Talk:Northeast Blackout of 2003/Archive 1

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Archive This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.

Is there supposed to be some connection between power outages in New York and Ottawa? They're in different countries, even...

I'm skeptical about whether this article is needed. Every city gets power outages from time to time. They aren't important events. Evercat 20:33, 14 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Power distribution extends beyond national borders. NY and Ottowa going down at once implies a major grid outage. This might be article-worthy -- the power distribution grid is not meant to fail like this. -- The Anome 20:40, 14 Aug 2003 (UTC)

OK. Sorry, had the wrong impression of this article. You're probably right. Evercat 20:41, 14 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Yeah, looks like you were in the dark about this. Hope it ain't serious --Uncle Ed 20:54, 14 Aug 2003 (UTC)

In the dark. :-) How appropriate. Evercat 20:55, 14 Aug 2003 (UTC)

7 Move to 2003 Northeast American electricity blackout? I say American because it appears that areas of Canada are concerned as well.—Eloquence

I'd support a move to something better than "New York", though "Northeast American" is still seems Amero-centric. (It's south for the Canadians). "Eastern US/Canada"? Also, can someone mention Toronto. I'm on dial-up, so I get conflicts. (source: NBC, NPR) General Wesc

How about 2003 North American blackout? - Montréalais 22:07, 14 Aug 2003 (UTC)


One theory is that the blackout may be related to current sunspot conditions.


Eh? That seems a bit bizarre. Evercat 21:29, 14 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Not really. Strange but true; Sunspots --> solar flares --> grid outages. See http://sunspotcycle.com/ -- and sunspot 431 is looking big and vicious... -- The Anome 21:41, 14 Aug 2003 (UTC)

See http://www.agu.org/sci_soc/eiskappenman.html for a reference on this... (NB I'm not saying this outage is caused by a geomagnetic storm, just that this is a theory...) -- The Anome 21:46, 14 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Hmm, do they not normally give warnings about this stuff? I'm sure there's such a thing as solar weather forecasting... were there any warnings? Anyway, who's theory is this? (that it's the cause of this particular event) Evercat 21:48, 14 Aug 2003 (UTC)
There was a major blackout due to solar flares in Quebec a few years ago. They seem to have been abandoned as a possible cause of this blackout, though. Trontonian

I have written an article about power outages for the German wikipedia: de:Stromausfall. I can't find a similar article on this wikipedia, can you please add interwiki links in case you have one? @Eloquence: can you please add it to the German main page? Thanks --Head 22:04, Aug 14, 2003 (UTC)

It says Boston is affected. I am in Minneapolis, where there are no signs of a blackout, and I am logged in to a machine in [MIT]'s math department, and have no trouble viewing MIT's home page or the MIT math department's home page. But when I try to look at New York University's home page or the NYU libraries home page I get an error message saying I cannot do it. Is this MIT's cogeneration facilities at work? OK, now I'm trying Boston University's home page and it's functioning normally. Michael Hardy 22:29, 14 Aug 2003 (UTC)

My Mom in Cambridge (near Harvard Square) wasn't even aware of the blackout until I telephoned her and she turned on her TV. --Ed Poor
There may be some confusion as to the exact extent of the blackout; initial reports suggested the power was out where I live, which it wasn't. - Montréalais 22:34, 14 Aug 2003 (UTC)

...and a web site in Cleveland I'm trying seems not to be working, but several web sites in Toledo that I've tried are functioning normallly. The report that Toledo is affected may be exaggerated. Toledo is about 50 or 60 miles southwest of Detroit. The University of Michigan is maybe 40 miles west of Detroit, and its web site seems to be functioning normally. Michael Hardy 22:42, 14 Aug 2003 (UTC)

That's not really an effective way of detecting power loss. A) not all web sites are hosted on-site. B) they may have backup power for telecommunications. C) power outages may not be complete; parts of a city may be without power while other parts are unaffected. --Brion 23:06, 14 Aug 2003 (UTC)
Ann Arbor did blackout, as did most of Toledo, though interestingly, some of the suburbs did not. My parents' home in Sylvania Township, on the northwest edge of Toledo, only lost power for a brief moment. -- Arteitle 00:57, 16 Aug 2003 (UTC)

I've deleted Boston from this articles list of places affected. Michael Hardy 23:01, 14 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Here's a possible useful link: http://www.niagaramohawk.com/

The cable tv/internet access was down in my area. One would think that they would have some type of backup.

