List of power outages

Toronto, Ontario skyline during the August 2003 blackout

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

To be included, the outage must conform to these criteria:

1. The outage must not be planned by the service provider.
2. The outage must affect at least 1,000 people and last at least one hour.
3. There must be at least 1,000,000 person*customer hours of disruption.

In other words:

• 1,000 people affected for 1,000 hours (42 days) minimum, but if fewer than 1,000 people, event would not be included (regardless of duration)
• One million people affected for a minimum of one hour, but if duration is less than one hour, event would not be included (regardless of number of people)
• For example, 10,000 people affected for 100 hours or 100,000 for 10 hours would be included

Largest

Article	Millions affected	Location	Date	References
2005 Java–Bali Blackout	100	Indonesia	2005-08-18
1999 Southern Brazil blackout	97	South and southeastern Brazil	1999-03-11
2009 Brazil and Paraguay blackout	87	Central, south and southeastern Brazil and all Paraguay	2009-11-10/2009-11-11
Northeast Blackout of 2003	55	North America, northeastern	2003-08-14/2003-08-15
2003 Italy blackout	55	Italy	2003-09-28
Northeast Blackout of 1965	30	North America, northeastern	1965-11-09

1965–1995

Hurricane Opal approaching Pensacola, Florida in October 1995

1965

The Northeast Blackout of 1965 in the northeastern USA and in Ontario, Canada, on the evening of November 9, 1965.

1974

A freak early season blizzard on October 13 caused a major power outage that affected more than a million customers for up to one week in Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island, Canada.

1976

On July 4, a major power failure affected most of Utah, and part of Wyoming for 1 1/2 to 6 hours.

1977

On July 13–14, the New York City blackout of 1977 resulted in looting and rioting.

1978

On December 19, a blackout affected 80% of France.^{[citation needed]}

1981

On January 10, prisoners on a work assignment burning trash & debris at the Utah State Prison in Draper, Utah, accidentally cause a major power failure when something they were burning exploded, causing a fireball that shorted out transmission lines above them. Power lost to 1.5 million people, in almost all of Utah, as well as parts of southeastern Idaho and southwestern Wyoming.

1983

On December 27, a disconnecting switch in a 400 kV substation near Enköping, Sweden failed due to overheating and this caused the substation's busbar protection to trip all circuit breakers, then most of the 400 kV lines carrying hydro power from northern Sweden were disconnected and the few remaining lines tripped due to overload within a few minutes. As a result, mains frequency and voltage rose in northern Sweden until safety systems tripped most of the generating equipment. On the contrary, southern Sweden suffered from sinking voltage and frequency until most equipment tripped there. For a short time, the whole country except parts supplied by small independent utilities, suffered from the blackout. It took up to 24 hours to restore full service because most of the nuclear power stations were emergency stopped and needed several hours to restart.

1987

The Great Storm of 1987 brought down power lines throughout southern England causing extensive blackouts.^{[citation needed]}

1988

On April 5, a failure of Takeo electrical substation from power, which knocked out power to 630,000 customers around Nagasaki Prefecture and some of Saga Prefecture, include Nagasaki, Sasebo, Isahaya and Karatsu.^{[citation needed]}

1989

March 1989 geomagnetic storm – 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.

1990

During the Winter of 1990–1991 in Western Europe the United Kingdom experienced heavy snowfall on the weekend of December 7–11, 1990. This caused extensive blackouts, notably across the English Midlands, as well as a widespread water supply cut-off. The Army were called in to help restore power.

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 3, the 1996 Peninsular Malaysia electricity blackout crisis occurred.
• 1996 Western North-America summer blackouts – On August 10, the Western Intertie buckled under high summer heat, causing a cascading power failure affecting nine western states of the United States and parts of Mexico. 4 million people were affected. Power was out in some locations for 4 days.
• 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.

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.
• From February 20 to March 27, the 1998 Auckland power crisis resulted in the entire Auckland Central Business District in Auckland, New Zealand being without power for several weeks, after a line failure had cause a chain reaction leading to the failure of three other lines.
• On May 31, a powerful wind storm knocked out power to nearly 2 million customers across much of Central North America.
• On September 25, the Esso Longford gas explosion which caused a complete loss of gas supplies to the entire state of Victoria, Australia for 2 weeks.^{[citation needed]}
• On December 8, affecting San Francisco, California, and its environs, over 350,000 customers(buildings) or 940,000 people were affected by an outage caused when the PG&E utility placed a San Mateo sub-station online at 8:17 am 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 4 pm the same day. Economic costs were estimated in tens of millions of dollars.

