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San Diego Power Outage Update
No, it's not some zombie Enron coming back from the graveyard behind Chapter 7 court. Nor is it the terrorizers. It is just some downed powerlines. However for anyone dumb enough to wish to take advantage of the chaos and immigrate: sorry, the border is running on backup generators.
View more videos at: http://nbcsandiego.com.
From NBC San Diego:
An SDG&E official just stated, "We expect power to be out well into the night and into tomorrow in some areas."
A transmitter line between Arizona and California was severed, causing both major connections in the region, causing the outage. The extreme heat in some areas also may have caused some problems with the lines, according to SDG&E.
"Essentially we have two connections from the rest of the world: One of from the north and one is to the east. Both connections are severed," said the SDG&E official.
The FBI and SDG&E officials said the power outage is not related to the terror threat.
San Diego County spokesman Mike Workman said that his department was unaware to the cause of what was going on and he is "sending a representative to SDG&E right now."
The San Diego border along Mexico is still open, as U.S. Customs and Border Patrol are running on back up power.
The San Diego Airport is still open -- but there are no outbound flights. Some inbound flights are being delayed or diverted.
San Diego State University has closed for the day. No injuries from the school has been reported.
Roads are congested throughout the county as traffic lights are out. Motorists are stuck in a gridlock as SDG&E works to fix the problem.
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Zombieland Bitchez
government regulation, bitchez
Would this be a bad time to tweet some bomb threats?
wait 3 days and then say it in public.
Fuck you, San Diego.
No Thur night NFL for you! (Packers 42-Saints 34) Sorry bout your luck.
EMP bitchez!
i just got a call from a pit boss i know in an indian casino
he sez it's one of those ocean's 11 thingies
Pechanga, Barona, Palomar, Golden Acorn, Sycuan, Viejas, Palo, Harrah's, Pauma, LaJolla, and Valley View all hit the Megabucks jackpot at exactly the same time and blew the fuking shit outa everything from san diego to vegas. this explains why they don't want you using the land lines, either, since they are all tied up with the floor managers telling each other: "Yeah! We got one, too!"
nobody's gonna make a piece of toast till they get this shit straightened out
trust me
that was the best f'n laugh me had in a week, thanks mate.
Actually it could be this, which is supposed to have potentially bad consequences.
The frequency variation test...
A yearlong experiment with America's electric grid could mess up traffic lights, security systems and some computers - and make plug-in clocks and appliances like programmable coffeemakers run up to 20 minutes fast.
"A lot of people are going to have things break and they're not going to know why," said Demetrios Matsakis, head of the time service department at the U.S. Naval Observatory, one of two official timekeeping agencies in the federal government.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2011/06/27/scitech/main20074627.shtml
According to CBS News, "The North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC), runs the nation's interlocking web of transmission lines and power plants and they will be conducting the tests" [1, 3]. Will this company be liable for appliance replacement and other costs associated with these tests?I think we are going to see major grid instability coming up.
Git ready, candle burning time.
V
Curse of Free Energy
http://www.parkerliveonline.com/2011/09/08/aps-employee-triggers-power-o... (from seek @ 00:17, below) [paste]
APS employee triggers power outage affecting millions
APS says a procedure being carried out by one of its employees at the North Gila substation near Yuma, AZ tripped a major 500kv power transmission line which serves San Diego Gas & Electric, causing a mass-scale power outage.
2-5 million people are affected by the outage, which persists at this hour all the way from southern Orange County (including San Clemente, San Juan Capistrano and Laguna Niguel) to the US-Mexico border, including the city of San Diego, and all the way from the California coast to Yuma, AZ.
Media outlets are reporting lines at gas stations, rushes on emergency supplies and traffic gridlock as people navigate tonight without street lights or traffic signals in one of the busiest metro areas in the country.
In addition to the SDG&E outage, the San Onofre nuclear reactors went into shutdown at 3:38pm, leading to further outages to the north, including some Southern California Edison customers.
People affected are being urged to activate their emergency plans, and are being advised that the outage could last into tomorrow.
lemme guess, employee's name is...Max Power?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4w3zdkmw2E4
More like Dim Bulb... So lemme get this straight, some guy trips a breaker and puts up to 5 million people in the dark? Who's running that company? Congress?