24.51.80.227 23:04, 14 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Most of the news articles, along with this article, mention "prisons are also without power". Why does that matter?

It doesn't matter. Vancouverguy 23:08, 14 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Beg to differ. Prisons without power = (possibility of) downed security systems, escaped prisoners, or at least riots. However, all the prisons I've heard of have generators. - Montréalais 23:10, 14 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Contents

why blanked page? primary cause my stupidity, but a software bug also likely

Besides rediscovering my own stupidity; I think I may have uncovered a new software bug!

Thank ghod it was on an obscure page like this :-S

After having moved this page to it's current spot, I heard on the telly that a whole whopping 10 nuclear power-stations had shut down becouse there was no grid to feed their power into. So I section-edited it into the place where I saw a mention of 2+2 powerstations powering down, thinking I had made a significant update.

Only, then I found that the section I had edited was specifically about New York. Oops. I was thinking about how many people must be accessing the page, and not a moment to be lost, I thought I would just self-revert and think where to put the info about the "10 nuclear power stations" later. So I clicked [rollback] on my contributions list.

I was told that the page had been reverted to the last edit by Montrealais. Only, the page was blank.

OOOPS!!!! Double-plus-ungood OOOPS!!!!

Deep breath!

Nothing on the page, but the history was live. I manually restored the previous to last version saved by Montrealais. I did so purely because I thought then, and still do now, that an out of date page was worlds better than a blank one.

I am still piecing together what did or may have gone wrong, but To All Whom It Does Concern: At every point I did the best I knew how. I am embarrased.

Sorry.

-- Cimon Avaro on a pogostick

It looks like a software bug to me, a Wikibug :P wshun 23:41, 14 Aug 2003 (UTC)
As I said on my talk page, this kind of thing happens all the while; it's a minor glitch. Don't stress out. - Montréalais 01:58, 15 Aug 2003 (UTC)

I guess a power outage affecting so many people is significant enough for an article, but I'd say this is more like a newspaper report than an article. You can tell from the large number of occurrences of "witness" and "reported". I mean, there's power outages all the time, there was one this week in the city where I live, but I don't see the need of writing an article about how people were using flashlights in shops and writing down transactions by hand... A nice article about when it happend, which area was affected (and that doesn't have to include every two-horse town or neighbourhood) when it was solved and what the cause was (when known) should do fine in my opinion. Jeronimo 07:12, 15 Aug 2003 (UTC)

What should this article be called? It was discussed earlier but seems to have stalled. So, if there are no objections, I will move this to Northeast American blackout of 2003 in two hours time. ²¹² 13:02, 15 Aug 2003 (UTC)

I hope you're not trying to cause a fruitless debate about where 'Northeast America' is (see the 'American' debate on village pump) :-). Mentioning both US and Canada explicitly seems better, even though only parts of each country were/are affected. Pete 13:14, 15 Aug 2003 (UTC)
Ontario was affected, not just the northeast, I think it's fine as is. Poor Yorick 13:21, 15 Aug 2003 (UTC)
Bah! I still feel the article should be moved to a tilte with more geographically precise boundaries. But I'll leave it. ²¹² 15:03, 15 Aug 2003 (UTC)
BAh! I think the title should be without a date, if possible. -戴&#30505sv 22:21, Aug 15, 2003 (UTC)
Actually, the blackout wasn't "northeast" anywhere; it occured in central-east North America, if you please, said the Canadian snittily. - Montréalais 09:30, 16 Aug 2003 (UTC)

The article says 'curiously, Chicago appears blacked out in both pictures' -- but I think this is because the picture is actually more of a radar sweep than anything, and Chicago is very far from the radar sweep. As evidence of this effect, you can see that Montreal is much darker in the second picture than the first, despite the fact that no power was lost. Perhaps more explanation of these pictures is required? In any case, I don't think the Chicago situation is 'curious' so much as it is a natural byproduct of the image processing. -- Tlotoxl 14:37, 16 Aug 2003 (UTC)

I agree with the person (sorry I forget who off the top of my head) who has removed the bit about it being covered nation-wide despite only affecting a few states. Likewise, I suppose 9/11 only affected a few states.... It would be one thing to write 'it received nation-wide coverage', but by continuing 'despite the fact that...', a very strong editorial point of view is implied. -- Tlotoxl 15:22, 16 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Politicians are making lots of statements blaming an old network for the blackout. I also saw an economist on Canadian TV saying that larger networks are more stable, and that the large interconnected network in the North-american Northeast was designed precisely to prevent what just happened.

