Report on

HISTORY OF MAJOR BLACKOUTS

Submitted as Assignment-1 for the course

Power System Operation and Control

ELECTRICAL AND ELECTRONICS ENGINEERING

To

MRS. K.K. DEEPIKA, ASSISTANT PROFESSOR, EEE

COURSE CO-ORDINATOR

ACADEMIC YEAR: 2017-18, SEMESTER-1

By

REGD. NO. NAME OF THE STUDENT

14L31A0277 K.VEERABABU
14L31A0278 K.SAIKIRAN
14L31A0280 K.REVATHI NAGA KANYA

DEPARTMENT OF ELECTRICAL AND ELECTRONICS ENGINEERING

VIGNAN’S INSTITUTE OF INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY
DEFINITION OF BLACKOUT:
A power outage ( called a power cut, a power blackout, power failure or a blackout) is a short-term or a long-term
loss of the electric power to a particular area.

BLACKOUT IMAGE:

Vehicle lights provide the only illumination during the 2009 Ecuador electricity crisis

TYPES OF POWER OUTAGES

Power outages are categorized into three different phenomena, relating to the duration and effect of the outage:
 A permanent fault is a massive loss of power typically caused by a fault on a power line. Power is
automatically restored once the fault is cleared.
 A brown out is a drop in voltage in an electrical power supply. The term brownout comes from the
dimming experienced by lighting when the voltage sags. Brownouts can cause poor performance of
equipment or even incorrect operation.
 A blackout is the total loss of power to an area and is the most severe form of power outage that can
occur. Blackouts which result from or result in power stations tripping are particularly difficult to
recover from quickly. Outages may last from a few minutes to a few weeks depending on the nature of
the blackout and the configuration of the electrical network.
CAUSES FOR BLACKOUTS:
There are many causes of power failures in an electricity network. Examples of these causes include faults at power
stations damage to electric transmission lines, substations or other parts of the distribution system, a short circuit, or
the overloading of electricity mains.

CASE STUDIES ON MAJOR BLACKOUTS:

Case-1-1999 SOUTHERN BRAZIL BLACKOUT:

The 1999 Southern Brazil blackout was a widespread power outage (the largest ever at the time) that occurred in
Brazil on Mar11, 1999. The blackout involved São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, Minas Gerais, Goiás, Mato Grosso, Mato
Grosso do Sul and Rio Grande do Sul, affecting an estimated 75 to 97 million people. A chain reaction was started
when a lightning strike occurred at 22h 16m at an electricity substation in Bauru, São Paulo State causing most of
the 440kV circuits at the substation to trip. Brazil was undergoing a severe investment crisis during 1999, which
limited spending on maintenance and expansion of the power grid. With few routes for the power to flow from the
generating stations via the 440kV system (a very important system to São Paulo state, carrying electricity generated
by the Paraná river) a lot of generators automatically shut down because they did not have any load. The world's
biggest power plant at the time, Itaipu, tried to support the load that was no longer being supplied by the 440kV
power plants, but the 750kV AC lines and the 600kV DC lines that connected the plant to the rest of the system
could not take the load and tripped too.] South of São Paulo the consumers experienced an overfrequency, caused
because they had more generation than load, mostly because Itaipu was now connected only to this sub-system, but
that problem was automatically solved by all generators in the area, that reduced their loads. The rest of the system
experienced a much bigger problem, an underfrequency, since the system had a lot of load and not enough
generation capacity. Some generators tripped because of the overfrequency, which aggravated the problem, and after
an automatic rejection of 35% of the sub-system load the underfrequency did not go away. This caused the system to
break in many pieces, São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro states were split with a few areas remaining online. Most of the
Minas Gerais system remained online, and powered Brazil's capital, Brasília, as well as the state of Goias and some
of Espirito Santo.
In Rio the military police placed 1,200 men in the streets to avoid looting. In São Paulo, traffic authorities
announced they closed the city's tunnels to prevent assaults. More than 60,000 people were on Rio's subway when
lights went out. At midnight, power began returning to some areas

Case-2- NORTHEAST BLACKOUT OF 2003:

The Northeast blackout of 2003 was a widespread power outage that occurred throughout parts of the North eastern
and Midwestern united states and the Canadian province of ontario on Thursday, August 14, 2003, just after 4:10
p.m.

Some power was restored by 11 p.m. Many others did not get their power back until two days later. In more remote
areas it took nearly a week to restore power. At the time, it was the world's second most widespread blackout in
history, after the 1999 southern brazil blackout the outage, which was much more widespread than the northeast
blackout of 1965, affected an estimated 10 million people in Ontario and 45 million people in eight U.S. states.
The blackout's primary cause was a software bug in the alarm system at a control room of the First energy
Corporation, located in Ohio. A lack of alarm left operators unaware of the need to re-distribute power after
overloaded transmission lines hit unpruned foliage, which triggered a race condition in the control software. What
would have been a manageable local blackout cascaded into massive widespread distress on the electric grid.

Case-3-JAVA-BALI BLACKOUT
The 2005 Java–Bali Blackout was a power outage across Java and Bali on 18 August 2005, affecting some 100
million people.

