Blackout
By Douglas Lummis
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停電
メキシコからカナダにかけ、大規模な停電が起きたのは、筆者がサンフランシスコに滞在中のことだった。はっきりした原因はわからず、電力会社の説明も二転三転。復旧後には火災が発生した…。
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Pacific Gas and Electric corporation (PG&E) holds a virtual monopoly over electrical power
on the U.S. west coast. On Saturday, August 10, most of PG&E's
electricity went out, from Canada to
Mexico.
We turned on our (battery powered) radio. A PG&E representative was saying that the company
did not yet know the exact cause of the power
failure. The whole west coast electrical system is a single grid, he explained, and an accident had
happened in one place in Idaho. He advised listeners to unplug their appliances. "Nothing will happen, but better safe
than sorry."
Power was restored to San
Francisco, though outages continued in other
locations for days afterwards. And the explanation kept changing: It was a
forest fire in Oregon. It was a problem in Bakersfield. It was too many air
conditioners. Or it was a power line that sagged, touching some trees. Vague.
Then on August 13 the TV news showed
something shocking. Seven houses had caught
fire in Hayward, near San Francisco. The cause: an electrical surge. One resident was interviewed: "Suddenly flames started spurting
out of the walls and shooting out of the
sockets." The camera showed electrical sockets blackened by fire. The fire department saved most of the houses; one ―
if I heard correctly ― was completely destroyed.
We have all heard of
electrical surges destroying appliances. For
example, a friend told me that lightning hit
the electrical lines near her house last year, and her computer was damaged.
But her house did not catch fire.
Were those houses in Hayward hit by an
electrical force greater than lightning? How could such high voltage get past
fuses and circuit breakers? Presumably
the electricity simply jumped across the gap.
Why would fire shoot out of
wall sockets? Presumably because the electricity was leaping across connections. Why would
flames spurt out from the walls? Presumably because electricity was burning the insulation off the wires.
If the
electric company set seven houses on fire, shouldn't it be front-page news? But it was not mentioned the
next day, at least not in the San Francisco papers. A few days later there were a few lines about it at the end of an
article. On page 20.
And on the same page there was yet another
explanation of the blackout. There were "voltage fluctuations" in PG&E's huge electrical grid, and
safety switches began to shut off. Regions
were cut off from the main grid, and power plants were shut down. The
purpose: to protect against power surges.
So the seven houses that burned
in Hayward are the key to understanding the blackout. PG&E's electrical
system has become so huge and powerful that the company is barely even
able to understand what is happening with it. When it gets out of control, all they can do is shut it
down (this was the second big blackout this year). Otherwise houses might start exploding into flame.
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