My prediction is that we are going to see lots of public money spent subsidizing unnecessary technical upgrades by electric utilities, and possibly moves to merge all three US interconnects.

Now, according to technical reports, modern electrical networks are designed so each component (subgrids, generators, but also individual power lines) has built-in automatic shutdown mechanisms to avoid damage by power surges. As the Canadian economist mentioned, the network is made as large as possibe in an attempt to share power surges so that shutdowns won't be necessary.

This is beginning to sound to me like a self-organized critical system. The very fact that the system was designed to prevent a repetition of the 1965 blackout but ended up causing a bigger one only supports the conclusion that the blackout was an effect of self-organized criticality. One of the features of self-organized critical systems is that disturbances whose size is of the order of the whole system are unavoidable. In fact, designing the local dynamics to reduce the frequency of small disturbances only increases the frequency of larger disturbances. The economist I mentioned said that it was "ironic" that a system designed to reduce the frequency of blackouts had caused the biggest one yet. I say it is not ironic, but actually in the nature of things.

If you look for "self-organized criticality blackout" in google, you find links to a bunch of research papers on the issue. There goes my idea for quick publication :-)

Anyway, I am going to predict that, after everyone involved is satisfied that the alleged technical problems have been solved, there will be another, even bigger blackout. The time scale for this should be the same as the last one, about 40 years (from 1965 to 2003). -- Sat Aug 16 17:20 UTC 2003 Miguel

That's a very interesting point, though I suspect that technology will be completely different in 40 years and almost impossible to predict. Yeah, I know that they thought we'd be in Mars by now in 1965, but if humanity exists 40 years from now, I think the whole energy economy and distribution will be almost unrecognizeable. If nothing else, fossil fuels aren't going to hold out the way they are right now, and I have no idea right now what the implications of that will be. -- Tlotoxl 17:19, 16 Aug 2003 (UTC)

The simple google search I mentioned turned up a jackpot, including a prediction published in January 2002! See the article. -- Sat Aug 16 23:51 UTC 2003 Miguel

Removed section (what the heck does this have to do with the subject of this article? This text needs to go somewhere else):

I beg to differ. The point is that large blackouts, like large earthquakes, are unavoidable in electric networks, and that apparently sensible efforts to reduce the risk of smaller blackouts can sometimes increase the risk of larger blackouts. So all the "speculation and blame-shifting" is dealing with the immediate chain of events leading to the blackout, but is not dealing with the systemic cause of the blackout. Moreover, unless this is taken into account, all the money spent upgrading the network in the near future will do very little to reduce the risk of a repeat of the blackout (which is very small already: of the order of once every few decades).
But, I'll move the section to blackout instead. -- Miguel

Useful timeline of the sequence of events, might clarify some of the points addressed here: http://groups.google.com/groups?q=blackout+breaker+grid&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&selm=3f3f2444_1%40news.tm.net.my&rnum=1 Graft 16:32, 17 Aug 2003 (UTC)

This looks a lot like the pre-shocks of a major earthquake. -- Miguel

I think the bulleted list of statements made in the aftermath should remain just that. There is no need to add lenghty discussions as to the correctness of each statement, as the facts of the matter are (or will be, as they become known) covered elsewhere in the article. Mkweise 01:37, 19 Aug 2003 (UTC)

blackout software

The day of the blackout one of the networks reported that Homeland Security installed new software a few days before the blackout.

THIS IS WHAT FAILED!! The company responsible for the new software should be held responsible.

As far as I can tell this has been covered up by the government. Not a word about the software upgrade has been mentioned after.

How come the fake photo is being left in? Adam Bishop 00:32, 8 Sep 2003 (UTC)

It gives a good idea of the areas affected by the blackout, so it doesn't matter if it is a doctored image. Tiles 01:57, 8 Sep 2003 (UTC)

US without periods is fine

Moved back to 2003 US-Canada blackout -- Viajero 11:42, 21 Nov 2003 (UTC)

With the periods is fine too. I think it looks better and I've updated the links here. Also, the investigative task force is called the "U.S.-Canada Power System Outage Task Force" [1], so we should probably use the periods. I've moved it back. --Minesweeper 12:01, Nov 21, 2003 (UTC)
It's more correct to leave the periods. --Jiang

