Canada-US blackout

One of the major issues an operator always faces is 100 percent hindsight in a quiet back office a week, a month or a year later.

"operators who did not think" ? The alarm system had failed! What actual issues/events/communications were occurring in the control room at the time of the alarm system failure?

From Computerworld (November 24) - as taken from the task force report

"... a software program that gives operators visual and audible indications of events occurring on their portion of the grid, began to malfunction. As a result, ' key personnel may not have been aware of the need to take preventive measures ..." ...

The statement below indicates the system board that was promised in planning the control room design was deleted to save $'s. Definitely a typical management shortcoming taking away the operators tools.

'this may have been, in part, the result of a failure to use modern dynamic mapping and data sharing systems'

The operators were always convenient targets.

Re failure to trim trees - are there any forestry personnel who are utility staff (not contractors) left at the utilities?

former Electrical Operator

There was actually quite a bit about how deregulation changed things. > > But, in this case anyway, it seems like the main issues were failure > to trim trees, operators who did not think, operators who did not > communciate effectively, a failure of a critical system (the alarm > program) without anyone realizing it had failed, and a failure of the > modeling software to function properly. Couple that with a poorly > designed control room. > > None of these things have anything to do with deregulation. They point > to management failures. > > Its also clear from the report that even though the operators were > getting telephone reports from other people telling them something was > seriously wrong, they took no action, instead believing their > non-functioning alarm system.