|
|
|
|
List of power outages
|
| |
|
| |
This is a list of notable wide-scale power outages.
1995
Discussion
Ask a question about 'List of power outages' Start a new discussion about 'List of power outages' Answer questions from other users |
Encyclopedia
This is a list of notable wide-scale power outages.
1965
1974
1977
1978
- On December 19, a blackout affected 80% of France.
1983
- On December 27, a storm destroyed equipment connecting the powerlines in Enköping, Sweden.
1987
1989
- On March 13, a geomagnetic storm caused the Hydro-Québec power failure which left 6 million people in the Canadian province of Quebec without power for 9 or more hours.
1991
- On July 7, a powerful wind storm affected a large portion of central North America and knocked power to about 1 million customers from Iowa to Ontario.
1995
- On October 4, Hurricane Opal, which killed at least 59 people, knocked out power to over 2 million customers across eastern and southern North America.
1996
- On August 10, the Western Intertie buckled under high summer heat, causing a cascading power failure affecting nine western states and parts of Mexico. 4 million people were affected.
- On August 3, the 1996 Peninsular Malaysia electricity blackout crisis occurred.
1998
- The early-January 1998 Ice Storm in northeastern North America caused prolonged blackouts, particularly in Quebec where many transmission towers were destroyed by ice. Over 3.5 million customers in total lost power during the event.
- On May 31, a powerful wind storm knocked out power to nearly 2 million customers across much of Central North America.
- On December 8, affecting San Francisco, California, and its environs, over 350,000 consumers were affected by an outage caused when the PG&E utility placed a San Mateo sub-station online at , 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 4 pm the same day. Economic costs were estimated in tens of millions of dollars.
1999
2000
2003
- On August 14, a wide-area power failure in the northeastern USA and central Canada (Northeast Blackout of 2003) affected 50 million people.
- On August 23, 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 made worldwide headlines such as "Power cut cripples London" but in fact only affected 500,000 people.
- On September 23, a power failure affected 5 million people in Denmark and southern Sweden.
- On September 27 to September 28, the 2003 Italy blackout resulted from a power failure that affected all of Italy except Sardinia, cutting service to more than 56 million people.
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.
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 a 250 kV 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 largest 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 strengthening Hurricane Katrina badly damaged the power grid.
- On September 12, a blackout in Los Angeles affected millions in California.
- 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, wintry weather including extensive ice knocked out power to 700 000 customers across portions of the Atlantic Coast of the United States.
2006
- On 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
- On July 18, the 2006 Delaware Valley blackout is the result of more than 365,000 PECO customers of the Philadelphia area losing power due to violent storms with 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 United States 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 1) 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 12, an unusual early-season lake effect snow storm hit the Buffalo, New York area and other surrounding areas of the United States and Canada. The storm dumped snow from that night through the morning of Friday October 13, 2006. At 8:00 pm, NWS Buffalo began to receive numerous reports of trees and power lines toppling after of snow accumulated. It was later called the "October Surprise Storm" or Lake Storm "Aphid".
- On October 15 an 6.5 magnitude earthquake occurred in the US state of Hawaii at about 7:07 am causing a power outage to most of the state. Luckily, nobody was hurt due to the power outage or earthquake. The power was restored that night.
- On October 24, in Lima, 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 the cruise ship Norwegian Pearl 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.
- On 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.
- On November 30, in St. Louis, as a result of a winter storm, about 500,000 people lost power due to outages which 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..
- Also on December 1, half of Long Island, New York received blackouts due to a fire at the Long Island electricity department.
- On December 15, 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.
- 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 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 . 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.
2007
- On January 16, power was cut to 200,000 people in the Australian state of Victoria when bushfires caused the state's electricity connection to the national grid to shut down.
- On April 19, Costa Rica experienced a national blackout at 20:10 local time. It affected nearly all the 4,328,000 Costa Ricans at that time. Power restoration started gradually at 21:45 local time.
- On April 26, Colombia experienced a nation-wide blackout at about 10:15 am local time, caused by an undetermined technical failure at a substation in the capital, Bogota, Colombia. Power returned to most parts of the country after several hours.
- On June 8, a power failure occurred in Sydney, Australia, affecting mainly the Northern Beaches for around 1 day.
- 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.
- 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..
- 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 December 2, a winter storm damaged transmission systems, resulting in a blackout over much of Eastern Newfoundland & Labrador affecting close to 100,000 customers. About 7,500 customers on the Bonavista Peninsula were without service for almost a week.
