Re: Y2K Fears to Stop Cityrail Trains

["Rod" <berlina@bigpond.com>]

>substances, ensuring paniced riot could claim a significant number of
lives.
>
> If the electricty grid does hickup, it is going to take more than 15
minutes
>to do a cold start. They havent actually done a cold start of the system
>before. Some people claim a cold start might not be even possible!.
>
> (The big power stations need a smaller one to 'boot' them. If the grid
>shuts of, and the power stations shutdown, where will the power come to
>restart them ?. There is a lot of switch gear to manually control to get
the
>Hydro in the Snowy switched to the Hunter to get the biggies online.)
>
About 6 or 7 months ago Eastern Energy Lost a major part of the Wodonga
power Grid at about 3.00pm
This was during a severe electrical storm, and an unusual cold snap. I would
think that Energy usage in both Domestic and Commercial areas would have
been high!
The grid tried to reset about a minute after, and failed. Approx a minute
after it failed again......then nothing. I was heading for the meter box,
after turning everything off in the house when it failed the second time. I
turned the power off at the Power board, by tripping all the circuit
breakers and attached a lead to the emergency power point on the board and
placed a light in a position where I could see it, when power was restored.
It took them nearly three hours to restore the power!
Eastern Energy needed to gather together enough people to travel all around
the town and trip the
Circuit Breakers for each local area. They then restored power, one section
at a time till the whole Town was again connected.
I rang Eastern Energy, and was told that in a major blackout like this, they
rely on their customers
to switch every thing off, so that they can restore power.
I knew that, because as an ex Spark Driver, our instructions were to wait
some time after power was restored, before operating the train normally. EG
Up trains waited a minute before applying power, or something like that.
It is interesting that Eastern Energy have not given us [the public] any
instructions as to what to do if this ever happens again. Would you not
think that a leaflet could have been included in our 'bills' to show us how
to avoid this in the future?
Rod