*ponder*
shawne merriman sez...LIGHTS OUT BITCHEZ!!!
it was a HAAMP, er HAARP thingie....um...they harpooned a Blue Whale and humped it up on the towers, yeah..the TWIN towers...yeah, THAT'S the ticket baby!...
Thanks for the kind words.
San Diegan here. Power came back on around 1:00 am PST, near as I can tell. I spent the early evening delivering candles and flashlights to friends who weren't prepared for such a "dire" emergency.
Missing NFL game sucked.
Only caught part of the teleprompter's speech on the radio.....missing that didn't suck.
I had a friend whose 6 am flight was canceled by 7 pm last night.....shortage of planes.
We've had rolling blackouts in the past (thanks Enron and friends in the industry....also, thanks semi-regulation...what a clusterf*ck). It's tough on the elderly, as this week has been unusually hot (mid 90's).
Life goes on.......How was Bachman's rebuttal?
It's those space aliens NASA predicted would annihilate us cause we ain't green enough, bitchez.
Klaatu barata nikto, bitchez.
Or, alternatively, earth-bound, garden-variety, ummm, eco-terrorists?
From the past (rather than the future) - prior grid attacks out west:
- Vandals or terrorists cut the 1,800-MW, 1,000-kV DC intertie line in California in 1987 http://www.wws.princeton.edu/ota/disk2/1990/9034/9034.PDF
- Environmental extremists were arrested in 1989 while cutting an Arizona transmission tower. The group was said to have been inspired by environmentalist Edward Abbey’s The Monkeywrench Gang about ecoterrorists
- The Evan Mecham Eco-Terrorist International Conspiracy (EMETIC) targeted electric system facilities in 1987–89 (Palo Verde
Nuclear Generating Station of Arizona towers)
- Bonneville Power Administration, Oct 31, 2003
Attempts to sabotage BPA’s regional high voltage transmission lines in both Washington and Oregon, Transmission towers located near The Dalles, Maupin, Boardman and Umatilla, Oregon and Benton City, Washington.
Major transmission lines owned and operated by other utilities were similarly sabotaged. These include PacifiCorp's transmission line near Klamath Falls, Oregon; Western Area Power Administration's transmission line near Anderson, California, and a Pacific Gas and Electric transmission line just outside of Sacramento, California.
Effing pussy down-raters!
Stand up, make a post, and take it like a man!
Effing pussy!
7777,
if you are not getting junked you are not posting anything useful/truthful.
I'll agree w/ ure ass for twice...
If the down-rater didn't like that post, he hates the rest.
+1 for informative post.
-1 for most of the rest of the time
net 0
slewie hearts edward abbey
great american writer!
Edward Abbey Quotes
"How to Overthrow the System: brew your own beer; kick in your Tee Vee; kill your own beef; build your own cabin and piss off the front porch whenever you bloody well feel like it."
yeah, the real deal om
Won't somebody please think of the children?!
Having them or their future? Preferences: Former rather latter ...
Let's start taking bets on how long before the looting begins - put me down for 12 midnight pacific time - USA! USA! USA!
shut up you stupid twat
Ok, mom.
Update: I over estimated by a good two hours - looters in Vista and in East County at 10:00 p.m. Pacific time.
http://www.nctimes.com/news/local/sdcounty/article_6190dd29-2e44-5251-ae...
Turn those machines back on!!
Northpark will be in flames by 1am.
Is that just north of Southpark?
Related?
California's Major Electric Transmission Lines
Arizona tie to Ariz. Public Service and Salt River Project.
Northern tie to Carlsbad/Irvine on the I-5.
Result of "optimizing" for perfect operation.
- Ned
500kv Zombie BBQ bitchez!!
Stay classy, San Diego.
Enron back from the dead.
Ken Lay is still alive -> http://www.kenlayisalive.org/
ZOMGROFLBBQ HAARP caused it Bitchez.
What the connection committed seppeku? Connections don't just sever themselves....well maybe
Both lines are severed? Guess that just happens all the time. Damn Chinese transmission cables!
oh and BACKUP GEN's BitcheZzz!
yes i want to know what that means as well.
