List of power outages

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This is a list of famous wide-scale power outages.

1 1965
2 1977
3 1978
4 1987
5 1989
6 1996
7 1998
8 1999
9 2000
10 2003
11 2004
12 2005
13 2006
- 13.1 Outages stemming from the 2006 North American heat wave
14 2007
15 2008
16 References
17 See also

[edit] 1965

The Northeast Blackout of 1965 on November 9, 1965.

[edit] 1977

The infamous New York City Blackout of July 13-14, 1977, resulted in looting and rioting.

[edit] 1978

On December 19 a major blackout affected 80% of France.

[edit] 1987

The Great Storm of 1987 brought down power lines throughout southern England causing extensive blackouts.

[edit] 1989

On March 13, a geomagnetic storm caused the Hydro-Québec power failure which left 6 million people without power for 9 or more hours.

[edit] 1996

On August 11, the Western Intertie buckled under high summer heat, causing a cascading power failure affecting nine western states and parts of Mexico.

On November 19, a severe ice storm affected the region around Spokane, Washington, and Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, causing power outages lasting up to two weeks.

[edit] 1998

The January 1998 Ice Storm in northeastern North America caused prolonged blackouts, particularly in Quebec where many transmission towers were destroyed by ice.
From 20 February to 27 March, the entire Central Business District of Auckland, New Zealand was without power: see 1998 Auckland power crisis
The Esso Longford gas explosion on 25 September, which caused a complete loss of gas supplies to the entire state of Victoria, Australia for 2 weeks
San Francisco, CA and environs - December 8 - this outage affected over 350,000 consumers when the PG&E utility placed a San Mateo sub-station online at 8.17am PST, while the station was still grounded following maintenance. This drew so much power from the Peninsula transmission lines that 25 other sub-stations in San Francisco automatically and immediately shut down. Power was not fully restored until almost 4pm the same day. Economic costs were estimated in tens of millions of dollars.

[edit] 1999

On March 11, an black-out affected about 70% of the Brazilian territory, leaving more than 90 million without power for hours. Huge cities like Sao Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, Belo Horizonte, Porto Alegre and Curitiba faced urban chaos lead by huge trafic jams and public subway systems that stopped working.
On July 5, the Boundary Waters-Canadian Derecho cut power to over 600,000 homes in Quebec with additional outages in New England and in the Upper Great Lakes region.
On July 29 in Taiwan the #326 transmission tower collapsed due to a landslide, which disconnected around 8.46 million electricity consumers.

[edit] 2000

On May 9, a stork caused the Southern Portugal Blackout of 2000.
During the 12-month California electricity crisis of 2000-01, there were regular power failures due to energy shortages.

[edit] 2003

The fact that the six blackouts in 2003 occurred in different parts of the world in rapid succession has drawn the attention of governments to power grids' vulnerability to technical failures.^{[citation needed]}

On August 14, there was a wide-area power failure in the northeastern USA and central Canada, affecting 50 million people: see Northeast Blackout of 2003.
On August 23, the power was lost for up to an hour in Helsinki affecting half a million people.
There was a 2003 London blackout on August 28 which won worldwide headlines such as "Power cut cripples London" but in fact only affected 500,000 people.
On September 2, a power failure affected 5 states (out of 13) in Malaysia (including the capital Kuala Lumpur) for 5 hours starting at 10 am local time: see 2003 southern Malaysia blackout.
On September 19, Hurricane Isabel knocked out electricity for 4.3 million people across nine US states and parts of Ontario, Canada.
On September 23, a power failure affected 5 million people in Denmark and southern Sweden.
On September 27 – September 28, a power failure affected all of Italy except Sardinia, cutting service to more than 56 million people. (see 2003 Italy blackout)
On December 20, a power failure hit San Francisco, affecting 120,000 people.

[edit] 2004

On June 29, a disruption in natural gas supplies from Indonesia caused a widespread blackout in the northern, eastern and western parts of Singapore.
On July 12, two power plants in Lavrio and Megalopoli, Greece, shut down due to malfunction within 12 hours of each other, during a period of high demand (heat wave); that led to a cascading failure causing the collapse of the entire Southern (Power) System, affecting several million people in southern Greece.
On September 4, five million people in Florida were without power at one point due to Hurricane Frances, one of the most widespread outages ever due to a hurricane.
On September 15, the government of Puerto Rico decided to shut down the island's power to prevent damage to the lines during Hurricane Jeanne.

