Electricity networks can fail for reasons other than hacking into control systems, in particular if part of the network is overloaded and closes down, leading to overload of the remaining network, which then closes down (“cascade failure” - the same underlying principle can also result in traffic gridlock on road networks operating at close to maximum capacity).
The possibility of hackers breaking into control systems is an additional source of insecurity.
Back in 1965, I was working for a major Electric Utility, and it came close to separating from the rest of the Eastern Utility systems as they struggled to maintain synchronized. Unfortunatly, the operators of CONED, NYC’s major utility had been trained to try to hang on to the Grid at all costs and should have separated but it cost them dearly.
Intercommunications between the sytems then were by low speed dedicated communication data circuits and voice circuits between system operators and the internet did not exist.
The Grid can be compared to a train that is maintaining speed, loads and power are matched. Add load (go up hill) and it slows down, add power and it speeds up. When matched, the power frequency is 60.000 Hz (cycles per second) when not matched the grid speeds up or slows down (60.001 Hz or 59.999) There are hundreds of generators and millions of customers connected to the grid. I remember once when a major generator in Florida tripped off the grid and we observed the system frequency drop about 0.005 Hz and the grid quickly recovered. We could see this on our frequency charts. What then happened was that other generators on the system had their throttles adjusted to pick up the load. Most don’t know but one major utility is in charge of keeping the grid frequency precise so that electric clocks that are on utility power will
You may be interested to know that eLoran is specifically concerned with this issue and can address it with the necessary precision.
Interesting article: http://gpsworld.com/innovation-enhanced-loran/
Back in the 90’s when I worked at SPRINT LORAN-C was the primary timing source for SONET networks. Later it was relegated to backup.
It has been seven years since LORAN-C was deactivated. It would be a major project, but some sort of backup is needed.
Thanks to all that have posted on this thread. Some very informative information. Most of you know the reluctance this poster has had with the US and world putting all of its eggs into the one GPS basket for many reasons. .
Many years expprience with Loran “A” and later Loran “C” showed how robust “C” was. This eLoran shows much promise studying the linked article. “C” was always useable inland instead of just on the coast and open waters . “C” should be useable even during high solar storms that will temporarily shut down GPS. Did not realize that the electric power grid was so dependent on the timing circuits of GPS. Makes one wonder what was used before GPS – WWV ? Unfortunately as pointed out even differential eLoran does not appear suitable for PTC.
IslandMan: You may remember that back in 1999 many people were worried about “Y2K”. That was the problems that might occur when computers that were programmed to work with 2-digit year dates only up to 99 - i.e., 01/01/99 - would have to deal with either the ‘roll-over’ to “00” for 2-digit year dates (“Would it think we’re back it 1900 ?”), or convert to 4-digit year dates - i.e., 01/01/2000, which was the “Y2K” date. So there was a massive effort to make any such device able to cope with that change.
Anyway, Trains published a photo of a Shay with the following sign on the back of its tender segment:
“Y2K compliant”
I think of it often.
Then there’s this article - “Unplugged”, datelined Aug. 16, 2003 - about that blackout. It’s pretty interesting, but I often quote the aside in parens about the lawyer and the gas stove during a blackout in Bethesda a few years prior, which is about 60% of the way down the page:
and: “Until it doesn’t work, and you have to crawl out of a subway like a sewer rat.”
As to frequency, I’m amazed that the Safe Harbor hydro-electric dam - which still has some 25 Hz facilities for its Amtrak customer’s usage - is designated as a “black start” generating station in the event of a widespread blackout. Approaching 90 years old, and its simplicity is a virtue in keeping the most sophisticated devices working.
Paul, I like your response and link. We are softies. I can still remember my Grandmothers farm where she got her water from a well, (Had a windmill) cooked on a stove fed with corncobs, had a tank on the stove for hot water, a privey for normal bodily functions, and they did have electricity, after REA brought it to the farm in central Indiana. Before then, they had a "DELCO plant for power for a washing machine. Heat was in the kitchen (from said stove) or a coal heater in the parlor. All self reliant. Raised their own chickens, and produce and canned for the winter. Today, I am dependent on electricity to heat the house. Yes, it is a gas furnace but it relies on electricity to ignite the gas and operate the blower. Have a gas stove and I can light the burners with a match (and have) but the oven has a glow bar for ignition and an electically operated gas valve. Fireplace has a gas burner that I could use for heat. But no, I am dependant.
Was up on Washington Island WI, at my son’s cottage when the Island lost power for a day. Had to scrounge for water as the well has an electric pump. So couldn’t flush the toilet. Has a wood stove so we had heat. Electric stove. No cooking. no refrigeration. A wonderful restaurant, (Danish Mill which just burned) had their own generator and we could get food, and we were able to buy water at a store that had its own generator. Fortunatly the mainland utility which supplies the power was able to recover and re-energize the underwater cable to the island and all was well. the island electical Co-op which has its own generators claimed the load was too unbalanced to restore with its own generators as was normally done.
Maybe we should all be survivalists and harden our abodes with stores of water, food, etc and wait for the apocolipse, but I enjoy having my set-back thermostat bring the house temperature up to daytime levels after sleeping in a cool bedroom so I will stay dependent on the grid.
Paul,
Thanks for your comments and thanks also for the interesting Washington Post article.
Yes I remember the Y2K kerfuffle. As far as I know there were no disasters when the new year came in but I’m not sure if that’s because there was never really a problem anyway or whether the many millions of person-hours spent going through code looking for dates paid off (friends of mine who worked in IT made a lot of money in overtime payments!).