Immediate impact
Power went off at around 10:23 am (UTC+7) on 18 August 2005 across most areas of the two islands.
Cause[edit]
A transmission line between Cilegon and Saguling, both in West Java, failed at 10:23 am local time; this led to
a cascading failure that shut down two units of the Paiton plant in East Java and six units of the Suralaya plant
in West Java
PT. PLN, the state-owned electricity company, confirmed that the electricity grid failed at several points throughout
Java and the neighbouring island of Bali, causing a supply shortfall of 2,700 MW, roughly half of the original
supply.
Jakarta lost power completely, along with Banten; there were blackouts in parts of Central Java, along with parts of
both West Java and East Java.

Effects[edit]
Due to the sudden supply shortfall, power went out in most areas of Java, including all parts of the capital and
largest city in Indonesia, Jakarta. Other major cities in Java, such as Surabaya, were also affected.

Restoration of service[edit]
Power resumed in most areas of Jakarta at about 5:00 pm (UTC+7) on the same day.

Case-4-2012 INDIA BLACKOUTS

Two severe power blackouts affected most of northern and eastern India on 30 and 31 July 2012. The 30 July 2012
blackout affected over 300 million people and was briefly the largest power outage in history, counting number of
people affected, beating the January 2001 blackout in Northern India. (230 million affected) The blackout on 31 July
is the largest power outage in history. The outage affected over 620 million people, about 9% of the world
population, or half of India’s population, spread across 22 states in Northern, Eastern, and North east India. An
estimated 32 gig watts of generating capacity was taken offline. An article in THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
stated that of the affected population, 320 million initially had power, while the rest of the affected population
lacked direct access.

30 July

At 02:35 IST (21:05 UTC on 29 July), circuit breakers on the 400 kV Bina-Gwalior line tripped. As this line fed into
the Agra-Bareilly transmission section, breakers at the station also tripped, and power failures cascaded through the
grid. All major power stations were shut down in the affected states, causing an estimated shortage of 32 GW.
Officials described the failure as "the worst in a decade".More than 300 million people, about 25% of India's
population, were without power. Railways and some airports were shut down until 08:00.It took 15 hours to restore
80% of service.

31 July
The system failed again at 13:02 IST (07:32 UTC), due to a relay problem near the Taj mahal As a result, power
stations across the affected parts of India again went offline. NTPC Ltd.. stopped 38% of its generation capacity. ]

Over 600 million people (nearly half of India's population), in 22 out of 28 states in India, were without power.

More than 300 intercity passenger trains and commuter lines were shut down as a result of the power outage. The
worst affected zones in the wake of the power grid's collapse were northern, north central, east central, and east
coast railway zones, with parts of eastern, southeastern and west central railway zones. The delhi metro suspended
service on all six lines, and had to evacuate passengers from trains that stopped mid-journey, helped by the Delhi
Disaster Management Authority.
About 200 miners were trapped underground in eastern India due to lifts failing, but officials later said they had all
been rescued.
The National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA), not normally mandated to investigate blackouts, began to
do so because of the threat to basic infrastructure facilities like railways, metro rail system, lifts in multi-storey
buildings, and movement of vehicular traffic.
The following states were affected by the grid failure:
 states on the northern grid: delhi, Harayana, himachal pradesh, jammu and kashmir, punjab, rajasthan, uttar
pradesh, uttarakhand
 states on the eastern grid: bihar, jharkhand, odisha, west bengal
 states on the northeast grid: Arunchal pradesh, assam, manipur, meghalaya, mizoram, nagaland, sikkim.

PROTECTING POWER SUPPLY FROM BLACKOUTS:

In power supply networks, the power generation and the electrical load (demand) must be very close to equal every
second to avoid overloading of network components, which can severely damage them. Protective
relays and fuses are used to automatically detect overloads and to disconnect circuits at risk of damage.
Under certain conditions, a network component shutting down can cause current fluctuations in neighboring
segments of the network leading to a cascading failure of a larger section of the network. This may range from a
building, to a block, to an entire city, to an entire electrical grid Modern power systems are designed to be resistant
to this sort of cascading failure, but it may be unavoidable.

Protecting computer systems from power outages:

Computer systems and other electronic devices containing logic circuitry are susceptible to data loss or hardware
damage that can be caused by the sudden loss of power. These can include data networking equipment, video
projectors, alarm systems as well as computers. To protect computer systems against this, the use of
an uninterruptible power supply or 'UPS' can provide a constant flow of electricity if a primary power supply
becomes unavailable for a short period of time. To protect against surges (events where voltages increase for a few
seconds), which can damage hardware when power is restored, a special device called a surge protector that absorbs
the excess voltage can be used.

Restoring power after a wide-area outage [edit]:

Restoring power after a wide-area outage can be difficult, as power stations need to be brought back on-line.
Normally, this is done with the help of power from the rest of the grid. In the total absence of grid power, a so-
called black start needs to be performed to bootstrap the power grid into operation. The means of doing so will
depend greatly on local circumstances and operational policies, but typically transmission utilities will establish
localized 'power islands' which are then progressively coupled together. To maintain supply frequencies within
tolerable limits during this process, demand must be reconnected at the same pace that generation is restored,
requiring close coordination between power stations, transmission and distribution organizations.
REFERENCES
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_India_blackouts
2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_major_power_outages
3. of the Largest Power Outages in History – and What They Tell Us About the 2003 Northeast Blackout
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