3 ms·

A bus driver plans to be seconds from driving over a cliff, as that is the optimal way to drive in some cases. Not so, here. There was no need to be this clos

• mywittyname 6y ago
  You really do have to drive close to the cliff when it comes to electricity generation. Producing too much power can damage the grid, and producing too little can damage the grid.
• blt 6y ago
  Given that they were already stuck with the hardware, is it possible that an optimistic approach was a reasonable way to manage the grid? Constantly monitor the status, be ready to shut down parts at any moment, but hope that you won't need to? I do not know the answer to this question. I know nothing about power grids. However, if they were following such a strategy, it's not surprising that they would end up disabling the system "seconds and minutes away from a catastrophic failure". That does not make the shutdown a last-minute precarious decision. It could be a preplanned response to a certain combination of failure conditions. The article fails to disambiguate between "react quickly with a planned decision" and "react quickly after analyzing the whole situation from scratch". The latter makes the operator seem more heroic. I agree with nimbius that some of the quotes lean towards the latter, but it would be better if the article removed the ambiguity.
• throwaheyy 6y ago
  Yes, there was. Supply and demand do have to be carefully balanced. Not an electrician but my understanding is that any imbalance starts to cause a deviation from the standard 60hz line frequency which is incredibly bad as some generating equipment will start to be “driven” by the grid while other equipment will be immediately and severely overloaded.