nanowrimo_lj | Power Outages

Power Outages

I don't know how to go about researching this without getting on a terrorist watch list, haha.

I'm trying to write a mass power outage into my story. But I need to know:

Would outages happen on a city by city basis, or could something happen to make an entire state lose electricity?
If said outage were to happen, what could cause it?
I'm sure this depends on the cause of the outage, but worst case scenario, how long would people be without power?
What types of buildings have backup generators to insure they will still have power in case of emergency? Hospitals and jails, I'm sure, but what else? Would a bank have a backup generator to keep the alarms going and the safe locked if the power's out?

The story is taking place in the USA. I Googled "National Grid USA" and found that there's a company by that name that manages just a few states. So am I correct in assuming there is no large-scale utility authority that manages the entire country? That's fine, it just makes my job harder, because I will have to write in several smaller outages instead of just POOFing everyone's electricity, haha.

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My husband works for the local electric company, I'll ask him your questions if you want.

In the meantime, there is this timeline of the large outage in 2003:

http://www.cbc.ca/news/background/poweroutage/timeline.html

ETA: Oh, this one's better:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northeast_Blackout_of_2003

How big do you want the outage?

Edited 2009-11-05 23:28 (UTC)

Thanks so much for your links, they're very helpful! I'm thinking a few states will do it. I have a few characters who need to come together somehow, and I don't want them to be near each other at first. But they don't need to be cross-country, just maybe a state or two over. So something like the outage you linked to is perfect. And I was already writing that it's due to a lightning strike, so yay!

That outage sounds like what you want, then. I can remember the coverage on that one, both from news sources and what trickled down the grapevine (my mom has relatives in that area, although I was away at college so news was filtered before it got to me).

Keep in mind that small outages can coincide with large ones, so you can knock out an extra grid beyond what would be affected that way.

Oh, and after 2003 I think they were supposed to take steps to prevent the "domino effect" from knocking that much of an area out again.

All emergency services have backup generators. All hospitals and most schools have something, although the schools may only have backup for "necessary" services: ie, in school, the generator could keep power to the lights in the halls, but not to the classrooms, since many classrooms have windows. This would allow people to exit the building safely without scrambling for flashlights. Many commerical buildings have this same type of power: my store has a backup generator for the registers, the cooler, the security system, and the main computer, but not for the lights (we have windows), the deli counter (food has to be removed and placed in the main cooler during a power outage), or anything else. (Although our generator is not hooked up normally; we call the manager, and if power can't be restored quickly, someone from the company comes to hook the generator up.) My local Wal-mart seems to work on the same principle: I've been during a power outage, and the registers in the front worked, but there were no lights (my Walmart has skylights instead), the doors were propped open since they didn't run on their own, and none of the registers but the front ones worked. I would assume a bank or other security-concious organization would have a generator for the alarm system, but if not, the system going out would alert the company managing it to send the police to guard the bank.

In large cities, most grocery stores are probably going to have generators, since people automatically swarm the stores for staple food items. In the country, I think it's common to keep more food on hand at one time, since going to the stores takes more time and gas. But really, you can probably vary things the way you want; any store not having grocery items can and possibly will go out of power, any store with could only have enough to run the cooler and therefore close anyway; conversely, either one *could* have a backup generator (although a store selling something non-essential probably won't have many customers). The only real mandates are that emergency services, particularly hospitals, will have backup power for at least the more necessary of services (ie, life support, minimal lighting, emergency wards, vital-signs monitors, etc).

There is no single electric utility for the entire USA. However, some utilities manage larger sections than others.

I'm glad I cold help! My husband answered your questions with probably more info than you needed, but here is what he said:

1. Where would outages happen? A brief background first. The “power grid” is actually many, many smaller grids (or networks) that have some degree of interconnection. There is currently (no pun intended J ) no way to store the electricity produced by a power plant, regardless of whether it is hydro, coal, nuclear, solar, or whatever. The inputs of power to each grid must match the power taken out (including the loss due to resistance in the wires, etc). One way to think of a grid is a dam (or other water source) connected to a network of pipes or irrigation ditches – if more is taken out than is put in, not only do some consumers not get what they need, but because of a loss of water pressure, some parts of the system cease to function! Going back to the electrical grid, the interconnections allow operators (humans or automatic programs) to transfer power from or to other grids/sources, or to sever the connections to prevent failures from spreading. (If you want to research more details, try www.bpa.gov, the Bonneville Power Administration’s web site.)

