I've been following the "investigation" of the blackout. If for no other reason, it turned a routine blackout into a hot potato of blame. Here is one of the better articles: Relay equipment manufacturer blames Entergy for Super Bowl blackout | NOLA.com What is great fun is watching the utility use every spin technique possible to blame someone other than themselves without actually saying so. My best guess (and it is a guess) is that the proper part in the proper place was improperly set to disconnect at too low of an overload current. Note the following spin techniques 1) We found the part and removed it. (No mention of it really being faulty, nor that they probably put in it's twin brother as a replacement.) 2) "(it) triggered, signaling a switch to open when it should not have, causing the partial outage." (Circular explanation, very useful lesson for PR departments. The power went away since the power was removed.) 3) "..on the Dome's two relays showed 'one relay functioned as expected and the other relay did not.'..." (No mention of the expectation was for failure or for success.) 4) "installed the device as we received it." (I usually take it out of the box before installing.)
In the scheme of things a few rich people got inconvienced and America had front row tickets now that is priceless.