- From 8 to 12 December, a series of ice events cut power to over 1 million homes and businesses across the Great Plains of the United States from Oklahoma to Nebraska.
- On December 28, a blackout occurred which affected 21,000 residents along the Florida Keys, from Key West to Big Pine Key, from 9:00 pm to 10:00 pm.
2008
- On January 9, a powerful windstorm hit Quebec leaving over 100,000 Hydro-Québec customers without power for over 3 hours.
- On January 22, the same area affected by the 2007 Halloween power-cut in Greater Manchester, England suffered another blackout, this time lasting an hour, from 19:15 to 20:15 local time.
- Also on January 22, the East Bay of San Francisco suffered a partial blackout lasting several hours, beginning approximately 20:00 local time.
- From January 25 to February 6, heavy snowstorms in China knocked down transmission lines. Fossil fuel power plant were running low on supply of coal as trains were unable to deliver coal due to frozen/blocked track. The storms were directly responsible for at least 129 deaths.
- On January 29, strong wind gusts in excess of caused around 70,000 people to lose power in Dallas County. In Southern Denton County, many customers also lost power. In Lewisville, around 2,000 people lost power. In Flower Mound, there were many dropouts. However, they only lasted from 10 seconds to 1 minute.
- On February 11, southern Calgary lost power due to ice buildup on power lines, overloading transformers.
- On February 20, Coal supplies to some power plants in Java have been stopped, as ships cannot go to ports because of big waves, resulting in an electricity deficit of about 1,000 megawatts affecting the Indonesian capital, Jakarta
- On February 26, a failed switch and fire at an electrical substation outside Miami triggered widespread blackouts in parts of Florida affecting four million people. The nuclear reactors at Turkey Point power plant were shut down on the day. The failure knocked out power to customers in 35 southern Florida counties and spread into the northern Florida peninsula. The affected region ultimately ranged from Miami to Tampa on the state's west coast and Brevard County, home to Cape Canaveral and the Kennedy Space Center, on the east.
- On April 2, 2008 around 420,000 households were left without power in Melbourne, and other parts of Victoria after the state was hit by winds of up to 130 km/h.
- On April 8, 2008, from around 3:30 am around 400,000 persons were left without power in the city of Szczecin and its surroundings (as far as 100 km away from the city), in northwest Poland. Most power was restored within 18 hours. The reason was the fall of wet, heavy snow, which stuck to the power cables and caused them to break. One of the major powerline pillars broke in the aftermath as well.
- On June 24, 2008, a faulty underground wire caused a power failure in Maidstone Town Centre and surrounding areas for numerous hours.
- Between 13 and 15 September 15, 2008, Hurricane Ike caused approximately 7.5 million to lose power in the United States from Texas to New York.
- On October 12, 2008 at 5:40pm power went out for all BC Hydro customers on the South of Vancouver Island in British Columbia, Canada. Around 200,000 people were left in the dark. The problem appeared to caused by a transmission line somewhere around Ladysmith, BC. Power was returned to most customers around an hour to an hour and a half later.
- On December 11, 2008, rare winter snowfall on Southern Louisiana caused 10,000 power outages, due to the accumulation of snow on transmission lines. Later that night in Massachusetts and New Hampshire an ice storm hit causing 1,000,000 people to lose their power.
- On December 26, 2008, 80% of power was lost for 12 hours on the island of Oahu, Hawaii at about 6:45 pm, suspected to be due to a thunderstorm with lightning striking transmission lines.
- On December 28, 2008, some 7,500 customers in Kanata North were left without power for hours.
2009
- On January 15, 2009, Toronto Hydro shut down a transformer station after water flooding at a control centre. It initially affected 22,000 homes and businesses.
- On January 23, 2009, a severe windstorm knocked out power to 1.2 million customers in parts of France.
- On January 27, 2009, an ice storm hit Kentucky knocking out power to about 769,000. As of February 15th about 12,000 were still without power from this storm.
- From 27 to 31 January, hundreds of thousands of homes in Victoria including Melbourne suffered various power failures as a result of a record heat wave. It is estimated that over 500,000 residents in Melbourne were without power for the evening of 30 January 2009.
- On 3 February 2009, power to a large portion of Auckland, New Zealand was cut following failure of a Transpower substation transformer.
|
| |
|
|
