ECN Forum Forums General Topics of the Trade Non-US Electrical Systems & Trades Power cut in Italy!

The blackout made the news bulletins here this evening, as you would expect.

Apparently, after the North American blackout the Italian prime minister appeared on TV to assure the citizens of Italy that such an event could never happen in their own country.

Never believe a politician, eh?

Ranger wrote:


Hehehe....looks like I'm in good company.

My name is Sven. Also Scandinavian. Blame my (Colombian) mom -- she was going to Uni in W. Germany at the time.

People wind up pronouncing it:
Swen, Schwen, Swin, Seven, Seth (huh?), Schwinn (like the bike), ES-ben (Spanish speakers), Steve, even a few Zvis for good measure.

You should see the mangling my last name gets: While, Wheels, Well....

I've gotten used to it. What can you do? It's funny actually to see people stumble over themselves. Eventually I just give up and write it out for them.

==

Back to topic. The latest reports I had heard was that France was blaming Switzerland. Switzerland is saying that it's Italy's fault. Hmm....

As one Italian contributor to the Usenet Newsgroup rec.antiques.radio+phono put it:

"Three fighting and no-one worried for my unfrozen meat. D***n!"



[This message has been edited by SvenNYC (edited 09-30-2003).]

TG: I had my mouse scrolled all the way to the right from reading Sven's post when I saw your picture of that goofy looking game! As soon as I saw it I thought to myself..."this must be Think_good". Thanks for all the laughs my friend.

Sven and Ragnar,

these are typical Swedish names. Always confuses me that you are not.

I never get anything spelled correctly, not even things like ID cards. I'm nicknamed C-H in the real world, and many will not know me by any other name.

Part of the problem is that my name is a double name (my mother is fond history and double names were apparently popular in the 18th century) Worse, my parents deliberately chose a mispelling of the name...

Instead of Clas-Henrik I get
Claes-Henrik, Klas-Henrik, Clashenrik, Claeshenric and so on. A dozen different version in all. Then there are four spellings of my last name.

I long ago stopped caring how people spell my name.

Here is the initial technical report (in English, since the grid is international) on the Italian black out.
http://www.ucte.org/pdf/News/20030929-After-the-Italian-Black-out.pdf

Apparently, the reason for this blackout was a three that fell on a powerline in Switzerland. Just goes to show how little margin of error there is in the system.

[This message has been edited by C-H (edited 09-29-2003).]

Ryan_J:
My pleasure. I try to keep things light. Sometimes, however, they can float away.

Speaking of names, there was an episode of Monty Python in which they discuss the least known composer in the world -- in fact, the greatest name in German Baroque music -- Johann Gambolputty de von Ausfern schplenden schlitter crasscrenbon fried digger dingle dangle dongle dungle burstein von knacker thrasher apple banger horowitz ticolensic grander knotty spelltinkle grandlich grumblemeyer spelterwasser kurstlich himbleeisen bahnwagen gutenabend bitte ein nurnburger bratwustle gerspurten mitz weimache luber .....

Do these words actually mean anything?

(taking no chances ...)

[This message has been edited by Webmaster (edited 10-01-2003).]

Was it followed by a four and a five?
(Don't you just love those typos that come out like that? )

It really does say something about the state of the grids and the way they are run when a fault one one line takes out the power to almost an entire country.


Guten Abend = Good evening
Bitte = Please
von = of
ein = a / an / one

That's about all I can see, but my German is extremely limited!

is it me or is there some sort of relation bettwen all these outages and deregulation??

( Milton Bradley knew.....)

btw~ betcha i could shout 'hey sparky' to anyone of you guys and you'd spin around

According to news reports today, it seems that a tree fell taking out a vital link between France and Italy. Also seems that, as demand was low at the time (middle of the night on the weekend), Italy had little in the way of generating plants running. France, according to the story, has mostly nuke plants. Which need to operate full tilt all the time. So France exports the excess power during low demand periods, and Italy was absorbing most of it. The tree takes out one link, and then other links get overloaded. Those cut out, and Italy gets blacked out. Someone in Italy should have load shedded so the remaining links could keep most of Italy alive.