1999

• On March 11, a blackout affected about 70% of the Brazilian territory, leaving more than 90 million without power for hours. Cities like Sao Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, Belo Horizonte, Porto Alegre and Curitiba faced urban chaos led by huge traffic jams and public subway and suburban trains systems that were out.^{[citation needed]}
• 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.
• On October 27, a failure of West Kyoto and Ayabe electrical substation from power, which knock out power to 420,000 customers around Kyoto Prefecture and north of Hyogo Prefecture, include Kyoto, Kameoka, Ayabe, Maizuru, Toyooka, which was restored within one hour.^{[citation needed]}
• On October 29, hurricane Linda, a Category 5 tropical cyclone, that hit the coast of Orissa, India crippled the local grid and local distribution companies to the extent that entire coastal Orissa suffered a total blackout for up to weeks. While power companies began restoring within 72 hours since first outage, the restoration was prioritized based on essential services - hospitals, telephone exchanges, train stations were the first to have normalcy in services. Rural Orissa continued without power for weeks and certain places for months.
• On November 22, a T-33 Shooting Star training aircraft struck an electric transmission line, which knocked out power to 800,000 customers around Tokyo and south of Saitama Prefecture, including Nerima, Suginami, Toshima, Hachioji, Tachikawa, Musashino, Tokorozawa, Kawagoe and Sayama. Power was restored within 4 hours.^{[citation needed]}

2000

• On 9 May, a major power outage left the entire southern half of Portugal, including Lisbon, without power for a few hours. The blackout occurred shortly after 10:00 p.m. local time. The apagão, as it is known locally, suddenly plunged Lisbon in complete darkness. Stalled commuter trains and nonworking traffic lights wreaked some havoc in the streets. Security was immediately reinforced in the city, but no rise in criminal activity was registered. Energias de Portugal, the main Portuguese electricity operator, later reported that the blackout was due to the electrocution of an unfortunate stork, which landed "on the wrong place at the wrong time". Because of this, the story was reported in the "oddly enough" sections of some European newspapers.
• During the 12-month California electricity crisis of 2000–01, there were regular power failures due to energy shortages.

2001

• On May 20 a problem on power substation caused the Blackout of 2001 in Iran. Outages were reported in Tehran and at least six provincial capitals that are among Iran's biggest cities - Isfahan, Shiraz, Tabriz, Kermanshah, Qazvin and Hamedan. This means, it is among the largest Blackout that affected more than 30 million.

2002

• On July 13, Baku and nearly the entirety of Azerbaijan experienced a blackout due to unknown causes.

2003

• On July 22, a severe wind storm knocked out power to over 300,000 customers in the Memphis, Tennessee metropolitan area.
• On August 14, a wide-area power failure in the northeastern USA and central Canada (Northeast Blackout of 2003) affected over 55 million people.
• On August 23, power was lost for up to an hour in Helsinki affecting half a million people.^{[citation needed]}
• There was a major blackout in London on August 28, affecting an area from central London to south London, most of London Underground and commuter trains. The report of the London Assembly’s Public Services Committee said "Although power was restored in 30 minutes, the resulting chaos lasted well into the night". The blackout was due to a defective transformer and an inadequate protection relay.
• On September 2, the 2003 southern Malaysia blackout resulted when 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.
• On September 5, a power outage left at least 3 million Mexicans in the southern Yucatán Peninsula without electricity.
• On September 19, Hurricane Isabel knocked out electricity for 4.3 million people across nine US states and parts of Ontario, Canada.^{[citation needed]}
• On September 23, a power failure affected 5 million people in east Denmark and southern Sweden.
• On 27 to 28 September, 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.^{[citation needed]}
• 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.^{[citation needed]}

2005

• The 2005 Malaysia electricity blackout crisis where many states of Malaysia's northern peninsular, including Perak, Penang, Kedah, and Perlis had no electricity due to a fault of the main cable transmission line grid near Serendah, Selangor.
• In January, a cyber attack knocked out power in three cities north of Rio De Janeiro, affecting tens of thousands of people.
• 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.^{[citation needed]}
• 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.^{[citation needed]}
• 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.^{[citation needed]}
• 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.^{[citation needed]}
• 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.^{[citation needed]}
• 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.^{[citation needed]}
• On August 29, millions of Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama residents lost power after a strengthening Hurricane Katrina badly damaged the power grid.^{[citation needed]}
• 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.^{[citation needed]}
• 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.^{[citation needed]}
• On December 22, a blizzard and snow storm cause a three cable transmission line to be broken from a tower, which knocked out power to 650,000 customers across Niigata prefecture, include Niigata, Nagaoka, Kashiwazaki, Sado and Joetsu.