[edit] 2005

On January 8, about 341,000 homes lost power in Sweden and several thousand of these were out of power for many days and even weeks in some cases. Power outage was because of the storm Erwin with wind speeds of up to 126 km/h.
On May 25, most of Moscow was without power from 11:00 MSK (+0300 UTC). Approximately ten million people were affected. Power was restored within 24 hours.
On June 16, two-thirds of the people of Puerto Rico lost power due al 250KV line damage. The power was restored the same night.
On August 18, almost 100 million people on Java Island, the main island of Indonesia which the capital Jakarta is on, and the isle of Bali, lost power for 7 hours. In terms of population affected, the 2005 Java-Bali Blackout was the biggest in history.
On August 22, all of southern and central Iraq, including parts of the capital Baghdad, all of the second largest city Basra and the only port Umm Qasr went out of power for more than 7 hours after a feeder line was sabotaged by insurgents, causing a cascading effect shutting down multiple power plants.
On August 26 1.3 Million People in South Florida lost power due to downed trees and power lines caused by the then category 1 Hurricane Katrina. Most customers affected were without power for four days, and some customers had no power for up to one week.
On August 29 Millions of Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama residents lost power after a stronger Hurricane Katrina badly damaged the power grid.
On September 12, a blackout in Los Angeles affected millions in California. Final report on the causes.
On October 24, Hurricane Wilma caused loss of power for 3.2 million customers in South Florida and Southwest Florida, with hundreds of thousands of customers still powerless a week later, and full restoration not complete until November 11.
On December 15, the 2005 Atlantic Power Outage began.

[edit] 2006

2006 Auckland Blackout: On June 12, half of Auckland, the largest city in New Zealand, suffers an 8-hour long power outage affecting 230,000 customers due to a shackle at a power station dislodging and short circuiting the mains wire of the Power Station.
July 17: Nearly half a million customers in Ontario and Quebec were affected after derechos and other isolated severe thunderstorms tore through those two provinces. See : Great Lakes-Atlantic Coast derecho
2006 Delaware Valley blackout: On July 18, upwards of 365,000 PECO customers of the Philadelphia area lost power due to violent storms with 71 mph (114 km/h) winds, which left two dead and thousands of dollars in property damage. In addition, around 26,000 homes were without power in New Jersey, as well as thousands in the Northeast stretching from rural Pennsylvania to southwestern Connecticut.
On July 22 parts of greater London, U.K., lost power. EDF Energy stated the reason was due to a higher energy demand, as more customers are using air conditioning in England's capital due to the 2006 European heat wave; more blackouts occurred right up to the July 27. Similar blackouts have affected the county of Kent due to the drought.
On August 1, in the Laurentians, in the province of Québec, Canada, a large amount (146,000, at its peak in the evening of August 1st) of households were left without electricity for a whole day, and some for up to a whole week due to intense thunderstorms that rolled through southern Quebec including the Greater Montreal Area. Over 450,000 customers in total were affected.
On August 2, nearly a quarter million customers of Hydro One lost power after severe thunderstorms that included tornadoes and damaging wind ripped through southern and eastern Ontario
On September 12, parts of east London, U.K., lost power, at approximately 9.15 pm
On October 24 in Lima, capital of Peru, an aerostatic balloon accidentally crashed against transmission towers causing a short circuit which affected nearly 13 districts in the capital. The power was restored that same night.
On the night of November 4, in parts of Germany, France, Italy, Belgium, Spain and Portugal over five million people were left without power after a big cascading breakdown. The root cause was an overload triggered by the German electricity company E.ON switching off an electricity line over the river Ems to allow a cruise ship to pass through safely. The impact of this disconnection on the security of the network had not been properly assessed, and resulted in the European transmission grid splitting into three independent parts for a period of two hours. The imbalance between generation and demand in each section resulted in the power outages for consumers.
November 15 a massive wind storm struck the GVRD in BC, Canada causing over 200,000 homes to lose power, in some cases for over a week.
November 30 in St. Louis, as a result of a winter storm, about 500,000 power outages. Lasted from 1 day to 2 weeks.
On the night of December 1, in parts of Ontario, tens of thousands of people lost power due to a severe winter storm, resulting in a state of emergency being declared in Russell Township. Blackouts continued into December 2. ^[1].
Also on December 1 half of Long Island recevied blackouts due to the Long Island electricity department going on fire.
December 15, United States. The Hanukkah Eve Wind Storm of 2006 caused a power failure throughout the Seattle area, causing 1 million people to lose power. Areas including Tacoma, Seattle, Federal Way, Bremerton, Everett, Olympia and Bellevue were affected. Some areas (Redmond) were without service for 4-5 days. Parts of coastal British Columbia and Oregon were also affected. Most of the damage was caused by trees falling into electrical transmission and distribution lines. Restoration was hampered by nested outages where multiple problems needed to be fixed before electricity to some customers could be restored.

