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CNN Saturday Morning News
Interview with Sakis Meliopoulos
Aired August 16, 2003 - 09:07 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.
THOMAS ROBERTS, CNN ANCHOR: Well, you know, some experts believe the massive power outage started with the loss of a major transmission line in Cleveland. Now, there's no confirmation of that just yet, but officials say the power plants were shut down in the Midwest, the Northeast, and Canada within minutes.
Sakis Meliopoulos is a professor of electrical engineering at Georgia Tech, and he joins us now to talk about exactly what may have went wrong here.
Sir, good morning. Great to have you with us.
SAKIS MELIOPOULOS, GEORGIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY: Good morning, (UNINTELLIGIBLE).
ROBERTS: So we talk about the possibility that Cleveland may be the point where everything went wrong, and that has to do with the Lake Erie loop. Can you explain that?
MELIOPOULOS: Yes. Basically, you have to go back a little bit earlier, a couple of hours before the incident happened. Several transmission lines in about three generating plants were lost in the Ohio, around Cleveland area, and Michigan. And that made the system vulnerable, and one transmission line can trigger an effect of cascading outages.
There is transmission system around the Great Lakes, and probably that trigger event caused the loop flow around the area that sagged the voltage, and the volt -- that trigger, a sequence of events that generated a domino effect.
ROBERTS: And we were just seeing the major arteries there on screen a second ago. A lot of people out there may not have been aware of the fact that the U.S. and Canada have shared this power area for so long, and also now we have to deal with this joint investigation.
Do you think, I guess, in your professional opinion, is this going be difficult for the U.S. and Canada to trade information and figure out, OK, who's at fault?
MELIOPOULOS: Not at all. I think will be a very good cooperation between the Canadian engineers and the U.S. engineers to figure out what exactly happened. We have a lot of recordings of the incident, and we're going to know exactly what happened. Now, in terms of the interconnection with Canada, this has been since day one of the power systems. And the reason is that the Canadians have a lot of inexpensive electricity, and we buy massive amounts of electricity from Canada.
ROBERTS: Well, what does this mean, though, for the major grids in the other areas around the country? Seeing what took place here, does this mean that these other areas are susceptible to the same thing happening to them?
MELIOPOULOS: Yes, there is always a risk that what happened in the Northeast can happen anywhere in the country. There are -- the electric power system today has a -- many bottlenecks that can trigger cascading outage similar to the Northeast. But a lot of people spend a lot of time to make sure that this will not happen, just sometimes the conditions are generated that generate this domino effect.
ROBERTS: And when you heard about this, were you surprised at how many people were affected by this, and also how long it's taken people, pretty much, to get back online? Or do you this think is pretty typical if something major like this does happen?
MELIOPOULOS: Not really. You know, we -- in power, certainly the power systems area, we always expect these blackouts, and we do a lot of studies to see how we can avoid them. And it's going to happen once in a while, this kind of thing could happen.
ROBERTS: Could happen, as it just did, as we saw over Thursday and through the weekend. Sakis Meliopoulos, a professor of electrical engineering at Georgia Tech. Professor, we appreciate your time this morning.
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 16, 2003 - 09:07 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
THOMAS ROBERTS, CNN ANCHOR: Well, you know, some experts believe the massive power outage started with the loss of a major transmission line in Cleveland. Now, there's no confirmation of that just yet, but officials say the power plants were shut down in the Midwest, the Northeast, and Canada within minutes.
Sakis Meliopoulos is a professor of electrical engineering at Georgia Tech, and he joins us now to talk about exactly what may have went wrong here.
Sir, good morning. Great to have you with us.
SAKIS MELIOPOULOS, GEORGIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY: Good morning, (UNINTELLIGIBLE).
ROBERTS: So we talk about the possibility that Cleveland may be the point where everything went wrong, and that has to do with the Lake Erie loop. Can you explain that?
MELIOPOULOS: Yes. Basically, you have to go back a little bit earlier, a couple of hours before the incident happened. Several transmission lines in about three generating plants were lost in the Ohio, around Cleveland area, and Michigan. And that made the system vulnerable, and one transmission line can trigger an effect of cascading outages.
There is transmission system around the Great Lakes, and probably that trigger event caused the loop flow around the area that sagged the voltage, and the volt -- that trigger, a sequence of events that generated a domino effect.
ROBERTS: And we were just seeing the major arteries there on screen a second ago. A lot of people out there may not have been aware of the fact that the U.S. and Canada have shared this power area for so long, and also now we have to deal with this joint investigation.
Do you think, I guess, in your professional opinion, is this going be difficult for the U.S. and Canada to trade information and figure out, OK, who's at fault?
MELIOPOULOS: Not at all. I think will be a very good cooperation between the Canadian engineers and the U.S. engineers to figure out what exactly happened. We have a lot of recordings of the incident, and we're going to know exactly what happened. Now, in terms of the interconnection with Canada, this has been since day one of the power systems. And the reason is that the Canadians have a lot of inexpensive electricity, and we buy massive amounts of electricity from Canada.
ROBERTS: Well, what does this mean, though, for the major grids in the other areas around the country? Seeing what took place here, does this mean that these other areas are susceptible to the same thing happening to them?
MELIOPOULOS: Yes, there is always a risk that what happened in the Northeast can happen anywhere in the country. There are -- the electric power system today has a -- many bottlenecks that can trigger cascading outage similar to the Northeast. But a lot of people spend a lot of time to make sure that this will not happen, just sometimes the conditions are generated that generate this domino effect.
ROBERTS: And when you heard about this, were you surprised at how many people were affected by this, and also how long it's taken people, pretty much, to get back online? Or do you this think is pretty typical if something major like this does happen?
MELIOPOULOS: Not really. You know, we -- in power, certainly the power systems area, we always expect these blackouts, and we do a lot of studies to see how we can avoid them. And it's going to happen once in a while, this kind of thing could happen.
ROBERTS: Could happen, as it just did, as we saw over Thursday and through the weekend. Sakis Meliopoulos, a professor of electrical engineering at Georgia Tech. Professor, we appreciate your time this morning.
TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com
