Re: Load shedding?
I was at college in New Hampshire when the blackout hit. As I remember Consolidated Edison was begging power companies not to disconnect in an effort to stabilize the grid. Granite State Electric finally had enough of this and disconnected later that evening. The most scary thing I remember was the street lights pulsing at about 1 cycle/second as the generators were slipping phase.
The college had their own generator that could power about 1/4th of the campus. When power was lost it was decided to power the dinner hall until dinner was over then switch to the dormitories. The food hall was begging for electricity for their refrigerators but it was pointed out that the food would last just fine over night.
The computer center (running time sharing) was on the same feed as the dinner hall so we got power back almost immediately. The field engineer came in ready to power up the computers but I stopped him until we ascertained what was going on. When we discovered that the East coast was without power we called it a day. (We lost power about 1/2 hour later when the feed to the dining hall was killed.) People in California were dialling in to the system and wondering why we were not up. I told them to read about it in the papers the next day.
It took about a week for power to become stabilized.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