So, with that in mind, a “mass” outage would require those safety measures to be overwhelmed in some way. In the case of California’s rolling blackouts a few summers ago, it was a combination of increased demand (air conditioning, higher population, etc), with both real and contrived supply shortages. The operators had to keep the demand in line with the supply, or the whole system would have collapsed. For an entire state to completely lose electricity, the “local” power generation would have to be shut down, as well as the lines that connected it to other states’ grids (since they have to be able to carry a huge amount of electricity, those connections are expensive to construction and therefore there are not an excess of them).

2. What could cause that? I could spin all sorts of doomsday scenarios, so here are a few examples.

a. Electro-Magnetic Pulse. This was a favorite scenario to imagine during the cold war. Anyway, a large, atmospheric atomic blast would either destroy the electrical distribution infrastructure directly or induce a current to overwhelm and destroy grid components in a huge area.

b. Solar storms. Storms on the sun send drastically increased streams of charged particles toward the earth, which damage or destroy sensitive electronics.

c. Terrorism. Deliberate damage/destruction of power generation facilities and grid interconnections.

d. Corporate greed. Just look at what Enron did. They were trying to create an artificial shortage so that states would have to buy from them at very inflated prices. If, while they were manipulating the market, some real accident or event occurred, the entire system may have failed.

e. Incompetence/stupidity. When the price of copper went up in recent years, there was a rash of thefts of electrical wiring, transformers, etc., both in inventory and in use. There are those who would be happy to have all the coal-fired power plants (or nuclear, etc.) shut down immediately, consequences be damned.

3. You are right that it depends on the reason the power was out. Here, we had a very severe wind storm in late 2006. I think 90% of our customers were without power. Due to round-the-clock efforts by our crews (and any other crews that we could borrow or hire), that number was down to about 20% (or 6000 customers) within 72 hours. The rest were without power for a week or longer. From an operations standpoint, the crews have to be able to do the repairs safely (so if your scenario involves a natural disaster, war, etc, the start of repairs might be substantially delayed). Also, the backbones have to be repaired first (the high voltage lines). As far as priorities go, hospitals, public works (roads), police and fire have to be restored first. I hope you get the idea.

4. Backup power generators. Many places have backup power, especially in areas where seasonal outages are common (heavy snow, etc). Places like banks might, but they might also have systems in place where the vault is impossible to open without the power being on. Many places have battery backups for alarms (like jewelry stores), but they only last for so long. Police stations, fire stations, power companies, data centers, government installations concerned with emergency management (like FEMA), and the like, usually have back up power generation. The thing is that the backup power capacity is not unlimited, nor is the stored fuel. Business managers spend what they think is prudent for what they expect to happen – be that for a few hours or a few days.

WOW, I can't thank you enough for even asking, much less typing all that out! You're so kind. And your husband, too, for answering all that. That information is infinitely helpful! The power outage is really the vehicle that gets the whole story going, so I'm glad I have lots of info about it now. It's interesting stuff to know in general, too. Virtual hugs, thanks so much!

Completely unrelated to the original topic, but reading through this made me think of a potential problem for my solar-powered spaceship.

My crew had best keep an eye on solar flares...

...good thing they've got those massive ramscoops to collect and store energy for their backups! *wipes brow* But now I definitely foresee a solar storm in my novel's future...

You want to knock out the grid, I'm thinking. That looks like some good info jancpb's got.

I just wanted to add the idea that there is a specific kind of bomb that knocks out electronics and nothing else. I don't actually know anything about it, really, other than it's called an electromagnetic pulse.

They used one in Ocean's Eleven... and a big one was the cause of the semi post-apocalyptic environment in the show Dark Angel.

Interesting stuff, I'm reading about them now. Thanks for the idea. I remember that in Ocean's Eleven!

I'll be honest, I'm no expert, but I do remember a few things.