2006

• On June 12, central and eastern Auckland, New Zealand experience a 6-hour long power outage, affecting 230,000 customers, after a shackle attaching an earth wire to the Otahuhu substation gantry dislodged and short-circuited a 220 kV line supplying the central city and three sections of the 110 kV busbar below it.
• 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 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 United States stretching from rural Pennsylvania to southwestern Connecticut.^{[citation needed]}
• 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.^{[citation needed]}
• On July 19, "at least 486,000" customers lost power in the greater St. Louis, Missouri, area due to 80 mph (130 km/h) 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 (40 °C). 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.^{[citation needed]}
• 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.^{[citation needed]}
• 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 August 14, a floating crane hit and broke a transmission across the Edo River, interrupting power to 1,398,000 customer in the Tokyo Metropolitan Area, include Tokyo, Yokohama and part of Kawasaki and Ichikawa. Power was restored within five hours.
• On September 12, parts of east London, U.K., lost power, at approximately 9:15 pm.^{[citation needed]}
• 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 3 inches (7.6 cm) of snow accumulated. It was later called the "October Surprise Storm" or Lake Storm "Aphid".^{[citation needed]}
• 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, there were no injuries as a result of the power outage or the earthquake. Power was restored later 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.^{[citation needed]}
• On the night of November 4, in parts of Germany, France, Italy, Belgium, Spain and Portugal over fifteen million households 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.^{[citation needed]}
• 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.^{[citation needed]}
• 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.^{[citation needed]}
• 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.^{[citation needed]}

2007

• From 12 to 24 January, about 1 million customers from Texas to Atlantic Canada lost power due to a series of winter ice storms including 330,000 in Missouri, 200,000 in Michigan and 120,000 in Oklahoma.^{[citation needed]}
• 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.^{[citation needed]}
• 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.^{[citation needed]}
• 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.
• Also on June 27, a severe thunderstorm hit Long Island causing half of Long Island to lose power after 8:30 pm.^{[citation needed]}
• 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.^{[citation needed]}
• On August 20, a rainstorm hit Regina,Saskatchewan with lightning. The lightning hit the broadstreet substation delaying the riders game and knocking out power but, some lights were on during the blackout.
• On 26 and 27 September, a cyber attack caused major disruptions affecting more than 3 million people in dozens of cities in the Brazilian state of Espírito Santo.
• 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 including large portions of Oklahoma, Kansas and 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 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.^{[citation needed]}
• 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.^{[citation needed]}
• 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 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 84 °F (29 °C) 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 April 29, Venezuela experienced a blackout that affected 40% of the country. It happened at 4:30 pm ET and the power was restored by 10 pm ET. It affected 16 states including Zulia, Lara, Carabobo, Yaracuy, Portuguesa, Miranda, Falcon, Mérida, Aragua, Bolivar, Tachira and parts of Caracas.
• On May 20, the entire island of Zanzibar, off the coast of Tanzania, suffered a complete shutdown of power over the entire island. It happened at around 10:00 pm local time, and it was caused by a rupture of the undersea cable from Mainland Tanzania. Power was restored after one month, on June 18.
• On June 24, 2008, a faulty underground wire caused a power failure in Maidstone Town Centre and surrounding areas for numerous hours.^{[citation needed]}
• On August 4, 2008, an extremely strong storm, a bow echo swept through the Chicago, Illinois and Northwest Indiana areas. In Chicago, ComEd, the Chicago electrical company, reported 200,000 customers to be without power at 6:27pm which was during the height of the storm. In Northwest Indiana, NIPSCO reported that 65,000 people were without power during the height of the storm. Storm recovery continued for almost 2 weeks in both states.
• On September 1, 2008, power blackouts hit Venezuela.
• Between 13 and 15 September, Hurricane Ike caused approximately 7.5 million to lose power in the United States from Texas to New York.
• On December 11, 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, power was lost for about 12 hours on the entire island of Oahu, Hawaii starting at about 6:45 pm, where then President-elect Barack Obama and his family were vacationing. This is now confirmed to be due to lightning strikes on power lines, which caused HECO's system to trip.
• On December 28, The power outage that left 7,500 customers in Kanata North without power for hours.^{[citation needed]}

