blackout frequency has been shown to be reduced by

operating it further from its critical point, it generally is not
economically feasible, causing providers to increase the average
load over time or upgrade less often resulting in the grid moving
itself closer to its critical point. Conversely, a system past the critical Comparison of duration of power
point will experience too many blackouts leading to system-wide outages (SAIDI value), in 2014.
upgrades moving it back below the critical point. The term critical
point of the system is used here in the sense of statistical physics
and nonlinear dynamics, representing the point where a system undergoes a phase transition; in this case the
transition from a steady reliable grid with few cascading failures to a very sporadic unreliable grid with
common cascading failures. Near the critical point the relationship between blackout frequency and size
follows a power-law distribution.[5][7]

Cascading failure becomes much more common close to this critical point. The power-law relationship is
seen in both historical data and model systems.[7] The practice of operating these systems much closer to
their maximum capacity leads to magnified effects of random, unavoidable disturbances due to aging,
weather, human interaction etc. While near the critical point, these failures have a greater effect on the
surrounding components due to individual components carrying a larger load. This results in the larger load
from the failing component having to be redistributed in larger quantities across the system, making it more
likely for additional components not directly affected by the disturbance to fail, igniting costly and
dangerous cascading failures.[7] These initial disturbances causing blackouts are all the more unexpected
and unavoidable due to actions of the power suppliers to prevent obvious disturbances (cutting back trees,
separating lines in windy areas, replacing aging components etc.). The complexity of most power grids
often makes the initial cause of a blackout extremely hard to identify.

Leaders are dismissive of system theories that conclude that blackouts are inevitable, but do agree that the
basic operation of the grid must be changed. The Electric Power Research Institute champions the use of
smart grid features such as power control devices employing advanced sensors to coordinate the grid.[8]
Others advocate greater use of electronically controlled high-voltage direct current (HVDC) firebreaks to
prevent disturbances from cascading across AC lines in a wide area grid.[9]

OPA model

In 2002, researchers at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), Power System Engineering Research
Center of the University of Wisconsin (PSerc),[10] and the University of Alaska Fairbanks proposed a
mathematical model for the behavior of electrical distribution systems.[11][12] This model has become
known as the OPA model, a reference to the names of the authors' institutions. OPA is a cascading failure
model. Other cascading failure models include Manchester, Hidden failure, CASCADE, and
Branching.[13] The OPA model was quantitatively compared with a complex networks model of a
cascading failure – Crucitti–Latora–Marchiori (CLM) model,[14] showing that both models exhibit similar
phase transitions in the average network damage (load shed/demand in OPA, path damage in CLM), with
respect to transmission capacity.[15]

Mitigation of power outage frequency

The effects of trying to mitigate cascading failures near the critical point in an economically feasible fashion
are often shown to not be beneficial and often even detrimental. Four mitigation methods have been tested
using the OPA blackout model:[1]

Increase critical number of failures causing cascading blackouts – Shown to decrease the
frequency of smaller blackouts but increase that of larger blackouts.
Increase individual power line max load – Shown to increase the frequency of smaller
blackouts and decrease that of larger blackouts.
Combination of increasing critical number and max load of lines – Shown to have no
significant effect on either size of blackout. The resulting minor reduction in the frequency of
blackouts is projected to not be worth the cost of the implementation.
Increase the excess power available to the grid – Shown to decrease the frequency of
smaller blackouts but increase that of larger blackouts.
In addition to the finding of each mitigation strategy having a cost-benefit relationship with regards to
frequency of small and large blackouts, the total number of blackout events was not significantly reduced
by any of the above-mentioned mitigation measures.[1]

A complex network-based model to control large cascading failures (blackouts) using local information
only was proposed by A. E. Motter.[16]

In 2015, one of the solutions proposed to reduce the impact of power outage was introduced by M.S.
Saleh.[8]

Key performance indicators

Utilities are measured on three specific performance measures:

System Average Interruption Duration Index, measured in minutes

Customer Average Interruption Duration Index, measured in minutes
Customer Average Interruption Frequency Index

See also
2019 Venezuelan blackouts Energy conservation
2019 Java blackout Internet outage
2012 India blackouts List of major power outages
2003 Italy blackout List of energy storage projects
2011 Southwest blackout New York City blackout of 1977
2019 California power shutoffs Northeast blackout of 1965
February 13–17, 2021 North American Northeast blackout of 2003
winter storm Outage management system
Brittle Power Proactive cyber defence
Coronal mass ejection Renewable energy
Critical infrastructure protection Rolling blackout
Cyberattack Self-organized criticality control
Dumsor Smart grid
Electromagnetic pulse (EMP) Uninterruptible power supply

References
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Restore Power after System-wide Blackouts" (https://dailyenergyinsider.com/policy/15388-s
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External links
Cascade Tripping in a Power Grid (https://techmedia2772.blogspot.com/2019/01/cascade-tri
pping-in-power-system.html)
"Blackout" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YuM5iCn_iKI), TED talk by Marc Elsberg
"3 Major Problems in Restoring Power After a Black Out" (https://web.archive.org/web/20030
707114019/http://www.windows.ucar.edu/spaceweather/cold_start.html), Space Weather
Motter, Adilson E.; Lai, Ying-Cheng (December 20, 2002). "Cascade-based attacks on
complex networks" (http://chaos1.la.asu.edu/~yclai/papers/PRE_02_ML_3.pdf) (PDF).
Physical Review E. 66 (6): 065102. arXiv:cond-mat/0301086 (https://arxiv.org/abs/cond-mat/
0301086). Bibcode:2002PhRvE..66f5102M (https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2002PhRvE..
66f5102M). doi:10.1103/physreve.66.065102 (https://doi.org/10.1103%2Fphysreve.66.0651
02). ISSN 1063-651X (https://www.worldcat.org/issn/1063-651X). PMID 12513335 (https://pu
bmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/12513335). S2CID 17189308 (https://api.semanticscholar.org/Corpu
sID:17189308).
Blackouts (http://people.howstuffworks.com/blackout.htm) at How Stuff Works
Design Discussion Primer – Power Outages and Emergencies (https://www.bchousing.org/p
ublications/MBAR-Power-Outages-Emergencies.pdf)

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