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SuperStorm 2010 Rolling Blackouts

D

dfwrunner

I was listening to KRLD doing an interview with Oncor yesterday (or that regulating body, I forget), when (hiliariosly) in mid oncor sentence, KRLDs transmitter shut down for 15-20 minutes. I never heard them mention this when they came back on, but maybe I missed it.

I was listening to KERA a while later and they went off the air similarly.

So my question...I thought all these stations had backups, don't these come on immediately? Does somebody have to drive in from abilene to flip the switch?
 
I don;t know the exact setup on KRLD or KERA but in general yes most radio stations will have back up generators at the studio's as well as there transmitter sites. In the case of the transmitter power loss most will have a UPS on all the pertinent gear, audio processors, T-1 shell's, ect... But the transmitter its self draws to much energy to run off batteries even for a few min/seconds so it will go off until the generator starts, 10-30sec depending on the controller and if it starts right away or has to crank multiple times.
The studios can be a different story, depending of they have a full site UPS system or just essential areas powered by smaller units, and in this age of IP audio distribution if a few things at the studio where not backed up by the UPS then it can take 20-30 min to get everything rebooted properly and get back on the air. The only cure for that is analog backup that would be less effected by the power glitch.

An easy way to tell where the problem could be is to listen to the dead air. if its quiet then its likely a studio/audio problem, if its static than the transmitter itself is off.
 
Superstorm 2011 bum bumm bummmm....

but brad's explanation makes the most sense. Though I would have figured the entire studio had a generator and the transmitter having a separate one.
 
What is truly unacceptable about these rolling blackouts is that NO ONE notified places like broadcasting outlets, hospitals, and other essential clients who COULD have gone on auxiliary power and remained in service HAD THEY KNOWN.

My station in Gainesville was off the air because of this for over an hour Wednesday morning beginning at 7:30 a.m. In a small town where the radio station is the only link to local information, that is not a good thing. Had we known, we could have gotten a generator to keep it on the air during this important time.

The power companies have an obligation to public trust, just like we do.

We'll be getting a generator so it doesn't happen again, but there needs to be a better plan for not only us but the power companies as well. For them to do this without an apparent PLAN is unacceptable.
 
bradgoehl said:
I don;t know the exact setup on KRLD or KERA but in general yes most radio stations will have back up generators at the studio's as well as there transmitter sites. In the case of the transmitter power loss most will have a UPS on all the pertinent gear, audio processors, T-1 shell's, ect... But the transmitter its self draws to much energy to run off batteries even for a few min/seconds so it will go off until the generator starts, 10-30sec depending on the controller and if it starts right away or has to crank multiple times.
The studios can be a different story, depending of they have a full site UPS system or just essential areas powered by smaller units, and in this age of IP audio distribution if a few things at the studio where not backed up by the UPS then it can take 20-30 min to get everything rebooted properly and get back on the air. The only cure for that is analog backup that would be less effected by the power glitch.

An easy way to tell where the problem could be is to listen to the dead air. if its quiet then its likely a studio/audio problem, if its static than the transmitter itself is off.
Click to expand...

In both cases the transmitter was off (I can see the antennas from my house)...huge amount of noise on both 1080 and also on 90.1 for nearly the entire duration.
 
Steve Eberhart said:
What is truly unacceptable about these rolling blackouts is that NO ONE notified places like broadcasting outlets, hospitals, and other essential clients who COULD have gone on auxiliary power and remained in service HAD THEY KNOWN.

My station in Gainesville was off the air because of this for over an hour Wednesday morning beginning at 7:30 a.m. In a small town where the radio station is the only link to local information, that is not a good thing. Had we known, we could have gotten a generator to keep it on the air during this important time.

The power companies have an obligation to public trust, just like we do.

We'll be getting a generator so it doesn't happen again, but there needs to be a better plan for not only us but the power companies as well. For them to do this without an apparent PLAN is unacceptable.
Click to expand...

Hospitals have generators for all essential units. The problem from a hospital's perspective is that we are supposed to be exempt from these. There are supposed to be codes on our account that override the blackout. As has been adequately reported by the DMN and others, that safeguard failed.
 
This brings up an interesting question. Which is or was worse?

A-Dallas radio
B-Dallas snow and ice removal with no road salt
C-Dallas public utilities being totally unprepared
D-George W. Bush
E-Jerry Jones
F-All of the above
 
Three observations, based upon tv/radio reporting:

Channel 11 seemed to be way ahead of the Channel 8 information curve. Scott Sams was telling us of the rolling blackouts due to a generating plant failure, while Channel 8 was telling people who had lost power to call Oncor.

I used to work at both Gainesville Memorial Hospital and KXGM, so I concur, Steve, as to your Cooke County listener needs for "local information."

This generating plant failure was so sudden (and it was one of the newer plants, go figure) that it seems they would have been trying to alert residential customers in the late hours/middle of the night.

In any event, one would hope that the situation will be investigated on behalf of hospitals and other exempt entities who were part of the "shed load" event.
 
RADIO TRUTH said:
This brings up an interesting question. Which is or was worse?

A-Dallas radio
B-Dallas snow and ice removal with no road salt
C-Dallas public utilities being totally unprepared
D-George W. Bush
E-Jerry Jones
F-All of the above
Click to expand...
I generally never go to the radio but rather TV for this kind of coverage so I cant give an answer to A.
as for B I'm actually glad we don't use salt, simply because it can destroy cement and your car, but it can easily be said you can just wash your car.
C wasn't expected to happen, 50 lost generating plants is hard to deal with, but we did seem to be caught with our pants down.