2009

• On January 23, a severe windstorm knocked out power to 1.2 million customers in parts of France.
• On January 27, an ice storm hit Kentucky and in Southern Indiana knocking out power to about 769,000. As of February 15 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.[24] The outtage affected much of central Melbourne with train and tram services cancelled, the evacuation of Crown Casino, traffic light failures, people being rescued from lifts and patrons of the Victorian Arts Centre evacuated and shows cancelled. The outage occurred only an hour after the National Electricity Market Management Company (NEMMCO) issued a statement saying load shedding was ending and power had been restored. Authorities say there had been a major electricity failure in the city's west, caused by the three-day heatwave. It is believed an explosion at South Morang contributed to the power problems along three transmission lines supplying Victoria's west and Victorian power supplier SP AusNet shed 1,000 megawatts.[24] On 30 January, Energy Minister Peter Batchelor announced consumers who lose power for more than 20 hours would be eligible for compensation It is estimated that over 500,000 residents in Melbourne were without power for the evening of 30 January 2009.
• On March 6, power to a large area of Maidstone, Kent, United Kingdom was lost due to numerous faults with a power substation in the Oxford Road, in the Shepway borough of the town. The first fault occurred at around 12am causing a power failure to Marden, Linton, Boughton Monchelsea and Loose, at 5am a second fault caused the power to fail in Shepway, Downswood, Bearsted and Maidstone Town Centre, power was restored to all these areas at 8.15am after causing rush hour chaos as all the main roads in the town were not signal controlled. At 11am a third fault caused a power failure in Parkwood and Senace, power was restore after 30 minutes. At 1am EDF made the decision to turn off the power to most of Maidstone to repair the substation, the areas affected by this power failure were Boughton Monchelsea, Chart Sutton, Coxheath, Linton, Loose, Marden, Parkwood, Senacre, Shepway, Sutton Valence and Tovil. In parts of Shepway, Parkwood, Linton and Senacre power was not restored until 10pm. This power failure caused the traffic lights to fail on the Loose Road, Linton Road, Sutton Road and Willington Street as they failed to turn back on when power was restored, these were not repaired till late on the Saturday, also parts of Shepway reported complete street light failure on the Saturday Evening.
• On March 28, 19:09, Georgia, in United States had a wide power outage by an outbreak of 20 tornadoes reported in Hinesville, Macon, Savannah, and Atlanta. Areas were left with out power for 1 day
• On March 30, the CBD of Sydney, Australia was plunged into darkness at 4:45pm, following the failure of the four lines delivering power to the CBD. The power outage forced the closure of both the Sydney Harbour Tunnel and the Eastern Distributor toll roads. Power was slowly restored to the Eastern Suburbs after 6:45pm with most of the city following shortly after.
• On March 30, a major power cut hits homes and business in Glasgow and parts of West Of Scotland. The affected areas included the west end of Glasgow, Bearsden, Clydebank, Helensburgh, Dumbarton and as far afield as Lochgilphead and Oban. Arran was also affected from the outage. The power cut occurred at 16:20 and power was slowly restored between 17:20 and around 18:30.
• On April 13, the West Swindon area of Swindon, Wiltshire, United Kingdom was sent to a blackout at 9:00pm most of the West swindon area was affected by the blackout, but many had their power returned after an 1 hour - 2 hour depending on the area they are living, other parts of West Swindon and near West Swindon such as SN4 (Wroughton) were subducted to dropouts.^{[citation needed]}
• On July 2, power was cut to about 200,000 customers across five Australia states for about an hour starting at 11am, including over 100,000 in New South Wales, and 50,000 in Queensland, in Melbourne 105 set of traffic light were blackout although no homes or business lost power, in Tasmania only industrial customers where affected, the outage was linked to a generator problem at the bays water power station in the NSW hunter valley.
• On July 20, power was cut to around 100,000 homes in the areas of South East London and North Kent, UK, after vandals deliberately caused a fire near a cable installation, which caused failure of a 132 kV cable and four circuit boards. Due to the nature of the cable, it was impossible to re-route supplies around other cables without overloading them. As a result, power supplies were cut to around half of the homes for around 4 days, whilst other homes were given 3 hour allocations of power followed by 6 hours "off". Over 70 mobile generators were brought in from around the country to help restore power in what was the largest deployment in London's history.
• On September 14, power was lost to several hundred customers after an incident at a local substation on the Isle of Man. All customers were restored within 90 minutes.
• On October 8, power was cut to about 103,000 homes in large parts of north and west Melbourne, Australia. Most customers had their power restored within 30 minutes and some within an hour and a half. The outage affected some further cities as well as Melton, Gisborne, Sunbury and Woodend with Woodend being 100 km away from the western suburbs of Melbourne. The most affected people were in the residential area of the western suburbs of Melbourne which affected 74151 customers. The cause is currently unknown but has been detected to be caused by a fault at the Keilor terminal station which caused it to shut down fully (View Keilor terminal station's supply area in Google Maps). List of most of the affected suburbs.
• On October 30 at around 8:00am NZDT, power was cut to the whole of Northland and most of the northern half of Auckland, New Zealand, affecting 280,000 consumers (14.5% of the country). A forklift carrying a shipping container accidentally hit one of the Otahuhu to Henderson 220 kV circuits while the other circuit was out for maintenance, leaving the region supplied by four low capacity 110 kV circuits. Power was restored to the entire region around 11:00am.
• On November 10, 22:13 Brasília official time, power was cut out to most states of Brazil due to a failure of transmission lines from Itaipu Dam, the world's second largest hydroelectric dam, affecting over 80 million customers. The failure was caused by a major thunder storm which affected a key transmission line to southeastern Brazil causing the hydroelectric power-plant's all 20 turbines to shut-down due the abrupt fall of power demand. Four of Brazil's most densely populated states entirely lost electric power (including the states, and its capitals of the same name, of São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro) with 14 more states being partly affected. The entire country of Paraguay experienced the power failure. It took about 7 hours to the system to fully recover. This is regarded as one of the largest blackouts in man's history.
• Also on November 10, at 12:00am GMT, power was lost to the whole of Sheffield and Rotherham in South Yorkshire, United Kingdom. Much of Rotherham regained power just 34 minutes later, and most of Sheffield had power back by 2:00am. Power was restored to the last area, the south-east of Sheffield, by 6:00am. Additionally, at around 6:00am, the British metropolitan borough of Calderdale, West Yorkshire was plunged into darkness for around 15 minutes causing every light on the National Grid in the area to go out. These events both occurred during the one-day Yorkshire Power Crisis.
• On November 23, power was cut in northeastern Tennessee and took in some places a week and a half to restore due to a large and fast-moving snow storm.

