Question 1.

(a) What is the need for regulation of electricity market?

There are many reasons to have a regulation of electricity market some reasons are mentioned

1.The state public utility companies have limited or no power over interstate holdings

2.some holding companies were highly benefited and financial failures were common.

3. some holding companies were being operated essentially as pyramid schemes, in which
resources were transferred from utilities at the bottom to the parent company at the top

(b) Comment on some of the advantages and flaws in a deregulated electricity market.

Advantages

no monopoly in the market.

reliability increased and quality of power improved.
customer can choose the utility.
prices would drop below those set by state regulators.
Disadvantages
rules manipulated and loopholes exploited to the benefit of a few at the expense of many.
there will be no organization to set rules.

(c) State the reasons for Western Energy Crises of 2000-2001?

There is no single key factor for the western energy crisis of 200-2001.
It may be a combination of below factors.

Weather: It was hot and dry season. Electricity demand was increased and electricity supply from
hydroelectric stations decreased because of drought conditions.
Capacity: Californias peak demand increased over 15% but capacity not increased to match the peak
load demand and also this region constrained by transmission line capacity.

Flawed market design: Market rules forced California utilities to be excessively reliant on the inherently
riskier spot market (that days price) to meet demand.
Corporate malfeasance: The flaws in the deregulated marketplace were being manipulated, most notably
by Enron. One of the most common techniques involved the exploitation of supply constraints to drive up
prices. This is just one example of the many schemes that Enron employed to game the market.

Failed oversight: An implicit assumption was made by FERC that the wholesale markets they were
advocating could and would be designed in a manner that did not require extensive oversight to prevent
manipulation.
(c) Mention the names of the states in U.S.A where the electricity market is deregulated?

Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Montana, New Hampshire, New
Jersey, New York, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Texas, District of Columbia

1965 Northeastern Blackout

The Northeastern Blackout in 1965 happened on the 9th day of November, 1965 disrupting power to the
northeastern United States and the provinces of Ontario, Canada. An estimated 30 million Americans and
Canadians were affected directly by the blackout encompassing about 80,000 mi2.The states that were
directly affected are Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Rhode island,
Pennsylvania and Vermont in United States and Ontario in Canada. The blackout lasted for almost 13 hours
leaving half of the country in darkness without power.
The blackout triggered an investigation by the U.S. Federal Power Commission (FPC) (The U.S.
Federal Power Commission). Similar to many regulation agencies today, the FPC was comprised primarily
of people with a nontechnical background who needed fundamental explanations of the history and
phenomena affecting the electric power system. Immediately following the 1965 Northeast blackout, the
FPC invited several major utilities to provide power system experts to educate its nontechnical members
and staff on dynamic power system phenomena, specifically, transient stability, and instability.

Cause of the Blackout

One of the oddities of an interconnected ac power system is that anything that happens anywhere on
the grid is felt everywhere else. So if a short circuit or fault occurs on a transmission line in Maine, it will
be felt in Mississippi. If a generator trips in Missouri, it will affect systems in Minnesota. You can build a
large electric power transmission grid with ac, but this unique characteristic is both its greatest blessing and
its saddest curse.
Prior to the blackout date some modifications have been made to the protective relays on five of the
230 kV transmission line that ran from hydro plants on the Canadian side of the Niagara River towards the
Hamilton and Toronto metropolitan areas. The relays were set to trip if high levels of power is to flow
through the transmission lines and protect them from damage. But due to some reason the engineers and
planning operators in the power plant were never advised of the changes done to the relay setting which
lead to the fateful day of 9th November.
The bulk power system breakup occurred in about 10s from the time the first line in Ontario tripped until
the last major transmission line opened, but it took about 10min for the lights to go out in some parts of the
affected areas. As a result of the blackout many areas that had been importing power from the affected
areas, the frequency reduced below 60 Hz and the many of the generators started to trip. Any time, the
generation falls below the connected demand the speed of the generators reduce and trip eventually.
Ironically, the lights never went out in two portions of New York City, Staten Island and the southwestern
corner of Brooklyn remained connected to the Eastern connection through a single transmission line that
spanned the Arthur Kill between Staten Island and New Jersey. Municipal utilities in Hartford, Connecticut;
Braintree, Holyoke, and Taunton, Massachusetts; and Fairport, Greenport, and Walden, New York had their
own power plants, which operators disconnected from the grid and which were able to sustain local loads,[6]
though some areas lost power for at least a few hours. Rockdale, Queens and Co-op City in The Bronx,
New York were also unaffected as they had their own power plants.

