Blackout

By Robert Kurz

[This article originally published in: Neues Deutschland August 2003 is translated from the German on the World Wide Web, http://www.krisis.org.]

The greatest power failure in the history of electrification was a lesson in several respects. Firstly, it was a lesson about the US, the last world power. A few days before the power supply collapsed for 50 million people in North America, the chief commentator of the New York Times, Thomas L. Friedman declared after an Iraqi visit: “How can we best show our power in Iraq? We start with our power supply.” How funny! This story published by Spiegel was spread with relish in the European media. In the second part of the lesson, the malice doesn’t reveal any economic insight, only anti-American resentment, the secret joy that the power show-off is made a fool at home and in Iraq. The economic core of the lesson should make people wonder on this side of the Atlantic.

The gigantic blackout (that will certainly not be the last) was a direct consequence that the US is so “exemplary” in the special neoliberal disciplines “privatization” and “lower costs”. As everybody knows, errors of economic policy and management have been imitated in Europe for a long time. Neoliberalism isn’t a specifically US affair but a worldwide consensus of crisis capitalism overarching the parties. In Germany, red-green and black-yellow seek to trump one another with savings- and privatization-policies. To see what results, one doesn’t need to look at the US with a swaggering smirk. Enough examples for the irrationality of this procedure exist in Germany.

From a purely economic management perspective, the praxis of lowering-cost radicalism reveals the inner self-contradiction of capital. The guideline of profit maximization for the “investor” at any cost leads to an abstract cost-cutting pressure that is counter-productive. An intensified performance-race results for employees. This race is planted in the anti-social rationality of capital and is connected with losses of contact aid a deteriorating business climate, increased sickness and so forth.

The cost-cutting mania increasingly seizes organizational, technical and material necessities of the operational course. The completely immaterial logic of money is indifferent to the substance of its “incarnation” and to the real production course. Repairs are delayed, substitute parts are not reordered, security regulations loosened, unusable (but cheap) material provided, necessary organization times cancelled and so on. The many little disasters of the brave new economic management are everywhere, can be seen every day and intensify altogether the economic crisis.

What leads to mad conditions on the individual firm or department plane is disastrous on the scale of the aggregate social infrastructures. Here the connections cross. The chain reactions grasp the whole reproduction of capital, not only the narrow circle of the firm. Even Adam Smith, the founding father of economics and economic liberalism, realized that the infrastructures could not be left to the “invisible hand” of the market since the infrastructures are framing conditions for all market enterprises and are not market enterprises themselves. With the unscrupulous unrestrained privatization policy and driven by the emergency of the state financial crisis, neoliberalism has thrown this insight overboard. If the infrastructures act as profit enterprises, they will become factors of social insecurity for capital itself through the crisis-induced cost-cutting policy come hell or high water.

The privatized power supply in the US shows another dilemma of privatization policy. The infrastructure redesigned for profit maximization is still subject to a political regulation. This infrastructure may not raise the price of electricity. This has good reason. The indebted US economy only runs with cheap energy to which customers have grown accustomed. Profit only occurs through “saving” necessary investments. The energy supply of the last world power is now at the level of a third world country.

The alternative would be an increase of the electricity price that stalls the already weak economic motor. What is your decision: blackout or expensive energy or both? This is the alternative not only in the US and not only with power supply. This is also true for water supply, the public health system and all other infrastructures. The train becomes increasingly expensive and is idle or derailed more often. Postal service and telecommunications also experience their blackouts while prices climb. The sewage system becomes antiquated everywhere. Most sewage systems were built at the end of the 19th century when the commons could pay for them. Now they are frozen or numb. With private operators, they will either be finally run down or demand prohibitive fees.

If this continues, our Mafia will sell drinking water in bottles while cities literally stink to the skies and lights go out more often. Every day there is a little apocalypse for the everyday customs of the wonderful market economy. What lessons are drawn by the policies of all parties? Even more privatization and more cost cutting! What a learning process!

View of the grid, red dots are control rooms.

Notice how many there are, notice Texas IS

indeed part of the grid despite ignorant claims

otherwise.

Ref:

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20030903/ap_on_re_us/blackout_investigation&cid=519&ncid=716

Exec: Poor Coordination Spurred Blackout



WASHINGTON - A breakdown in communication and cooperation

among Midwest utilities contributed significantly to the

worst power blackout in U.S. history, a utility executive

has told congressional investigators.





