This blackout made a lot of noise because of this (apart from the actual disruption, obviously).
Do you not think that trains should be able to resume ASAP? Do you not think that "it never happened before" is not a valid reason to be unprepared?
Do you not think that "we never had to use it before" is not a valid reason to explain why an emergency generator might not work when needed?
What backing up do you need?
As mentioned, things get added to the grid all the time, case of the airport was that it was not on a priority list. Yes that is an oversight, but who's fault and accountability we do not know. The onus would of been in the airport to inform the power distribution and if that failed to happen then the airport would be the ones with the hands up, if they was and the distribution failed to add it, then their hand would go up.
But hospitals as I mentioned operate and a designed and planned for such issues with them having backup power supplies. Which is the solution for many installations as many will not have or justify the cost of being upon their own distribution spur.
As for the "we never had to use it before" that's down the testing and covered in previous comments fairly well without repeating it again.
But if you wish to focus upon being able to point a finger at somebody and say it is there fault, then fine. But I and I'm sure many others would not be focusing upon that, though I can appreciate that mentality due to the way media/tabloids cover such and all issues in life. After all, power cuts today are not that common on this scale, decades past and in less developed countries they would be so common that they wouldn't even make the news.
But remember, if the weather forecaster says it will not rain and you go out and a light shower makes you wet - would the forecast be wrong or would we have the mentality to go, that mistake was within acceptable parameters and just one of those things. It gets down to what we are used to and what we accept. So yes, I get that blame need to be lain in many eye's but is that fair all the time?
But then - nothing is perfect - better to focus on getting closer to perfection than expending energy stagnating as too busy pointing the finger.
This failure may be within acceptable parameters and it may be simply meaningless to try to find someone truly responsible for it. But you seem to be unreasonably reluctant to believe that maybe it's not.
I understand that it's interesting to analyze what happened from a more technical perspective, but of course a proper investigation has to be conducted to find the responsible if there happens to be one (or more).
WE have covered many area's, trains, planes and hospitals (maybe a movie there). Sure I'd rather focus on the technical aspects and not presume this was something totally avoidable. Rather look at each nuance instead of the binary blame game. Which is not clear cut. After all - we don't know what SLA's supply contracts are in place now do we. But nothing is ever 100%. But it is possible to argue both sides of the coin and without ALL the details, go around in circles.
If we really want to blame anybody - why not just blame God for allowing it to happen and move on. Leave it to the report, which will happen into the incident and associated fallout to cover all that and discuss any blame then, once all the facts are in. But remember - we do not know what the SLA levels are, so all those fallouts take on a whole new perspective of blame. Equally, you can have a problem and nobody is to blame - though God works for those, at least "Act of God" is actually used in insurance contracts (yes worked in that field as well disclaimer, though late 80's early 90's). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Act_of_God
I have no axe to grind. Hope that adds some clarity.
I am commenting that the scale of the disruption resulting from (only) a 5% drop does not seem reasonable and that some of the issues should have been better handled or avoided altogether.
> But I and I'm sure many others would not be focusing upon that, though I can appreciate that mentality due to the way media/tabloids cover such and all issues in life
That's a personal attack quite out of order.
> That's a personal attack quite out of order.
Not really. It's just a societal commentary on how we've conditioned ourselves by the media we consume into passing quick blame instead of taking a slow, reasoned approach to analyzing the event, seeing the compounding factors at stake and only in the face of gross negligence assigning blame.
Neither of which are acceptable.
> seeing the compounding factors at stake and only in the face of gross negligence assigning blame.
You are entitled to have your views. Claiming that there is no blame to assign until it reaches criminal liability is rather odd, though.
Hence my question about your background. But you implicitly answered that, too.
Thing is, a solution today might not be best for tomorrow as the grid's usage is not static, new this and that are added so the impact changes.
It is interesting that you mention the inability for trains to restart. That was educational and was due to some new trains and showed that the drivers did not have the skills to in effect - reboot the trains from a cold start. So less a grid fault and more a case of that it never happened before so the result was less prepared. Interestingly the previous generation of trains did not have this issue, which may explain why it got overlooked as something that needed attention until such an event like this.
As for hospitals, they all have backup generators, though if that generator fails to kick in as was the case in one I read about, that can and will cause issues. Again, may be a case of never needing it before and the combination of that and regular checks/tests presented the problem.
Remember - nothing is perfect, and many lessons (as with any outage in all walks of life) will be learned from this as with all previous outages. But equally have to remember that whilst you can have the same combination of events happen in say 5 years time and have a response that works for that combination learned from the last time. Things change, like that new housing estate attached to the grid, small nuances like that could change everything or nothing. You just don't know. Heck, could be newer issues, suddenly find that you have thousands of electric cars being charged at the time you cut them off now feeding back small amounts of electricity back into the grid as they never expected to loose power without a physical disconnect.