Spehro Pefhany wrote:

Whatever triggered this, it was obviously a system problem on a large
scale. No single failure should have been able to cause this- at worst
a very limited area should have been isolated in blackout. An
*engineering* failure, for sure.

I have to respectfully disagree. I think that they've
created a monster that's impossible to model or simulate.
It's not even clear that there's been a 'failure' in the
sense of a defective component. It could have been some
sort of transient that resonated rather than damped down.

Just trying to visualize all that current zipping back
and forth with phase changes and turbine inerta and line
capacitance makes my head spin.

Here where I work, we've even speculated that it is
(remotely) possible that they'll never get the grid
up again. Think about it. All the old farts that brought
it back in '75 are probably gone. The new kids running
the system have never had to deal with this order of a
restart. It can't be trivial and they haven't any
experience doing it. It's sort of like an old car that
you dare not shut off for fear you'll never get it
started again.