US is more common, the periods are superfluous. Lirath Q. Pynnor

It is incorrect American English usage to leave out the full stops. U.S. is more common in the American media. --Jiang
Agreed. -- Mattworld 22:12, 6 Dec 2003 (UTC)

As a proper name, this article title should be capitalized. Lirath Q. Pynnor

Man, the edit war sucks. Personally I think that if it's U.S.-Canada, then it should be Blackout. IF it's Canada-U.S., then it could be blackout. Silly, but if it's not a proper name, then why aren't the countries listed in alphabetical order? They aren't listed in alphabetical order, thereby indicating that it is very much a proper name. Not that it matters or anything. -- Tlotoxl 17:51, 27 Nov 2003 (UTC)

It matters because we have naming conventions to follow. Lirath Q. Pynnor

Sorry for interrupting your really important revertion fight for CAPITALISATION, but could I point that current title is not encyclopedic anyway? "2003 U.S.-Canada power system outage event" seems to be more academic, precise and clear for foreigners. And no problem with the naming convention. What do you think? Drbug 18:52, 27 Nov 2003 (UTC)


The wording is far too "clunky"; what is wrong with "blackout" -- most news sources referred to it as a blackout. Lirath Q. Pynnor

If someone doesn't speak out against "2003 U.S.-Canada Blackout" (Wik, this means you!) I will move it there. Refusal to discuss means your position will not be followed. --Jiang 00:54, 28 Nov 2003 (UTC)

This is not an established term. We could call it as well "Canada-U.S. blackout of 2003", "North American power outage (2003)", or whatever. It is not a proper name like "World War II". The naming convention says "Unless the term you wish to create a page for is a proper noun, do not capitalize second and subsequent words." --Wik 01:02, Nov 28, 2003 (UTC)

But it is a proper name, "dog" refers to a class of objects, "dogs"; Fido is an instance of the class. 2003 U.S.-Canada Blackout refers to only one thing, one instance of a class "blackouts" -- it is a proper name. World War II is an instance of a class of "wars", it is a proper name. Historical events are capitalized according to the long established naming convention here at Wikipedia. Lirath Q. Pynnor

Stupid warring

Stop moving the articles, they are starting to perform endless looped talk pages.

You want an appropriate name, how about 2003_Blackout. It's just a redirect, and it best describes the document, and makes it easier to find. Going to it now will redirect you about 3 times becuse of you self conscious people who must have created the page themselves.

The following pages link to here:
  • Talk:2003 US-Canada blackout (redirect page)
  • Wikipedia:Most-edited talk pages
  • Talk:2003 North America blackout (redirect page)
  • Talk:2003 US-Canada Blackout (redirect page)
  • Talk:2003 electricity blackout in New York (redirect page)
  • Talk:Blackout in New York (redirect page)
  • Wikipedia:Redirects for deletion
  • Wikipedia:Redirects for deletion

Look at that. I will move the page myself, and fix every redirect for it if you continue to move the page.

-Fizscy46 14:31, 2 Dec 2003 (UTC)
The debate isn't about US-Canada or Canada-US, or even North America or New York; its about B or b. Lirath Q. Pynnor
As it is a title, it should be capitalized, and the other redirect to it. However, due to the fact that it really doesn't make a f***ing difference, they should both be blocked from editting it if possible.

-Fizscy46 17:55, 2 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Vote

This vote ended at 04:33, 6 Dec 2003 (UTC) with four votes for Blackout and three for blackout and 9 to not move it back and forth. The 9 win, leave it alone! (Daniel Quinlan 05:32, Dec 9, 2003 (UTC)) [1]

Discussion about this issue is now on Angela's talk page, Current disputes, and probably other places I haven't found yet. Can they all be moved to one place? --Pakaran 04:58, 5 Dec 2003 (UTC)


Well, if you're through with this charade here's a tiny excerpt of the long list of articles you will have to move then as well, since they're exactly the same kind of descriptions of events with no fixed proper name:

1979 energy crisis
1986 Berlin discotheque bombing
1992 civil unrest in Los Angeles
1994 Northridge earthquake
1998 U.S. embassy bombings
2001 anthrax attacks
2002 Bali terrorist bombing
Stock market downturn of 2002
2003 Nova Scotia election
2003 invasion of Iraq
Ontario general election, 2003

And don't forget to fix all the redirects... --Wik 04:58, Dec 5, 2003 (UTC)