2010

• On January 30, two separate transmission lines were hit by lightning, blacking out the Australian city of Darwin and the nearby cities of Katherine and Palmerston starting at about 6am. Power was restored to all areas by 4:30pm.
• In early February, a pair of blizzards hit the Northeastern US on February 5–6 and again just a few days later on February 9–10. Among the hardest hit areas was the Baltimore-Washington corridor, with well over 200,000 people impacted at the height of the outages and about two-thirds of those without power for periods lasting from half a day to several days. Other urban areas, such as Pittsburgh, were also hard-hit.
• On 6 March very violent storms bringing tennis ball sized hail came over Melbourne, Australia. This caused between 50,000 and 100,000 people to lose power. On the same evening, possible tornadoes were reported ripping apart houses and tearing down power lines causing another 20,000 to be without power. Some streets had no power for up to 3 days as many powerlines were replaced. It is estimated that in the 3 days of storm activity half a million customers has their power interrupted.
• Sunday 14 March, roughly 15 million people—about 90% of the population of Chile—were left without power when a major transformer failed in southern Chile. Power began to be restored within a few hours, and almost all of the country had power by the following day. The outage was apparently not directly related to damage from the major earthquake that hit the country the previous month.
• Sunday 14 March, a severe windstorm knocked out power to hundreds of thousands of customers primarily in southwestern Connecticut as well as parts of Westchester County and Long Island, and New Jersey as a result of a severe wind and rain storm. The outage lasted as long as six days for some customers in the hardest-hit communities. Many Public School districts were also closed for up to five days the following week. [1]
• On March 30, about 30,000 homes in Northern Ireland were also hit by a power cut, caused by winter weather conditions. Omagh, Enniskillen, Dungannon, Derry, Coleraine and Ballymena were affected.
• Monday 31 May - Tuesday 1 June: Large areas of Sheffield, UK, were plunged into darkness for up to 8 hours. The cause is currently being investigated but it is thought to be the failure of an electricity substation near the M1 motorway.
• Sunday 27 June Portsmouth UK suffered a massive blackout when a substation caught fire.
• On Thursday, July 15, 76,000 people in Oakland and Wayne counties in southeastern Michigan lost power at approximately 7 PM during heavy storms. As of noon on Friday, July 16, power still has not been restored.
• On Sunday, July 25, an estimated 250,000 Pepco customers lost power in the Washington, D.C. area, due to severe storms that swept through the area.
• On Wednesday, September 1, Iceland experienced a massive power outage. See Iceland power outages 2010.