Aftermath and consequences

New York City was dark by 5:27pm, the restoration of the power took almost 13 hours. Power in western
New York was restored in a few hours, thanks to the independent generating plant at Eastman Kodak
Company in Rochester, New York, which stayed online throughout the blackout. It provided auxiliary
power to restart other generators in the area which, in turn, were used to get all generators in the blackout
area going again. Blame for the blackout should not be attributed to poor planning operations. The initiating
event was the sudden loss of five system elements on the transmission line. Following the blackout,
measures were taken to avoid another similar repetition in the future. Ten councils were created covering
the networks of the North American Interconnected System. Many different studies were conducted for
knowing the exact cause of the blackout and how could it had been avoided. On the night of the blackout it
took only 10s for the system to go unstable, such a time is too rapid for human operator intervention from
the most state of the art control center. This raised the idea of automating the whole power system where
the computers can take the required action without any human intervention. There was a lot of research
going on after the blackout which proposed automating the entire power system would help in preventing
such a disaster to occur in the near future.
 2003 Northeastern Blackout

On August 14, 2003, just after 4 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time (EDT), 1 the North American power grid
Experienced its largest blackout ever. The blackout affected an estimated 50 million people and more Than
70,000 megawatts (MW) of electrical load in parts of Ohio, Michigan, New York, Pennsylvania, New
Jersey, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Vermont, and the Canadian provinces of Ontario and Qubec.
Although power was successfully restored to most customers within hours, some areas in the United States
did not have power for two days and parts of Ontario experienced rotating blackouts for up to two Weeks.

Causes of blackout

The main cause of the blackout was found out to be a software bug in the alarm system of the First Energy
Corporation. A lack of alarm left the operators unaware of the potential overloading in the transmission
lines which then lead to a cascading effect and the whole system fell apart in just a few seconds. At 13:31,
the FE Eastlake 5 generating unit tripped offline due to an exciter failure while the operator was making
some adjustments. Shortly after 14:14 the alarm and the logging system in the First Energy failed and was
not restored until and after the blackout.
The loss of this alarm is the main cause for the blackout to happen. Unknown to the operators the
alarm system failure eventually lead to the failure of several other energy systems leading to inability of
the operators to have any situational awareness of the oncoming problem. Between 15:05 and 15:42, three
of the FE 345 kV transmission lines supplying the Cleveland Akron area tripped and locked out because
the lines contacted overgrown trees nearby due to sag conditions.
No alarms were received in the FE control center because of the alarm systems failure and the
operators were totally unware of the impending danger and the events that are taking place. The loss of two
more 345kV power lines shifted the power flow onto the underlying network of 138kV power lines. These
lines were not designed to carry such a huge load and they quickly became overloaded. Concurrently, the
voltages began to degrade in Akron area. As a result of these increased loading and decaying voltages,
sixteen of the 138kV lines tripped in a period of 30 minutes which can be described as the cascading failure
of the 138 kV systems in Ohio. Several of these line trips were due to the sagging of the lines onto the
nearby vegetation due to the huge overload current present in the transmission lines, which eventually lead
to a complete disruption of power in the northeastern power system. By around 15:46 when the FE, MISO
and neighboring systems
The massive blackout of 1965 had many ramifications. It forced Americans to reconsider their
dependence on electricity, and propelled electrical engineers to reexamine the power grid

system. New York

o

Aftermath

The 2003 blackout was more widespread than the previous 1965 blackout and affected many people on a
large scale. Many of the basic facilities such as water, transport and several other industries were widely
effected. The NERC(North American Electrical Reliability Corporation) submitted a detailed report about
the blackout which included the causes and the steps if taken could have prevented such a widespread
blackout. In its Investigation it stated that many entities violated the policies of NERC which directly
contributed to the cascading situation in the blackout. It also stated that the operators adopted different
interpretations of functions, and capabilities needed to operate a reliable power system. It also identified
the deficiencies in studies regarding poor vegetation management, operator training practices and lack of
tools that allow operators to visualize the system conditions.
The governments of USA and Canada have decided to work together in order to prevent such a
condition from happening again in the future.