According to my wiring vendor, copper clad aluminium wiring is all the rave for dishonest wiring mfrs...in the network world anyway.
A nice side affect for Ben Dover is that it helps mask inflation. These are not the hedonics you are looking for. Keep on moving.
May I suggest that San Diego Power might want to check out all the local copper scrap dealers tomorrow morning to retrieve their 20 miles of missing copper cable and a dozen transformers?
Come on CD. Anyone smart enough to know to and how to steal the copper will wait until after the twist to sell.
Anyone smart enough to trebuchet their brother-in-law onto the line to short it out, then cut the copper down, is just dumb enough to sell it now. :>)
(At least that's how I would have done it.)
Must have been a typo. Surely you meant trebuchet your MOTHER-IN-LAW;)
That's in "Les Baux de Provence", in southern France. Beautiful place.
I am sensing some unrequited anger here.
P.S. no fair you fight with images!
that contraption would be fun to take to Burning Man as an amusement ride (and burn at the end of course).
Is that a trebuchet in your pocket, or are you just happy to see me?
The fact that this article was actually published on ZH is why I love this place.
The prisons in Californicated aren't overflowing because of high criminal IQ's.
Severing a major power line and not killing your self is a lot harder than it appears. The trick is to do it so that A) you don't kill yourself B) don't start a fire will all the molten copper bits flying everywhere.
Yeah, after all, it's not like a six-pack of liquid courage and a cutting-torch (or half a dozen hack saws) are going to do ANY kind of damage to those minimal support-structure towers ...
actually its pretty easy to do, especially when they're hot, stressed and running at capacity, or demand could have done it too.
A tire fire below could do it, or a bundle of mylar ballons, or even poor maintenance (dirty insulators) or you could shoot up the insulators or if you're a good shot even sever the lines with a good shot, or lightning could short it too especially if a gound line was stolen, if there is no ground line the lightning can't go to ground especially in dry sandy soils.
humor: There was a crisis at the Beverly hills mansion of the clampets. It required the arial service lines to be cut. Jethro did the job. Later, when the banker and Jed inpected the post mortem, the banker asked "who could have done this?" Jed says it was Jethro. The banker said "how can you possibly know that?" Jed replied "Well he's the worst shot of the family" Again, the banker asked in amazement "the worst shot?" Jed holds up the wires "See here, he had to use two shots, the rest of us (Jed, Granny, Ellie) coulda got both wires with just one bullet.
Some methhead will be connected to grid when it is turned back on.
Christopher Reeves human steak (tales from the crypt) coming soon.
Cooked one way....well done.
Consider it, a taste from the world of tomorrow. Economic collapse style.
Who needs Soylent Green.
transmission lines don't have transformers.
It was humor. Did you notice the image of the evil transformer? Besides, they don't use copper in transmission lines. Humor twice.
Never mind. :(
"...the jokes are much funnier if I don't have to explain them. Oh bollocks..."
"Essentially we have two connections from the rest of the world: One of from the north and one is to the east. Both connections are severed,"
Excuse me?
Both connections failed at the same time?
Did someone just heist a lot of Gold?
I'm guessing they don't sever themselves, do they??
Probably a bad choice of words. The 500kV lines that he's talking about have rather large SF6 circuit breakers that open the line. I would hope that's what he meant by severed - that the beakers opened, and isolated their system from the rest of grid.
If the relaying system picked up on some sync issues, or overload issues, it's not uncommon for multiple breakers to open - at different ends of the system. They're all tied together by SCADA that makes sure the timing doesn't damage generators, transformers, and other sync-sensivitve equipment.
Though, there's a part of me that can't stop thinking about that virus that the US/Isreal programers sent to Iran to blow up their centrifuge system... I can't imagine that our power grid/SCADA systems are any better protected than Iran's nuclear program...
Dude, it cool, our gird runs Windows man, Windows! No way the Iranians, your three year old, or anybody who knows some DOS commands could hack our grid. Airtight, as long as we don't piss off the Chinese, right Google?
Good question, M'Lord. Based on my encyclopedic knowledge of universal government/military/business ethics and morality, buttressed by observation of Tepco's recent follies, I'll hazard a guess here and say that whatever story they finally decide to go with will be....a lie. The only question will be what lie they can think up that allows them to look good. Something about 'Public Safety', maybe.
