Massive Power Outage

[Thermodyne]

Looks like the lightning strike was ***-covering, there is news about a transmission failure in Canada starting to see the light of day. The sudden voltage drop causes a cascading disconnect-shutdown event that was designed to protect the generators from burnout like occurred in the 60’s. But it also requires a manual reset that requires trained man power on site. These men have been, for the most part, victims of deregulation and profit maximizing. There is a message in all of this. The system put in place decades ago to protect the generating plants from suffering burnouts during a sudden voltage drop are no longer usable. Deregulation of the power industry has allowed them to lay off the people needed to service this system in an event like this. They simply do not have the manpower to go out and reconfigure the switches. Storm damage during the Last few years has uncovered the shortcomings of pooled-contract line crews, perhaps now the government will decide that the power industry is not capable of policing itself, and guaranteeing an up-to-date, reliable power system.