Name: Muhammad Saad

Class: B.E(VII)
Specialization: Power
Assignment: Black out in
ITALY 2003
Submitted to: Engr. Jamshed
Ansari
 Blackout in Italy
28 th September 2003

Qno1: What are the major causes and issues for Blackout?
Answer: Following are the major causes for the blackout in Italy:
 There was a line to ground fault on the Lukmanier line.
 An instability issue occurred in GRTN network.
 Phone calls between the GRTN, RTE and ETRANS that were
not responded at the required moment.
 Operators were unaware of the fact the overloading was only
allowed for about 15 minutes and the call took place
between the GTRN and ETRANS 10 minutes after the trip of
first line.
 Reclosing of the Lukmanier line was unsuccessful because of
phase angle difference that was too huge at that moment.

Qno2: Which type of fault occurred during event?

Answer: The fault that occurred and was major cause of the black
out was line to ground fault at Lumanier transmission line.

Qno3: Discuss the sequence of events that occurred during fault?

Ans: The sequence of events that occurred were:
First of all a due to a storm a tree shed down and a Lukmanier
transmission line tripped off, initial measures were taken to clear the fault but were
not succeeded. Later manual actions were taken to clear the unhealthy portion but
it couldn’t help in clearing the fault. After that load was tried to be shifted to other
lines and due to this another line Sils-Soazza was over loaded and no
remedial measures were taken to restore it back to its initial
limits. After this scenario a phone conversation took place between ETRNS
in Launfenburg and GTRN control in Rome and request was made to reduce the
load by 300MW. In regard to this call load was reduced to the
desired limits. After that another line got tripped possibly due to
overheating of conductors and sag created in Sils-Soazza. Due to this fault the
frequency of the power system was disturbed to 49Hz causing generating stations
to trip as well and blackout started to occur. After all this system was restored and
generating stations started to operate again and system was fully energized after
almost after 6 hours of the initial fault.

Qno4: Explain how these faults affected the stability of an

interconnected system?
Answer: In an interconnected system stability of the power
system becomes very sensitive in that case whenever the fault is
not resolved by protective devices it travels in the whole system.
In this case protective devices as well as manual actions were not
able to help to restore the system back to its normal state. During
the fault when the load was being transferred from one line to
another, the affected lines were overloaded due to the uneven
distribution of load. For suppressing these huge transients, the
other systems or stations which were synchronize also didn’t
worked their part so as a result the overall stability of the system
was badly harmed.

Qno5: Explain how reliability of the system was lost?

Answer: The Reliability of the system totally depends on the
continuous supply of power. Due to the fault occurred on the line,
it kept travelling in the system and making other lines to overload
as well. Causing a complete power breakdown throughout the
whole system. In regard to this fault the whole country suffered a
severe blackout.
Qno6: Being an Electrical Engineer, provide your suggestions how
this blackout could be prevented and stability of the system could
be maintained?
Answer: Being an Electrical Engineer, I would recommend the
following remedial measures to be taken to stop the fault from
causing a severe blackout
 The major remedial measure that should be taken at that
moment is to shed the equal amount of load on line so that
line would not overload and get tripped.
 Also proper maintenance of the protective devices should be
done so that they can isolate the unhealthy portion for the
healthy portion in the required time limit.
 Operators should be ordered to take instant action in order
to stop the fault by isolating the healthy portion from the
faulty area.