2011

The residential neighborhood of Los Navegantes, in Pichilemu (O'Higgins Region, Chile) during the September 24 blackout.

• In the second week of January, violent floods hit Queensland, Australia. The floods caused widespread damage and death. 150,000 people were without power at the peak of the floods and some people were reconnected as long as 3 weeks later as each flooded home had to be individually checked for electrical damage.^{[citation needed]}
• On February 2, in Texas, forced outages at two major coal-fired power plants and high electricity demand due to cold weather caused rotating blackouts affecting more than one million customers.
• On February 3 Cyclone Yasi hit communities in North Queensland, Australia. The cyclone with winds reaching up to 300 km/h (186mp/h) cause widespread damage through many communities. 170,000 homes lost electricity.
• Wednesday, February 4, at least eight states in northeastern Brazil (Alagoas, Bahia, Ceará, Paraíba, Pernambuco, Piaui, Rio Grande do Norte and Sergipe) suffered from a major blackout from around midnight to 4 a.m. It is estimated that 53 million people were affected. Major cities like Salvador, Recife and Fortaleza were completely out of power.
• On 22 February at 12:51 p.m., a 6.3-magnitude earthquake struck the city of Christchurch, New Zealand, damaging large parts of Orion's sub-transmission and distribution network. Over 80 percent of the city (approximately 160,000 customers) lost power following the quake. A total of 82% of customers had their power restored in five days. Some central city areas are still without power as of 1 May.
• In March 2011, a major earthquake hit Japan, not only did the earthquake cause damage but it created a ten-meter high tsunami that wiped out entire towns. It is estimated that four million people lost power and many are still without.
• In April 2011, 2 violent storms raged across the southeast US, leaving many people without power in Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, and Tennessee. The first one, from April 15–17, brought the majority of the power outages, the second, from April 25–28, left not as much power outages, but still, many people were without power. This ties to the listing below.
• Within the last week of April, there were reports on massive power outages and wreckages in Elizabethtown, Kentucky. These power outages were the end result of a tornado.
• On May 1, a three-hour power outage in Karachi, Pakistan affecting 20 million people.^{[citation needed]}
• On June 30, Chennai city suffered a Major power outage affecting many parts of the city for more than 15 hours
• On July 11, Cyprus a half-week power outage, affected all cities on greek part of island after blast near Vassilikos power plant
• On July 23, failure of a glass insulator caused an outage of most of Northern Saskatchewan for about 4 hrs.
• On the morning of July 11, the Chicagoland area was hit by a large derecho which knocked out power to over 850,000 according to ComEd.
• On August 27–28, Hurricane Irene caused over five million power outages.
• On September 8–9, widespread power outages affected parts of Southern California and Arizona, as well as parts of northwestern Mexico. Started by monitoring equipment that was causing problems at a power substation in southwest Arizona. As of 5:08 p.m., power had been fully restored in the Yuma, Arizona area. Over five million people were affected.
• On September 15, a blackout had affected most of South Korea^{[citation needed]}
• On September 24, nine million people in north and central Chile were affected by a blackout that lasted for at least two hours.
• In late October, a snowstorm along the East Coast of the USA caused over two million power outages. Some residents of Connecticut and western Massachusetts were without electricity for over seven days.

Further reading

• Hordeski, Michael F. (2005). "Emergency and backup power sources: preparing for blackouts and brownouts". Fairmont Press. http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=jXIwvQTzX6UC&pg=PA1#v=onepage&q&f=false. Retrieved February 04, 2012.  ISBN 0881734853

External links

• Blackout Tracker
• Power Outages reported on Twitter