[edit] Outages stemming from the 2006 North American heat wave

2006 Queens blackout: On July 18, and continuing for over one week, upwards of 50,000 Queens, New York, and Westchester County Con Edison customers lost power due to excessive heat and dilapidated infrastructure. In Astoria, several power lines and transformers caught fire, melted, or failed as Con Edison attempted to restore service. Two air control towers at LaGuardia Airport lost power briefly on the 18th, resulting in the cancellation of some 45 flights and re-routing of 11 others. Subway service on several Queens lines (BMT Astoria Line, IRT Flushing Line, and IND Queens Boulevard Line) was suspended and/or reduced throughout the outage. On July 20, Con Edison announced that approximately 2,500 Queens customers were still without power. On July 21, Con Edison announced a revised estimate of "at least 25,000." On the same day, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg stated that Con Edison's definition of "customer" referred to each building they provided power and that the number of people without power was possibly 100,000. More than 3,000 Con Edison customers - an estimated 10,000 people - remained without power as of July 24.
On July 19, "at least 486,000" customers lost power in the greater St. Louis, Missouri, area due to 80 mile-per-hour winds and thunderstorms that rolled through the area. Two-thirds of Lambert-St. Louis International Airport was out of power, stranding hundreds who slept on the concourses. A portion of the airport's roof sheared off and flew onto Interstate 70, closing lanes. A heat advisory for the area was issued due to temperatures reaching as high as 104 °F. Power was out for up to 9 days for some people, in part due to a second storm on the 21st. Together, some 600,000 people were affected.

[edit] 2007

January 12 to January 24, United States & Canada - About 1 million customers from Texas to Atlantic Canada lost power due to a series of winter storms including 330,000 in Missouri, 200,000 in Michigan and 120,000 in Oklahoma due to an ice storm.
January 16 - Power to 200,000 people in the Australian state of Victoria is cut off when bushfires caused the state's electricity connection to the national grid to shut down. The cities of Melbourne, Geelong, Ballarat and Bendigo are affected, with the outage disabling up to 1,200 traffic lights and affecting public transport systems. At some stage, up to 1/3 of the Victorians were affected by the power outage. Ten people were trapped in lifts and the stock exchange was forced to suspend trading, officials said. January 16 was one of the highest consumer electricity demand days ever recorded, mainly due to high temperatures (close to 40 degrees Celsius) and large use of air conditioning. The Victorian grid was forced to take power from New South Wales lines, which when cut led to rolling power blackouts throughout large portions of the state.
April 19 Costa Rica experiences a national blackout at 20:10 local time. It affected all the nearly 4,328,000 Costa Ricans at that time. Power restoration started gradually at 21:45 local time.
April 26 Colombia experiences a nation-wide blackout at about 10:15 am local time. At first officials believed it was carry out by one of the country's rebel groups, particularly FARC; this however was later ruled out. It was caused by an undetermined technical failure at a substation in the capital, Bogota. More than 80% of Colombia was affected. Power returned to most parts of the country after several hours. Only some rural regions were still being affected by the blackout.
On June 27 a power failure occurred in New York City. About 136,700 customers were without power during the height of the outage. The outage affected Manhattan and the Bronx for approximately one hour.^[2]
Also on June 27 a sever thunderstorm hit Long Island causing half of Long Island to lose power after 8:30 PM.
On July 23, the city of Barcelona suffered a near-total blackout. Several areas remained without electricity for more than 78 hours due to a massive electrical substation chain failure.^[3].
On July 25 a blackout occurred in the Republic of Macedonia, Albania, Greece,parts of South Serbia, Montenegro and parts of Greece were affected.The main cause of this is believed to be as result of 2007 European heat wave. Power was restored by the following day.
On October 10 a blackout occurred around the area of Oxted in Surrey, England at about 19:00 local time (18:00 GMT) and lasted for a total of up to 20 minutes, having been restored for about 2 seconds before a second blackout occurred.
On October 31 a blackout occurred in Greater Manchester in England, at about 19:30 local time and lasted for around 15 minutes

[edit] 2008

On January 4 a winter rainstorm hit northern California causing 1.6 million Pacific Gas & Electric customers to lose power. Most customers had power restored by the morning of January 5.

[edit] References

^ Ottawa Sun
^ [[NYC Power Outage Shuts Down Train Lines
^ See Spanish Wikipedia

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