Right, the two lines feeding power just happen to be cut at the same time?
"Sorry everybody, seems an unlucky squirrel touched the wrong wire."
pods
Copper - Bitchez!
How does extreme heat cause problems in power lines?
It doesn't, extreme heat is a hoax.
Infrastructure is shit and obsolete - plus they missed the boat while there was still cash to get things upgraded. I live in L.A. and experience at least 10 outages a year - no joke. Expect things to get worse in the coming years.
High temps = air conditioning = big electrical demand. One line overloads and shuts down. That puts a big load on the remaining line, which could then overload and shut down. Usually they run rolling brownouts to keep this from happening. I don't know why they didn't do that here.
Don't forget line sag from extreame heat on conductors. Most reansmission line are steel reinforced aluminum that are rather heavy. As the cable heats due to current flow as well as increase in ambient temperature, they tend to sag and the cross sectional area of the cable decreases at cetain points. If there is an existing weak section of cable that can't handle the increase stress placed on it by the excess sag, it snaps like a twig. But then again, what the hell do I know.
as in OH coupla summers ago.
" Don't forget line sag from extreame heat on conductors. "
Damn good point; there were some 110 degree temps a few hrs ago out in that desert area ...
Effing pussy down-rater!
Come get me puss!
I've already created 5 accounts just to junk your ass 'cause I know it makes you cry.
hey Ident, your posts remind me of dudes on public transport who sit with their legs W I D E O P E N to take up more space.
( <3 Blunderdog, lol )
Increased heat load has two effects:
Just saying..
Woops... looks like I'm late.
extreme heat increases demand, the more juice that flows through a line the hotter it gets, and the hotter a line gets the less juice it can carry, when one line goes (burns up or goes offline) the load gets shifted to adjacent pathways causing a chain reaction, if all the adjacent lines are at capacity they can't take any additional load either and either switch off or burn through.
If the terrorist want to get us on Sunday it will be some well placed logic bombs in the grid or banking system..Hope not but...
9.11.11
two chances at that date this year - sunday, and november's FEMA drill. . .
"However for anyone who wants to immigate illegally and is afraid of the dark, <snip> dumb enough to wish to take advantage of the chaos and immigrate: sorry, </snip> the border is running on backup generators."
Fixed it.
Arriba arriba, andale andale !
Yeah. Reminds me of a country I visited recently. Mandatory powercuts between 12 and 3 PM. Except that it happened randomly, anytime between 10 AM and 5 PM. The gist: get used to it. It is going to become more pronounced.
So we can't blame this on Prius drivers getting home at 5:40 and plugging in?
Back to the centrally planned drawing board ;-)
Plugging in to ZH for the latest you mean?
lol...more like Google server farms lighting up with every ZH post.
I heard a girl in her mid-20s telling her other 20 something girlfriend that she wanted a leaf or a volt becasue it would eliminate pollution!
Obviously, she was going to plug it into a solar panel, not the grid.
I'm saddened and pissed at the same time.
Somewhere along the line (some) young people have been deluded into thinking a fish is square and electriity magically appears on demand from a wall socket.
And of course, dollars are dispensed by skittle shitting unicorns from DC ;-)
I almost said something, but figured they might taze me or call the cops for being some krazy dude. So, I just vomited in my mouth.
It sometimes calms them to just smile politely...then avoid them in the future ;-)
this is why it's always wise to carry a lump of radioactive coal with you at all times...for gift-giving sake.
And when they all plug in during off-peak, there will be no off-peak.
San Onofre Nuclear Power plant is in emergency shut down being reported.
being reported by.........?
Yes, but will the water still be warmer?
For the surfers and all?
The FBI and SDG&E officials said the power outage is not related to the terror threat.
San Diego County spokesman Mike Workman said that his department was unaware to the cause of what was going on and he is "sending a representative to SDG&E right now."
Yep, back to back. They know what its not, just not what it is.
+Shimizu
These evil doer terra'ists hate us for our eeeetricity.
FAITH IN THE SYSTEM
FAITH IN THE SYSTEM
FAITH IN THE SYSTEM
We know what we're doing.
