Last year’s electricity blackout in the Northeast left 50 million people in the dark and cost billions of dollars to the area’s economy. Researchers at Mississippi State University and the Tennessee Valley Authority are now working in a collaborative effort to ensure similar devastation is not felt here in the South.
Noel Schulz, an associate professor for electrical and computer engineering, said the blackout of 2003 occurred because of several factors.
One of those factors, she said, is that more and more power is being provided from the same electricity system.
Schulz described the electric power system as being like an energy highway.
“As we add new neighborhoods and industries, we’re still using the same highway but putting more and more power on it,” Schulz said.
A major component of the flow of energy to neighborhoods is the placement of large towers of power, Schulz said.
People do not want these towers in their backyards because of aesthetics or property values, she said. That means that power companies are not able to keep erecting towers to keep up with the ever-increasing size of neighborhoods.
“The current transmission system is being pushed for a little bit more than it was designed for,” Schulz said.
Another factor in the blackout was the lack of communication among different utility companies, Schulz said.
Schulz said that all the power in the Northeast is connected, so when one part of the system fails, it can create a domino effect. Everything becomes overloaded.
Schulz said the hot weather at the time of the blackout was another factor. The power lines became very hot because a large amount of people were using air conditioners.
All of these factors combined to create that domino effect, Schulz said.
Schulz said the power system is designed so that if one failure takes place the entire system does not overload.
“If a couple of things happen, everything in town gets stopped,” Schulz said.
Much of the research conducted at State to prevent something similar from reoccurring centers around the university’s high voltage laboratory.
“We have a very unique facility here in our high voltage lab,” said Jim Harden, head of electrical and computer engineering.
Harden said the four-story complex is capable of producing lightning and one million volts of electricity.
It is one of only three or four laboratories in the United States capable of producing such energy, he said.
Among other things, the lab is used to test equipment used by electricians and the reliability of networks and transmission lines under conditions like lightning.
Stan Grzybowski, an electrical and computer engineering professor, said the laboratory has been used for nearly a decade to provide short courses about electricity measurement and systems to the staff at the TVA and other members of the power community around the world.
As a further collaboration between these two research entities, Schulz said the Authority has provided funding for professorships in electrical, mechanical and computer engineering.
Schulz said there are a few things that may help improve the power industry in the future, including better communication among utilities so that one utility’s action will not create the wrong reaction from another company.
Schulz also said older power systems needed to be replaced with newer, more high-tech systems.
“A lot of high-tech activities are really going to help improve power systems in the future,” she said.
More research and education on reconfiguring the system after a failure should be provided so that people can get back online as quickly as possible, Schulz said.
“We will not eliminate outages completely,” Grzybowski said. “It will happen.”
Grzybowski said the only quest is to judge the cost of trying to prevent power outages.
Schulz said a recent increase in people’s interest in power production might be partly attributed to the recent blackouts.
Several ideas are floating among researchers on how to make power safer and more efficient, Schulz said.
Some ideas include burning chicken litter, waste products and wood products to create electricity.