Examples of network failures

摘要

Northeastern United States, 1965: On Nov. 9, power was disrupted to parts of Ontario, Connecticut, Massachusetts. New Hampshire, Rhode Island. Vermont, New Jersey, and New York. More than 30 million people were without electricity for up to 12 hours, all due to an error in setting up a protective relay in the network. An interconnecting transmission line between the Niagara Falls (N.Y.) hydro generating station and Ontario was tripped offline, while it was operating well below its rated capacity. The loads that were being served by this line were transferred to another transmission line, causing it to overload and trip offline. This created a major power surge due to excess capacity on the Sir Adam Beck generating station, which reversed the direction of power flow on other transmission lines crossing into New York. While the Robert Moses plant (Niagara Falls generating station) isolated itself from the surges, the network disruptions cascaded throughout New York and the other Northeast states.