I think Id go with Jerry as the worst :D
 
Why didn't the electric utility just shut off power to the Jerrydome? ;)


RADIO TRUTH said:
This brings up an interesting question. Which is or was worse?
A-Dallas radio
B-Dallas snow and ice removal with no road salt
C-Dallas public utilities being totally unprepared
D-George W. Bush
E-Jerry Jones
F-All of the above
Click to expand...

My selection "D" would instead be Obama......but nothing's worse than "E."
 
It would have been nice to have had SOME notice, otherwise I wouldn't have had to sound uhhhh-duhhh with a 94% full hotel with guests asking me what's what (I figured some doofus slid on the ice and hit a pole somewhere)...

I thought they only did rolling blackouts in the summertime.

This is unfortunately going to end up a mess of finger-pointing, name-calling, and shoulda/woulda/coulda's.
 
Re: SuperStorm 2011 Rolling Blackouts

dfwrunner said:
I was listening to KRLD doing an interview with Oncor yesterday (or that regulating body, I forget), when (hiliariosly) in mid oncor sentence, KRLDs transmitter shut down for 15-20 minutes. I never heard them mention this when they came back on, but maybe I missed it.

I was listening to KERA a while later and they went off the air similarly.

So my question...I thought all these stations had backups, don't these come on immediately? Does somebody have to drive in from abilene to flip the switch?
Click to expand...
Corrected title...gee where did 2010 go...we hardly knew ye
 
In California, they assign you a location code (mine used to be N001). Then in the case of possible rolling blackouts, you could go to the web site to find out if your number was up :) You could also get the info from the media as well. Not a tough system to implement if you know that these are going to happen. I suspect Texas was caught by surprise.
 
K6JHU said:
In California, they assign you a location code (mine used to be N001). Then in the case of possible rolling blackouts, you could go to the web site to find out if your number was up :) You could also get the info from the media as well. Not a tough system to implement if you know that these are going to happen. I suspect Texas was caught by surprise.
Click to expand...

The spokesmen/women stated that no emergency responders, hospitals, etc were supposed to be affected, but they were anyway.
 
I've talked to several friends in Texas since the bad weather hit, and I have to say that, right now, I'm glad I got out of there 15 years ago (although I did go back for a month two years ago). Even though we've had a blizzard that dumped 2 feet of snow on us near St. Louis, it's far preferable to ice storms you're getting. We also don't have rolling blackouts up here. Of course, keep in mind that California has had years of practice with rolling blackouts. It probably didn't go much more smoothly for them at first either.

Steve, I've been listening to your station online during these blackouts, and I have to say you're doing a really good job given that you don't have a lot to work with. While it sounds to this former radio guy like you're using Dave Scott's Unattended Weather and running prerecorded announcements, you're at least keeping your audience as informed as possible. I didn't hear much at all on the Dallas stations. I'd think the Dallas stations could do a better job considering even the lowest rated station probably bills close to what KGAF does!
 
Kent said:
I've talked to several friends in Texas since the bad weather hit, and I have to say that, right now, I'm glad I got out of there 15 years ago (although I did go back for a month two years ago). Even though we've had a blizzard that dumped 2 feet of snow on us near St. Louis, it's far preferable to ice storms you're getting. We also don't have rolling blackouts up here. Of course, keep in mind that California has had years of practice with rolling blackouts. It probably didn't go much more smoothly for them at first either.

Steve, I've been listening to your station online during these blackouts, and I have to say you're doing a really good job given that you don't have a lot to work with. While it sounds to this former radio guy like you're using Dave Scott's Unattended Weather and running prerecorded announcements, you're at least keeping your audience as informed as possible. I didn't hear much at all on the Dallas stations. I'd think the Dallas stations could do a better job considering even the lowest rated station probably bills close to what KGAF does!
Click to expand...

:) aw now, it wasnt that bad, just a little inconvenience
 
Generators are something that requires attention from time to time. If you don't give them attention, they'll screw you when they're needed. My guess is several stations found out the hard way.
 
I finally got to use my little $59 RCA ATSC from Walmart with built in battery. Decent performer but only 234x480 resolution...OK for casual and emergency use.
 
There's a difference between rolling blackouts and weather related outages. Rolling blackouts shouldn't be more than a half hour. The reason they STARTED the rolling blackouts was because multiple power plants had failures, greatly reducing the output for the area. The reason most of the stations at the hill had issues was because they DID do a rolling blackout (which IMHO they shouldn't have) to the feeder that feeds ALL the stations at the hill, but when the 15 minutes was up and they went to flip the switch back on, the switch broke. They had to get a replacement switch, and power was out most of the day while they got a new one and got it installed.
 
radi0avenger said:
There's a difference between rolling blackouts and weather related outages. Rolling blackouts shouldn't be more than a half hour. The reason they STARTED the rolling blackouts was because multiple power plants had failures, greatly reducing the output for the area. The reason most of the stations at the hill had issues was because they DID do a rolling blackout (which IMHO they shouldn't have) to the feeder that feeds ALL the stations at the hill, but when the 15 minutes was up and they went to flip the switch back on, the switch broke. They had to get a replacement switch, and power was out most of the day while they got a new one and got it installed.
Click to expand...

Oncor spokesmen repeatedly stated that this was NOT a rolling blackout...it was "load shedding"... ???
 
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