Outages happen on a grid-to-grid basis. Depending on the size of the city, a power grid could be a whole city, or a few blocks. I remember having outages in Montebello, CA (average drive time from one end of the city border to the other would be about 15-20 minutes) where my parents' place would be out and my grandma across the street still had power.

A mass power outage that would span a whole city if not more? The surest way of that happening is a malfunction in the power plant itself, I'd think.

Brown-outs used to last a few hours in the LA area. I think the longest I've experienced an actual power outage is 24 hours, roughly.

Hospitals and jails, yes, definitely. I actually can't be sure about banks. If the power's out, there wouldn't BE an alarm system to go off, I'd think, unless they thought of the backup generator idea. The power plant itself might also have one to get the computer systems up and running to FIX whatever caused an outage. Police and fire departments probably have one. Any government buildings would probably have one, too.

Again, I'm no expert. My knowledge is based off questions I'd ask when things happened and what I remember of the answers. Everything beyond that is just me applying logic LoL

Thanks for the help :) True, I'm sure the power plant has some major backup! I never pictured I'd be writing crimes into my story, but maaaaan, power outages are just ripe with opportunity!

No kidding! When you asked, I was thinking "Huh... I wonder what he wants a power outage for? Hmm... Banks...? OH!!! So much possibility!"

Weather is the easiest way to knock out power in a large area. Thunderstorms, snowstorms, or even really strong wind can knock over power and phone lines and cause substantial outages.
A good chunk of New England lost power in last winter's ice storm. Never mind cities; whole states lost power, and some people didn't get it back for two weeks. Isolated places are usually the last to get power back.

Thanks! My MC lives in a rural area, so her power will be out the longest.

You could always take the computer virus way out. There have been stories about upgrading the nation's electricity to a "smart grid" that would reallocate power as needed. So why couldn't a virus targeting that, or even targeting power station control systems, take a bunch of them out?

Great idea, thanks!

All I really know is what I've experienced myself.

Once a few years back the power went out pretty much right across my county for a week. But when we went to the city most of them have back-up generators, surprisingly. I'm pretty sure the superstore had a generator, but it was only used to keep the frozen stuff semi-cold. As far as I know the bank didn't have power during that time, but there were cops all over.

Another time was up at my cottage, a twister knocked down a major power line and the power was out for a good two weeks. I only mention this because of the cause. The power went out gradually, from what I'd guess because the remaining electricity in the lines still had to get to the houses. Oh, I should mention that this happened up away from most of civilization. About an hour from any hospitals and such.

I hope I was of some help. :/

Edited 2009-11-05 23:54 (UTC)

Thanks for the help! I hadn't thought of a tornado, though I suppose it's an obvious cause of an outage.

I had been curious about grocery stores, so this post's been good for that too. I was at a grocery store when the power went out once and all the lights were out, none of the registers worked, but the freezers could stay on for another 8 hours or something like that. OT, that's probably a smart idea for any grocery store- one time my friend accidentally turned the freezers off at the store where he worked, and they lost almost $10k in frozen foods.

Wasn't there a huge power outage that took out pretty much everything in Lethal Weapon 4? There was some facility or something that got taken out and somehow that made the power go out. Anyways, you could always try watching the movie or Googling to find out what they did there.

Yes, that was my first thought, too. It had something to do with cascading viruses or something? o.o

Thanks, I haven't seen that. Netflix time!

It's strange that power outages happen so often, and yet most people don't think about them.

Heh. I lived in Alaska for a good chunk of my life, so I'm very familiar with them! They'd be caused by wind, snow, ice, avalanches, or it simply being too cold. (Seriously.) The local electric company was amazing, though, and the longest we were without power at my house was 8 hours (on Thanksgiving, of course!). (Why is that amazing? The area they had to cover was divided into two areas by mountains, and the one that we lived in was the size of West Virginia!)

Of course, the first winter we spent in Alaska, my brother and his family were renting our Upstate NY house from us (this would have been ... 1994?) and they had a MASSIVE ice storm that knocked out power for days....

