Northeast Blackout > So what's the deal with Quebec?

So what's the deal with Quebec?

said by russotto:

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Quebec, which supplies a good deal of power for the affected grid, is conspicuous by its absence from the blackout maps. What's going on with them?

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There was a report on the radio about this. Quebec does have the ability to feed power to adjoining grids if necessary. However, the plants and generators feeding the neighbouring grids are disconnected from the Quebec grid during the transfer. This way if anything catastrophic happens in the other grids, Quebec's grid is protected and stays intact. There was no indication in the report if Hydro Quebec was feeding power to the Eastern grid at the time of this massive power failure though.

The causes of Quebec's power failures are sometimes a little different from power failures in other areas. Our energy requirements are being satisfied mostly by huge hydro-electric dams located in Northern Quebec transmitted down 735 KV power lines spanning huge distances. Most of the time, Hydro Quebec handles the peak loads reasonably well.

Unfortunately, those long distance power lines were the catalyst for one of the most bizarre massive power failures we've ever encountered back in 87 I believe. On that year, the sun was spouting massive solar flares towards the Earth. As they brushed the atmosphere, they created incredibly bright northern lights. Unfortunately, all that energy is DC power! With AC power lines spanning all across the province, the power grid acted as a giant antenna and absorbed a lot of that DC power. When the DC power reached the switching stations, the equipment designed for AC power couldn't handle the DC power invasion and promptly shut down.

One Hydro employee described the nightmare in one of the control stations. Every light on his main board were going out one by one! It was like a hand went across the province and turned everything off! It took quite a bit of time to reset the equipment and get the grid back on line.