TVA using latest technology to guard against major blackout

Contact: Phil Hearn

The Tennessee Valley Authority is using all available resources, including the latest technology, to protect its seven-state coverage area against a major blackout such as occurred in the northeastern United States last year.

"We've got to be smarter about what we do," TVA official Jim Rossman said Tuesday at Mississippi State. He was among participants in a daylong program spotlighting a collaborative effort by the university and the nation's largest public power company.

Rossman, senior manager of power quality, said the blackout of Aug. 14, 2003, impacted 50 million people in the Northeast and parts of the Midwest and Canada, "leaving them in the dark and costing billions of dollars."

He said the 2003 blackout started with the failure of three electric power generators in the Detroit, Mich., and Cleveland, Ohio, areas.

"Within six minutes, 531 generators tripped off and 400 transmission lines went out," he said. "Very quickly, things started falling apart and after that, the whole area blacked out."

Rossman said TVA, which operates service centers in Starkville and Tupelo, utilizes 222 power quality monitors and operates 54 large sensitive consumer transmission delivery points to help guard against voltage sags and a variety of other potentially damaging service interruptions in its coverage area. "It's critical to the nation's economy," he said.

Rossman also noted TVA is purchasing five SuperVAR dynamic synchronous condensers from American Superconductor. The 10-megawatt units are a new breakthrough product that stabilizes grid voltages, increases service reliability and helps maximize transmission capacity.

MSU President Charles Lee and TVA Chairman Glenn L. McCullough, an MSU alumnus and former Tupelo mayor, were among other featured speakers during the day.

TVA serves nearly 8.3 million residents through 158 locally owned distributors in seven states of the Tennessee Valley: Alabama, Georgia, Kentucky, Mississippi, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Virginia.