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CNN Sunday Morning
Interview With Marshall Brain
Aired August 17, 2003 - 09:32 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
SEAN CALLEBS, CNN ANCHOR: The blackout of '03 -- it has its own monicker now -- raises questions about how a power grid works and on rare occasions how it doesn't work. Not many laymen know, so joining us with some answers this morning is Marshall Brain, the founder of howstuffworks.com.
And Marshall, just for our viewing audience, that is indeed your last name, Brain.
MARSHALL BRAIN, HOWSTUFFWORKS.COM: On good days it is, anyway.
CALLEBS: Let's talk about how a grid works. One thing that I think that -- I wonder how many people realize, you can't store the electricity. It has to be used as it comes down the line.
BRAIN: That's exactly right. So you have millions of people demanding electricity and you have dozens of power plants supplying that electricity. And it all has to be perfectly matched every second. And if it -- you know, if something goes down and that match gets out of whack, then you can have a problem like we saw last week.
CALLEBS: OK. Tell us, basically, as you understand it, what happened. We saw this in California a couple of years ago. It apparently was like a domino effect here in the Midwest and in the Northeast.
BRAIN: Right. So in '96, the California crisis was caused when something really simple, the power lines sagged into some trees and just shorted, just like a lightning strike or something to ground. So in the news right now the thought is that three transmission lines went out simultaneously.
And you can imagine the designers were thinking, OK, we can imagine one going out. We can imagine two going out. But three will never go out. And it just -- you know, something lined up so that all three went out.
And then all their load transferred out to other neighboring lines and then they failed. And the question will be why wasn't it isolated to a cell? You know, to one state or something? How did it spread so far?
CALLEBS: Exactly.
BRAIN: And that will probably be because something else might have failed on a smaller basis or maybe some stuff was off line for maintenance.
CALLEBS: But what about this argument the alarms didn't work? I mean, to some, it may sound like the dog ate my homework.
BRAIN: Well, a lot of times it can happen so quickly. Like I've heard reports that this whole thing, the whole region went dark in nine seconds because of that cascading overload. It may be that there's a need to look at the cellular design of the grid and beef up the capacity so that there is an ability for the alarms to react and actually isolate states or regions...
CALLEBS: Right.
BRAIN: ... more quickly. They don't take months to figure out that. But it will be a design issue like that, where there wasn't an easy way to break or fire wall off that region.
CALLEBS: You know, it was hot, but it wasn't scorching for a prolonged period of time. Why did it happen so quickly to such a broad area?
BRAIN: Well, again, it could -- we won't know for months, but it could be that -- let's say that three plants were off line for maintenance and it was scheduled and it was all completely normal, or some transmission pieces were off line at that same time. And it's just that it was such a big failure, who would have thought that three things would fail simultaneously. So that, in combination with normal maintenance, probably is what caused it to spread so quickly on that particular day.
CALLEBS: OK. Marshall, thanks a lot for joining us this morning. We appreciate it. Marshall Brain, founder of howstuffworks.com. And check out the Web site. It's kind of interesting.
Thanks very much.
BRAIN: Thanks, Sean.
TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com
Aired August 17, 2003 - 09:32 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
SEAN CALLEBS, CNN ANCHOR: The blackout of '03 -- it has its own monicker now -- raises questions about how a power grid works and on rare occasions how it doesn't work. Not many laymen know, so joining us with some answers this morning is Marshall Brain, the founder of howstuffworks.com.
And Marshall, just for our viewing audience, that is indeed your last name, Brain.
MARSHALL BRAIN, HOWSTUFFWORKS.COM: On good days it is, anyway.
CALLEBS: Let's talk about how a grid works. One thing that I think that -- I wonder how many people realize, you can't store the electricity. It has to be used as it comes down the line.
BRAIN: That's exactly right. So you have millions of people demanding electricity and you have dozens of power plants supplying that electricity. And it all has to be perfectly matched every second. And if it -- you know, if something goes down and that match gets out of whack, then you can have a problem like we saw last week.
CALLEBS: OK. Tell us, basically, as you understand it, what happened. We saw this in California a couple of years ago. It apparently was like a domino effect here in the Midwest and in the Northeast.
BRAIN: Right. So in '96, the California crisis was caused when something really simple, the power lines sagged into some trees and just shorted, just like a lightning strike or something to ground. So in the news right now the thought is that three transmission lines went out simultaneously.
And you can imagine the designers were thinking, OK, we can imagine one going out. We can imagine two going out. But three will never go out. And it just -- you know, something lined up so that all three went out.
And then all their load transferred out to other neighboring lines and then they failed. And the question will be why wasn't it isolated to a cell? You know, to one state or something? How did it spread so far?
CALLEBS: Exactly.
BRAIN: And that will probably be because something else might have failed on a smaller basis or maybe some stuff was off line for maintenance.
CALLEBS: But what about this argument the alarms didn't work? I mean, to some, it may sound like the dog ate my homework.
BRAIN: Well, a lot of times it can happen so quickly. Like I've heard reports that this whole thing, the whole region went dark in nine seconds because of that cascading overload. It may be that there's a need to look at the cellular design of the grid and beef up the capacity so that there is an ability for the alarms to react and actually isolate states or regions...
CALLEBS: Right.
BRAIN: ... more quickly. They don't take months to figure out that. But it will be a design issue like that, where there wasn't an easy way to break or fire wall off that region.
CALLEBS: You know, it was hot, but it wasn't scorching for a prolonged period of time. Why did it happen so quickly to such a broad area?
BRAIN: Well, again, it could -- we won't know for months, but it could be that -- let's say that three plants were off line for maintenance and it was scheduled and it was all completely normal, or some transmission pieces were off line at that same time. And it's just that it was such a big failure, who would have thought that three things would fail simultaneously. So that, in combination with normal maintenance, probably is what caused it to spread so quickly on that particular day.
CALLEBS: OK. Marshall, thanks a lot for joining us this morning. We appreciate it. Marshall Brain, founder of howstuffworks.com. And check out the Web site. It's kind of interesting.
Thanks very much.
BRAIN: Thanks, Sean.
TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com