FAITH IN THE SYSTEM
Everything is under control.
Watch your television (oops, no power.)
FAITH IN THE SYSTEM.....
Not related to the terror threat. Dang.
Fox news was looking through photos of OBL's apartment hoping to see some cable cutters in the corner.
This is starting get the same 'flavor' as that sub launched missile that was not launched off the coast a few months ago.
http://www.nbclosangeles.com/news/local/129498468.html
San Diego Gas & Electric advised its customers via Twitter at 5:37 p.m.: "If you have a personal family emergency plan, please activate it now."
"It sounds like it's really widespread -- I'm hearing anyone who is a customer of San Diego Gas & Electric is affected,'' Orange County Fire Authority Capt. Marc Stone said. "It could be as widespread from Mexico to Phoenix. "
The outage was triggered after a 500-kilovolt (kV) high-voltage line from Arizona to California tripped out of service, according to the California Independent System Operator. The transmission outage cut the flow of imported power into the most southern portion of California, resulting in wide-spread outages in the region.
"The outage was triggered after a 500-kilovolt (kV) high-voltage line from Arizona to California tripped out of service, according to the California Independent System Operator. The transmission outage cut the flow of imported power into the most southern portion of California"
Imagine *if* they had local generation ... oh wait; the greenies won't stand for that ...
Better give that bankrupt Obama Solar company is Calif another $500 million to build their shoddy expensive solar panels. The FBI needs to shred all the documents first.
Shoddy solar panels - bitchez!
BLOOMBERG: BE VIGILANT
okay, I will report all suspicious activities here on ZH as they occur. I encourage fellow ZH'ers to follow suit..........
There aren't enough hours in the day to do what you request.
okay, one last peak out my window before I call it a night....
tree
jack rabbit
horse
dick cheney in moonlight
y a w n ...goodnight folks
WILL SOMEONE PLEASE THINK OF THE CHILDREN!
WILL SOMEONE PLEASE THINK OF THE CHILDREN!
I will have Sister Sara say a prayer for the children, good night
If electricity is cut everywhere in the US for long enough, you'll have a revolution.
Yes, it will be coordinated via Twitter. </sarc>
Retards get angry w/o their cable & college ball, Pawn Stars and Dancing with Chaz Bono.
Kaleefornia is very primitive!
Well, if the power is going out I better get to drinnking all my ice cold beer before it get too warm. When I wake up it all be over win-win !
Public infrasctructure in SoCal is hopelessly obsolete - should have been fixed/ugraded during the fat years. Of course that never happened - instead they spent the cash on paying firefighters $150k/year pensions.
Looks like you got junked by some millionaire union firefighters. Calif is a shithole now.
A traditional house in a village in Zimbabwe
Thanks to hyperinflation Zimbabwe has become the poorest country in the world. It used to one of the 10 poorest countries but the 87.9 sextillion percent inflation has left the countries economy into ruins. The inflation worrying the country since 2007 saw the government printing 100 billion dollar bills that were only good enough to buy a few eggs. In August 2008 there was even a time where the government simply decided to take 10 zeroes off of every bank not – simply because they didn’t fit very well. Just 6 months later they removed an additional 12 zeroes. The 87 sextillion percent inflation meant that throughout the year prices kept doubling every 1.1 days. In other words – when an apple would cost 1 dollars on Monday it would already cost 64 dollars on Sunday. In a month the same apple would cost just over 1 billion dollars.
This is all bullshit. How do the east and north transmission lines both get severed at the same time, I smell a Monkey Wrench. Would not take much to bring down a line in remote locations and what the hell might as well coordinate and bring down two. I'm a solid 40 years on this earth and the event packed last three years is off the charts but mind numbing, who and I mean who could have imagined this. You really can't make this shit up.
there be no shelter here
AD
All will be revealed in the post-event analysis report as required by FERC.
Or maybe not ...
Nonetheless, it will take 3 - 6 mos to complete.
Plus, another 3 - 6 yrs to fight the FOI requests.
it IS amazing...you must admit. It's more and more like a cheesy TV sitcom. All prepared and spoonfed to the sheep. Part of the plan. They'll get'r done, no matter the cost.