Wik, the issue is on this one article. --Pakaran 05:03, 5 Dec 2003 (UTC)
Where is the difference? Can you make an argument for capitalizing this and not the others? And if you can't, do you really think most of our present articles are spelled wrong (because most of this kind are not capitalized)? --Wik 05:06, Dec 5, 2003 (UTC)
Wik, in view of the fact that you're one of only 4-5 people currently honored with a problem users subpage, I can't help wondering if you're just edit warring to be edit warring. And "Blackout" just looks better. -- Pakaran 05:08, 5 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Wik has a point though. But on the contrary, there's September 11, 2001 Terrorist Attacks, Canal Hotel Bombing, etc. --Jiang | Talk 05:14, 5 Dec 2003 (UTC)

It does kind of make sense to differentiate (via case) the events with standard names and those we have named. I'm currently leaning towards lowercase if I had to express an opinion. Daniel Quinlan 05:23, Dec 5, 2003 (UTC)

If Wik feels we should have a policy on those capitalization issues, he is free to raise the issue on the mailing list, or somewhere. Edit warring, particularly move warring, as a hobby does not bias the project towards his positions. --Pakaran 05:28, 5 Dec 2003 (UTC)
Actually, we do have a policy. From Wikipedia:Naming conventions: "Convention: Unless the term you wish to create a page for is a proper noun or is otherwise almost always capitalized, do not capitalize second and subsequent words." The fact that this debate is going on at all suggests to me that there isn't even a well-established standard name for the event, let alone one that is "almost always capitalized". Can anyone who thinks that there is a standard capitalised name please provide some references for the claim? -- Oliver P. 15:58, 5 Dec 2003 (UTC)

This is a proper name, it describes one specific event, it is the "name" of the event -- names of historical events are capitalized. Lirath Q. Pynnor

Which name is its "proper name"? A Google search for "2003 US-Canada Blackout" results in about 121 matches, most of which seem to derive from Wikipedia in some way. Swapping "US" and "Canada" results in just six matches, most of which do derive from Wikipedia in some way. So I don't think your argument really holds up. As I said, if you think there is a standard name for the event, and that it is "almost always capitalized", can you provide a reference for the claim? -- Oliver P. 03:57, 6 Dec 2003 (UTC)

2003 ain't over yet, there may be more... :-) Stan 22:12, 5 Dec 2003 (UTC)

So shouold we name this the "Great Blackout," by analogy with the "Great War?"  :) -- Pakaran 22:56, 5 Dec 2003 (UTC)

I really think people are devoting too much attention to such a silly topic. It's just a blackout, blackouts happen to basically every person who has electricity. If the blackout resulted in widespread rioting or war, then maybe I'd think differently. Who really gives a damn if one letter is capitalised, or if "Canada" goes before "U.S."? Just leave it as it is; most Wikipedia articles follow sentence case, and "Canada-U.S." is in a rather favourable alphabetical order. - Mark Ryan 09:08, 6 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Not to mention that the 'Canada-US' order is also top to bottom (North to South)! :) -- Tlotoxl 09:30, 6 Dec 2003 (UTC)
Why don't you just name it 2003 Blackout. The chance of such a large scale power outage happening in the next 25 days is extremely low. Should it happen, then you can seperate it.
Other than that, does it really matter which article has the text, when all the others will redirect to it? The answer is NO! -Fizscy46 04:51, 7 Dec 2003 (UTC)
If this was done, 1.) The title ignores major blackouts in other parts of the world, such as Iraq and Japan, and assumes that the only major worldwide blackout was in the U.S. and Canada, and 2.) We still have the blackout vs. Blackout problem. -- Mattworld 23:49, 9 Dec 2003 (UTC)
There's no need to wait 25 days. One happened in Italy within days of the one in North America.:) Jamesday 17:50, 10 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Solve the B issue first, then move on from there. Lirath Q. Pynnor

Below this are some notes for expanding the investigative report section. After two weeks of holding them locally and not being able edit, it's time to put them here: Jamesday 02:24, 17 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Findings

On November 19, 2003, the U.S.-Canada Power System Outage Task Force released an interim report [2]. The day started as a normal one with moderately high load and a routine failure at the Eastlake 5 power plant near Cleveland, Ohio causing some loss of generating capacity and increasing load on the electricity transmission system as it had to transfer more power between southern and northern Ohio. The three main causes of the subsequent blackout were identified.