Where I live now, in Western Washington, I guess the power gets knocked out quite a bit by wind storms. I've experienced the power at my work flickering out; not sure for how long, though, as the emergency generators kick in after about 10-20 seconds. (Major corporation with several office buildings.) I've heard that some neighborhoods (mostly in the big city) can be without power for days. Also, there were some power outages caused by a simple snow storm last December. (Ok, so it was really an insane snow storm for this area, but considering where I've lived, I laughed the whole way through it.)

Oh, and when I lived in Michigan, there'd be summer time outages caused by the insane thunders storms that came roaring through. Not sure if it was the wind, lightning, or twisters, but.... (Oooh, I miss those storms!)

I miss Michigan thunderstorms too :-/ I now live in Minnesota, the south end toward the plains, and gahhh the weather is so boring here.

Thanks a lot for your input! In my NaNo the outage is taking place during the winter, so it'll probably be caused by a snowstorm if nothing else. That way when people try to get to town for supplies their cars get stuck in the snow and people get stranded...gosh, I'm a mean writer :P

I find myself thinking the same thing about the weather in Western Washington. (Single boom of thunder followed by rain? Seriously, that's a thunderstorm somewhere other than Alaska??)

Oooh, winter snow storm caused power outages could be major fun (to write about)! ^^ The lines could get overloaded with heavy, wet snow and snap in several places. They've done that a lot in most places I've lived. (Ice storms are worse for snapped lines, as they snap them in waaay more places than just snow storms, for the same reason of the lines being overloaded with weight. And then they can be followed by snow, and people think it's safe to drive, and then find themselves on slippery snow on top of sheets of ice and major wrecks ensue.)

Have fun writing!

Out in Sacramento... I beleive it was '99, the power to a good portion of the west coast went out (PG&E I believe) I don't think it would be a state to state, but either county or area (west coast, pacific north west, etc). Also, we have rolling blackouts as well (When it's too intense in the summer and EVERYONE has thier AC on, nice discount though!)
Sorry I couldn't help more

Actually, having never lived out west I don't know all that much about rolling blackouts, but now I do thanks to the wonders of wikipedia :) I was interested in how grids are divided up since it's different across the country. In my area in MN we have two separate companies supplying my city alone, mine is the rural neighborhoods and is wind power (yay!) and the other is the "city" company. But in other states a single entity sometimes runs an entire state, or just a county like you mention.

Most factories I've worked in have pretty big diesel generators to run fire pumps, emergency lighting, and safety related controls. Of course, if these aren't tested regularly, they may not actually work in a real emergency. Places where the power gets knocked out regularly (like here in FL during hurricane season) there are folks that have gas powered generators in their homes. It's always weird to see lights on at one house in the block, LOL.

That would be sort of disconcerting, seeing power to one house while the rest of the neighborhood's out! Thanks for the factory spin on things, I have a secondary character who needs a job and a factory position would fit him quite well.

Places that also often have generators are grocery stores and nursing home/assisted living homes and restaurants. Some churches may have them too, depending on what area you're in. I'm in Kentucky so a lot of the churches here have generators because they're used for tornado shelters etc. WalMart and big chain stores also usually have generators.

We had a really bad wind storm a year or so ago, and it knocked the power out through most of the city for about 2 weeks if not longer in some places. If going for weather or something similar to knock the power out, you should check up on what city it's in. Some of the newer homes have the power lines underground to prevent power loss from ice and wind.

Hope some of this helps!

The area I grew up in (northern MN) had all underground power lines, so when I moved I was like, what are all these wires on everyones houses?!

But thanks, churches are something I hadn't considered but that's so true, they are often used as shelters or emergency aid bases during emergencies. Thanks!

There was a massive blackout over a large part of Canada and some of the states in 2003. Since it was awhile ago, I don't remember the technical details of how and why, but if you Google "Blackout 2003" you'd probably find the answers to most of your questions.

Oh, but I do remember that my particular area was without power for approximately... 16 hours. Other areas went more than 24 hours.

Also having worked in a couple of different retail stores during blackouts, I can also tell you that most of them will have backup generators for lights, but that's it.

Thanks! I've been finding out a lot about the 2003 blackout, and I'm thinking the one in my story will be fairly similar, although brought about by different means.

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Power Outages

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Wow, he wrote so much I couldn't fit it in one reply!

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