Vat do you mean. Vee have achieved global sta-beel-eet-tee.
Social science experiment, Bitchez.
Rodney King sure is out causing shit tonight...
Solar flare?
that was my first thought...lots of activity recently
If you go here:
http://sohowww.nascom.nasa.gov/data/LATEST/current_c2.mpg
And fastforward to 2011/09/08 at about 00:00 am you will see a Class M Solar event; relatively rare, I believe.
Interesting these probelems followed. Interesting disruptions in the electromagnetic fields of our solar system. More to come?
Big boy: http://screencast.com/t/siuMsm92U
I believe that this guy mis-spoke. The AZ line went down first.
Then the CA nuke plant had no external power supply, they MUST
shut down. Regulations. I don't think a second actual line went down.
They just had to shut the nuke plant down.
A nuke plant has to shut down because there is no external source of power? Why that's rediculous, what could possibly go wrong? Nuclear power is clean and safe don't cha know.
Other way around, if the plant doesn't have a load to send its power to, then it will shut down.
Looks like the line along the I-5 (the northern feed) went down, that would cut SONGS, which could still feed north to LA-Way and the northern OC.
I should read more before I post (below). But OK, How about putting a nat gas burner on site at the nuke plant to provide back up power? Or how about they siphon off some of that nuke juice? Since it breaks the laws of physics (something about not being able to power a device with the power generated by that device) they had to shut it off?
False flag event? This certainly is a big coincidence.
Actually Nassim Taleb warns of this in his newest effort: Robustness.
It turns out you get a lot of bad events when you try to optimize. The black swans start to breed and outdo themselves.
This outage is the attempt of state regulators to limit the competition and number of power interconnects to save the rate payers money.
Regulations and regulatory agencies are turning the US into a third rate banana republic with the infrastructure and fascism to go with it.
HOUSTON, Sept 8 (Reuters) - The California grid operator said the loss of a 500-kilovolt line on Thursday triggered a widespread power outage affecting more than 1 million people in Southern California and knocked a nuclear plant offline.
The California Independent System Operator which oversees the flow of electricity in the state said it declared a transmission emergency after a major system disturbance occurred on a line between Arizona and California.
No other details of the disturbance were disclosed.
I worked for a utility company for many years and this is just weird, not all the details are out yet obviously but those lines are designed to handle pretty much anything in terms of weather conditions. plus they are on average 125 ft off the ground on steel towers so that leaves accidents and pulls downs out of the question and it would take a hell of a lot more than bolt cutters to snip one, I suppose maybe a plane or helicopter crash could do it but that probably would have been reported from the start...strange...
Well.... "I was a lineman for the county and I drove the main road..." "I was always looking for an overload...."
Great song. Written by Jimmy Webb when he was probably 19 or 20.
It's probably not a conspiracy. But we are operating right at the ragged edge. By 2050, US population will increase by 130 million people. That is equivalent to 37 more cities with the population of the present Los Angeles. I wonder where we are going to get the energy, water, land, and other resources to keep growing our population like a third world country. I wonder what the US quality of life will be with a half billion people.
Take a flight and look down gmj! Of course if America continues to rely on infrastructure last upgraded in the 1950s things will look like they did in the Soviet Union in 1980. By 2050 I'm certain there will be a post depression generation with the gumption to reverse the great stagnation brought on by Wall Street + the green movement.
Why would anyone hop the border? Isn't the "official" unemployment in Mexico like half of CA's? Of course their numero uno job opportunity is "Professional Killer", but I'm sure that will be a big importer of that too.
Are you SURE this wasn't a zombie Enron deal???? I only ask as Andy Fastow was just recently released from playing chess all day at Club Fed.
It's the seventh Fetzer valve. Maybe you guys need a refresher course!
Yeah yeah I know where it is. I'm just trying to get a bird's eye view here.
The aliens are taking over now. Let the attack begin.
Excellent report...
BOTH LINES SEVERERED...and? and? WTH?
You know they got a nuclear power plant right there in San Diego county? But for some reason power lines in Arizona got them all screwed up. The nuclear power is probably sold to Las Vegas Nevada, while the Arizona lines probably burn from natural gas pumped up in New Mexico. Nobody in the county ever heard the term "localization" before.