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Northeast blackout of 2003
The Northeast blackout of 2003 was a widespread power outage throughout parts of the Northeastern and Midwestern United States, and most parts of the Canadian province of Ontario on Thursday, August 14, 2003, beginning just after 4:10 p.m. EDT.
Most places restored power by midnight (within 7 hours), some as early as 6 p.m. on August 14 (within 2 hours), while the New York City Subway resumed limited services around 8 p.m. Full power was restored to New York City and parts of Toronto on August 16. At the time, it was the world's second most widespread blackout in history, after the 1999 Southern Brazil blackout. The outage, which was much more widespread than the Northeast blackout of 1965, affected an estimated 55 million people, including 10 million people in southern and central Ontario and 45 million people in eight U.S. states.
The blackout was due to a software bug in the alarm system at the control room of FirstEnergy, which rendered operators unaware of the need to redistribute load after overloaded transmission lines dropped in voltage. What should have been a manageable local blackout cascaded into the collapse of much of the Northeast regional electricity distribution system.
According to the New York Independent System Operator (NYISO)—the ISO, responsible for managing the New York state power grid—a 3,500 megawatt power surge (towards Ontario) affected the transmission grid at 4:10:39 p.m. EDT.
For the next 30 minutes, until 4:40 p.m. EDT, outages were reported in parts of Michigan (Detroit), Ohio (Cleveland, Akron, Toledo), Ontario (Toronto, Hamilton, London, Windsor), New Jersey (Newark), and New York (New York City, Suffolk, Nassau, Westchester, Orange and Rockland counties, Rochester, Syracuse, Binghamton, Albany).
This was followed by outages in other areas initially unaffected, including all of New York City, portions of southern New York state, New Jersey, Vermont, Connecticut, as well as most of the province of Ontario. Eventually, a large, somewhat triangular area bounded by Lansing, Michigan, Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario, the shore of James Bay, Ottawa, New York, and Toledo was left without power.
According to the official analysis of the blackout prepared by the US and Canadian governments, more than 508 generating units at 265 power plants shut down during the outage. In the minutes before the event, the NYISO-managed power system was carrying 28,700 MW of load. At the height of the outage, the load had dropped to 5,716 MW, a loss of 80%.
Essential services remained in operation in some of these areas. In others, backup generation systems failed. Telephone networks generally remained operational, but the increased demand triggered by the blackout left some circuits overloaded. Water systems in several cities lost pressure, forcing boil-water advisories to be put into effect. Cellular service was interrupted as mobile networks were overloaded with the increase in volume of calls. Multiple cell sites were out of commission due to power outages. Television and radio stations remained on the air, with the help of backup generators, although some stations were knocked off the air for periods ranging from several hours to the length of the entire blackout.[vague]
Hub AI
Northeast blackout of 2003 AI simulator
(@Northeast blackout of 2003_simulator)
Northeast blackout of 2003
The Northeast blackout of 2003 was a widespread power outage throughout parts of the Northeastern and Midwestern United States, and most parts of the Canadian province of Ontario on Thursday, August 14, 2003, beginning just after 4:10 p.m. EDT.
Most places restored power by midnight (within 7 hours), some as early as 6 p.m. on August 14 (within 2 hours), while the New York City Subway resumed limited services around 8 p.m. Full power was restored to New York City and parts of Toronto on August 16. At the time, it was the world's second most widespread blackout in history, after the 1999 Southern Brazil blackout. The outage, which was much more widespread than the Northeast blackout of 1965, affected an estimated 55 million people, including 10 million people in southern and central Ontario and 45 million people in eight U.S. states.
The blackout was due to a software bug in the alarm system at the control room of FirstEnergy, which rendered operators unaware of the need to redistribute load after overloaded transmission lines dropped in voltage. What should have been a manageable local blackout cascaded into the collapse of much of the Northeast regional electricity distribution system.
According to the New York Independent System Operator (NYISO)—the ISO, responsible for managing the New York state power grid—a 3,500 megawatt power surge (towards Ontario) affected the transmission grid at 4:10:39 p.m. EDT.
For the next 30 minutes, until 4:40 p.m. EDT, outages were reported in parts of Michigan (Detroit), Ohio (Cleveland, Akron, Toledo), Ontario (Toronto, Hamilton, London, Windsor), New Jersey (Newark), and New York (New York City, Suffolk, Nassau, Westchester, Orange and Rockland counties, Rochester, Syracuse, Binghamton, Albany).
This was followed by outages in other areas initially unaffected, including all of New York City, portions of southern New York state, New Jersey, Vermont, Connecticut, as well as most of the province of Ontario. Eventually, a large, somewhat triangular area bounded by Lansing, Michigan, Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario, the shore of James Bay, Ottawa, New York, and Toledo was left without power.
According to the official analysis of the blackout prepared by the US and Canadian governments, more than 508 generating units at 265 power plants shut down during the outage. In the minutes before the event, the NYISO-managed power system was carrying 28,700 MW of load. At the height of the outage, the load had dropped to 5,716 MW, a loss of 80%.
Essential services remained in operation in some of these areas. In others, backup generation systems failed. Telephone networks generally remained operational, but the increased demand triggered by the blackout left some circuits overloaded. Water systems in several cities lost pressure, forcing boil-water advisories to be put into effect. Cellular service was interrupted as mobile networks were overloaded with the increase in volume of calls. Multiple cell sites were out of commission due to power outages. Television and radio stations remained on the air, with the help of backup generators, although some stations were knocked off the air for periods ranging from several hours to the length of the entire blackout.[vague]