I suspect that there is not really any such thing as ‘progress’ in the sense of a single, inevitable path into the future. The direction technology takes is due to choices made about investment in R & D and this depends on many things including government policy, trade patterns, wars, big vs. small business, tolerance of intellectual dissent (think of Galileo) and control of research funding by oligarchs vs. ordinary people.
If the sort of funds used for R & D in IT were diverted to materials science it might be possible to make machines with the same sort of lifespan as static structures, e.g. automobiles lasting centuries. In this scenario total raw material consumption would drop to low levels as would the amount of labor needed to make stuff.
And they all have their quirks, especially Russian Glonass[*-)]
MC,
I am onboard with you. Nothing man has created is perfect but we try to get by with the informaton presented. At times such information can be erronious but knowing you work for and represent on of the most respectred survey companiies I will take tour word as gopel.
Your posts have been informative to say the least.
In a previos life I was a title exminer. and worked with a lots of metes and bounds. I would not think of myself as qulified to challenge you.
Thanks for your insiight.
This has been the case since shortly after the industrial revolution. The biggest reason this hasn’t come to pass, is what do you do with the factory and supply-chain employees between the 100year demands? That’s a lot of welfare checks to write. Also, they aren’t buying the other guys’ widgets (and keeping those employees working) without a paycheck.
It’s a thought rather than a practical proposition, a bit like those ‘what if?’ scenarios that historians sometimes like to pose (e.g. Abraham Lincoln being assassinated prior to the Civil War, or the German conquest of Britain in 1940). The idea came to me after watching a TV history program. In the days before coal was used as a fuel for cooking, cooking pots were handed down as family heirlooms and would sometimes last 400 years (pots for cooking on wood fires in Europe were roughly spherical in shape with three legs, exactly like the vessels used by witches in kids’ books to brew up ‘eye of newt and tongue of toad’).
If any ‘longevity revolution’ came about there would be a gradual increase in the lifespans of consumer durables (“consumer very durables”? “consumer extremely durables”
Actually, I observed thi
I have 2 residences - one in Jacksonville and one in Maryland. The refrigerator (and for that matter all the appliances) came with the house when I bought it in 1990 and they are all still going strong - I believe they all date from the late 60’s or early 70’s from the Harvest Gold and similar colors that they are.
I first rented my Jacksonville place in 1991 and ended up buying it in 1998 after the landlord tried (unsuccessfully) to sell it 3 times before I bought it. Since 1991 it has had 4 refrigerators, 2 dishwasher and a heat pump.
Yep! They don’t build things to last these days. I guess my Dodge Durango is an anomoly with over 351K on the clock.
My grandparents bought a GE refrigerator in 1939, and an International Harvester freezer (yes, you read that right, IH freezer) in 1946. Both were still going strong when my grandmother died in 1973. My cousin, who bought the house from my grandmother’s estate, used both for some period after that. Both of those appliances were built like tanks (I ought to know, I helped move them around a time or two).
The Wall Street Journal had an artical in it about a week or so ago concerning the staggering number of satellites that are now in orbit. They are guessing that there are at least 20,000 of them but that’s just a guess 'cause no one knows for sure and dozens more are getting launched every week. Some of them are no larger that the size of softball.
The concern is, what if one or more of them hit and knock out GPS satellites? The article didn’t mention railroads but I got to wondering, what if that were to happen and knock out PTC? Will the trains just have to stop? Or, would they be permitted to revert to old operating rules? Would they have to operate at restricted speed?
This poses some disturbing questions. PTC might turn out to be a nightmare. One can recall years ago when the BART first opened with few or no wayside signals and all operated by computer. It was an ungodly nightmare until they finally got all the bugs out of it. BART was up and running, or tried to, before the technology was fully developed and perfected. Will history repeat itself with PTC?
Regards,
Fred M. Cain
The number of satellites in GPS orbit are much lower than low earth orbit (LEO). OTOH, the orbit is pretty tightly defined, so there is a chance of a repeat of the COSMOS/Iridium collision of a few years back.
GPS was designed with a lot of redundancy, so the loss of one satellite will not have much of an effect unless the receiver is in an location with limited view of the sky. Examples would be canyons whether their natural or urban in origin.
One mitigation against GPS spoofing would be using a phased array antenna for reception as the positions of the satellites are well known, signals not coming from the expected location would be ignored. This would also help with multipath.
Some of my GPS devices identify the number of GPS satellites the device is in contact with - the number varies - generally between 8 & 11. I really don’t know how many GPS satellites there are aloft.
Those are both good points (erikem & BalACD) but the question still remains, what would happen to a running railroad in the event of a PTC crash? Or is that something that we can be completely confident will never happen?
Regards,
Fred M. Cain
PTC as it is being implemented on the Class 1 carriers is an overlay on the already existing systems. Those systems are Automatic Block Signal Systems and Track Warrant Control of specific tracks.
PTC in being a overlay, ENFORCES, the signal aspects that it gets fed from the track various radio devices associated with the switches and signals on the territory. In TWC territory the dispatcher defined limits of the authority, while enforced by GPS locations, are still ‘paper limits’ that the crew must obey.
Each carrier, in their implementation of PTC has also implemented rules and procedures for operation in the absence of PTC for any of a wide variety of reasons.
In the absence of operative PTC, the Class 1’s will continue to operate until PTC is restored. Remember PTC is only being installed on a portion of the Class 1 carriers trackage. Thousands of miles of the Class 1’s systems will be operating without PTC and without PTC being required.
What the governmentally funded commuter rail systems are implementing, I have no idea - other than is must be compatible with the Class 1 systems where these carrier operate on Class 1 trackage.