AMETEK Power Instruments Capture Events Leading up to and after Recent Blackout; Power Quality Recorders Document Sequence of Events in Largest U.S. Blackout.Business Editors ROCHESTER, N.Y.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Aug. 25, 2003 As electric utility operators, investigators and officials review the sequence of events leading up to the largest blackout in U.S. history, among the tools at their disposal are power quality and multi-functional event recorders Event recorder A small machine, worn by a patient usually for several days or weeks, that is activated by the patient to record his or her EKG when a symptom is detected. Mentioned in: Electrophysiology Study of the Heart from AMETEK Power Instruments, a unit of AMETEK, Inc. (NYSE NYSE See: New York Stock Exchange :AME See AIT. ). These instruments with up to 1/1000th of a second accuracy are able to indicate how a power problem cascades through the electric power system. AMETEK Power Instruments, in fact, captured data documenting the initial power voltage drop Noun 1. voltage drop - a decrease in voltage along a conductor through which current is flowing free fall, drop, dip, fall - a sudden sharp decrease in some quantity; "a drop of 57 points on the Dow Jones index"; "there was a drop in pressure in the pulmonary and subsequent blackout that occurred on August 14 on power monitoring and analysis instruments at its Rochester, NY, manufacturing facility. The data, which is typical of the information available to electric utilities at power plants and substations throughout the interconnected power grid, allows operators and others to identify the source of problems and take action to prevent them from recurring re·cur intr.v. re·curred, re·cur·ring, re·curs 1. To happen, come up, or show up again or repeatedly. 2. To return to one's attention or memory. 3. To return in thought or discourse. . Additionally, it was a Sequence of Events Recorder A sequence of events recorder is an electronic device which monitors external inputs and records the time and sequence of the changes. Sequence of events recorders usually have an external time source such as a GPS. manufactured by AMETEK's Rochester Instruments unit that helped to pinpoint the cause of the previous "Great Northeast Blackout Two Northeast Blackouts occurred:
Fault and Power Quality Recorders at AMETEK's Rochester facility on August 14 indicated an initial power voltage drop of 10% occurring over an 870-millisecond time window. The voltage then recovered briefly as automatic protection systems attempted to maintain normal voltage. However, after recovering for 270-milliseconds, a second, more severe voltage drop of 22% occurred for 540 milliseconds. That voltage and associated frequency oscillations oscillations See Cortical oscillations. are indicative of massive power swings that ultimately may have caused the cascading outages that resulted in the blackout. The instruments captured the local blackout at approximately 8.2 seconds following the initial voltage problem. Power at the Rochester location was restored at 23:31:23.850 or 7 hours and 10 minutes later. AMETEK Power Instruments is a recognized leader in the design and manufacture of power measurement and recording instrumentation. It offers the industry's most extensive line of state-of-the-art power quality and monitoring instruments. These include the TR2000 multi-function recorder, which captured the data at AMETEK's Rochester plant; the Meridian Ultra portable, self-contained power quality analyzer; and the versatile P&QR 128 high-performance power quality recorder. AMETEK, Inc. is a leading global manufacturer of electronic instruments and electric motors with annual sales of more than $1 billion. |
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