In a letter to House investigators, the chief executive of a

major Michigan utility says he is convinced that a power

plant shutdown and transmission line failures in Ohio "were

the triggering event for the blackout" and that an "apparent

failure in communication" was a major reason the problem spread.



"For some reason, the required level of communications and

coordination failed on Aug. 14," Anthony Earley Jr.,

chairman and chief executive officer of DTE Energy, wrote

the House Energy and Commerce Committee. He said this

"apparent breakdown in communications between the Ohio

utilities and other utility systems" must be dealt with.



Earley, whose Detroit Edison serves 5 million people in

southeastern Michigan, complained that "Michigan utilities

did not have timely or adequate warnings about

deteriorating systems condition in Ohio" during the

hour before the blackout.



He said Detroit Edison did not begin to detect anything

unusual until 4:06 p.m., five minutes before the blackout

hit full force in all or parts of eight states. Investigators

said the first of five transmission line failures in Ohio

began occurring an hour earlier.



In a separate letter to House investigators, FirstEnergy Corp.,

the Ohio-based company whose generating plant and

transmission line failures have been at the center of the

blackout investigation, dismissed the notion that a single

event triggered the blackout.



Executives of the International Transmission Co., which

operates transmission lines in Michigan, also have complained

that their engineers did not receive even a courtesy call

from Ohio utility officials about their line problems prior

to the blackout.



When ITC found out about the problems on the Ohio lines, "it

was at the point of no return" and too late to act, Michigan

Gov. Jennifer Granholm will tell the lawmakers. She says in

prepared remarks that had Michigan grid operators been warned,

"they might have been able to craft a contingency plan ...

and avoid the cascading failures."

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -



See this is exactly what I said - the control room operators

weren't doing thier jobs. Thier main job *specifically* is to

do whatever needs doing to keep the power up. (generally this

means bringing spare capacity on-line as quickly as possible

and *telling other operators so they can too*, while one

engineer is flipping switches to turn on more generators

another is *on the phone* with other operators explaining the

situation to them - this is the typical reaction)



It took several control room engineers NOT DOING THIER JOBS to

allow the blackout to happen during the HOUR THEY HAD before

they actually ALLOWED the grid to crash.



Also you notice;



> He said Detroit Edison did not begin to detect anything

unusual until 4:06 p.m., five minutes before the blackout

hit full force in all or parts of eight states. Investigators

said the first of five transmission line failures in Ohio

began occurring an hour earlier.



This is a bald faced LIE. They were down the line from Ohio

and the operator at Niagra Falls *already admitted* he was seeing

wild fluctuations in the PHASE of the power for more than an

HOUR before the blackout. ALL CONTROL ROOMS have sensitive

voltage and frequency(phase) meters specially wired both up

and downstream (near the power plant and near load centers,

plus on all grid connections)

They were ALL sitting on thier thumbs and ALLOWED the blackout

to occur with an hour to bring more generating capacity on-line.

That's all they had to do, bring up more generators and TALK TO

EACHOTHER. They did neither...



All this noise from politically motivated people who were so

quick to blame a couple of transmission lines, don't even

understand how the grid works - I have a working knowledge

of power distribution and said from day one that the

blackout could only happen if control room engineers allowed

it to happen by not doing thier jobs.

A line going down is a fairly common fault they are prepared

to deal with, that's why there is a GRID. Once power plants

start shutting down it's a critical situation - they should

have been on the phones with eachother before even one plant

shut down. Two or more plants shutting down is considered

an emergency situation (the whole grid is in danger of

crashing if that happens) There's NO EXCUSE for them ALLOWING

the grid to crash. They simply weren't doing thier jobs.

"Democratic presidential contenders are blaming President Bush for the massive blackout in the northeastern United States and Canada," the Associated Press reports:

Senator John Kerry says the blackout "underscores a blackout in this administration on energy policies."

Representative Richard Gephardt says the blackouts can be linked to the Republicans rejection of a plan to modernize the power grid in 2001.

http://www.kesq.com/Global/story.asp?S=1405022

OK, this is a two-week-old story, but I've been away, and somehow this is even funnier now than it was immediately after the lights came back on. Did these guys really think the blackout was going to win the election for them?