When things go wrong at Power Stations, they can go really wrong.

[Shannow]

CS Energy have released to the public the cause of one of Australia's beggest power station failures...

 

[dnewton3]

A dark comedy of errors combined to really manifest into a terrible experience.

From an outward point of view, one of three possible conditions existed:
- DFMEA wasn't done at all
- DFMEA wasn't done properly
- DFMEA was ignored

The RPN values should have been very high; mitigation was clearly not in place.

 

[oldhp]

Anything designed by man, built by man, ran by man, installed safety backups by man can and will, when circumstances fall in line, be destroyed by mans over looking the other "What If's". If a human touched it, it can fail.

 

[samven]

The perfect storm, its never just 1 thing that goes wrong, it takes a series of things and people that dont know what is happening.

 

[vavavroom]

Anything designed by man, built by man, ran by man, installed safety backups by man can and will, when circumstances fall in line, be destroyed by mans over looking the other "What If's". If a human touched it, it can fail.

It will fail.

 

[Snagglefoot]

They lined up the holes.

 

[UncleDave]

Well..that cascade of failures that makes for an exciting, expensive, & possibly deadly day.

 

[JimPghPA]

There's a high price to pay for not fixing things that should have been fixed. The system was designed properly, at least properly to some extent. If the automatic change over switch had been repaired before installing the new battery charging system the disaster never would have happened.

Over the years I've seen examples where equipment was operated when there was a known problem with it and because some additional problem happened the combination of multiple problems ended up in a much bigger problem then would have happened if the first problem had been repaired on a timely basis.

 

[JimPghPA]

I would like to know what the final price for repairing everything and down time added up to?

 

[JimPghPA]

They lined up the holes.

Is that a reference to the Swiss Cheese model of of a large bureaucracy?

 

[Snagglefoot]

Is that a reference to the Swiss Cheese model of of a large bureaucracy?

Yes, it spilled over into the safety management sector as well.

 

[zzyzzx]

Obligatory:

 

[wemay]

Incredible how in so many of these scenarios a domino effect of multiple errors plays a part.

 

[wpod]

The more plumbing there is the easier it is to clog up the pipes. Are there failure drills as pilots have failure drills when training in their simulators. i know nothing about power plants cept for the few I have been in are complicated.