DOE recognizes electrical blackout research

Submitted by Carla Browning
Phone: (907) 474-7778
01/30/04

The U.S. Department of Energy has recognized the work of UAF physicists David Newman and his colleagues at Oak Ridge National Laboratory as one of the top achievements in the fusion energy sciences in 2003.

Newman Ben Carreras, ORNL and Ian Dobson, University of Wisconsin Madison developed a computer model that predicts the probability that an electrical network will have a catastrophic blackout, as was experienced in the northeastern U.S. in August 2003.

Using these models and analysis they are trying to determine what types of situations cause the large cascading failures, what the effect of different corrective actions would be and what the general probability of large blackouts is in a large power transmission system.

The researchers were interviewed last fall by ABC’s Nightline, the New York Times, the San Francisco Chronicle and the Wall Street Journal.

David Newman, UAF Physics Department can be reached at (907) 474-7858 and ffden@uaf.edu, or visit the DOE website for more information.