Power restored after massive San Diego blackout, but questions remain

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Quick Take: A spokesman for the Arizona Public Service Company said the substation outage that caused a transmission line to shut off and trigger the cascade of blackouts that hit the San Diego area and parts of Arizona and Mexico Thursday should have been isolated – and should not have spread to the transmission line. In the future, self-healing grids will isolate problems automatically, forestalling system-wide outages. In a recent Tuesday Topic we asked readers to discuss whether smart grid improves reliability during disasters. They had some very interesting things to say.  - By Jesse Berst

The lights came back on Friday morning for 1.4 million San Diego Gas & Electric (SDG&E) customers and for 56,000 Arizona Public Service Company (APS) customers after a blackout of historic proportions cut power Thursday afternoon.

FERC, coordinating with DOE, the North American Reliability Corporation, California and Arizona regulators, the affected utilities and others are investigating why the massive blackout happened.

The outage began after a transmission line near Yuma, Arizona, tripped offline – after a repair at an APS substation northeast of Yuma resulted in a problem that caused the substation to automatically shut down, according to a WSJ.com article.  An APS press release said operating and protection protocols "typically would have isolated the resulting outage to the Yuma area."

Why that didn't happen is the focus of the investigation.

Jesse Berst is the founder and chief analyst of Smart Grid News.com. He consults to smart grid companies seeking market entry advice and M&A advisory. A frequent keynoter at industry events in the US and abroad, he also serves on the Advisory Council of Pacific Northwest National Laboratory's Energy & Environment directorate.

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