List of major power outages

Skyline of Toronto during the Northeast blackout of 2003

This is a list of notable wide-scale power outages. To be included, the power outage must conform to all of the following 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-hours of disruption.

In other words:

Largest

article millions of
people affected
location date references
July 2012 India blackout 620 India 30 July 2012-31 July 2012 [1]
January 2001 India blackout 230 India 2 January 2001
November 2014 Bangladesh blackout 150 Bangladesh 1 November 2014 [2]
2015 Pakistan blackout 140 Pakistan 26 January 2015 [3]
2005 Java–Bali blackout 100 Indonesia 18 Aug 2005 [4]
1999 Southern Brazil blackout 97 Brazil 11 March 1999 [5]
2009 Brazil and Paraguay blackout 87 Brazil, Paraguay 10–11 Nov 2009 [6]
2015 Turkey blackout 70 Turkey 31 March 2015 [7]
Northeast blackout of 2003 55 United States, Canada 14–15 August 2003 [8]
2003 Italy blackout 55 Italy, Switzerland 28 September 2003 [9]
Thailand Nationwide blackout of 1978 40 Thailand 18 March 1978 [10]
Northeast blackout of 1965 30 United States, Canada 9 November 1965 [11]
Sri Lanka nationwide blackout 2016 21 Sri Lanka 13 March 2016 [12]

1960–1969

1965

On the evening of November 9, the Northeast blackout of 1965 affected portions of seven northeastern states in the United States and the province of Ontario in Canada.

1969

On August 5, a 50-mile stretch of Florida's gold coast was hit with a general power failure after an explosion at the Cutler Ridge facility. The outage affected more than 2 million people, and created a monumental traffic jam. Miami and Ft. Lauderdale downtown areas were offline for almost two hours, with other areas dark for much longer periods. Chicago Tribune, August 6, 1969 [13]

1970–1979

1971

On the evening of February 2, power in parts of the New York City boroughs of Manhattan, The Bronx and Queens was lost following an explosion at Con Ed's Waterside power facility on 40th Street and 1st Avenue in Manhattan. New York City television and FM radio stations that transmit from the Empire State Building were knocked off the air, AM radio stations were largely not affected, as most of their transmitters are located in either Northern New Jersey(e.g. WABC-AM) or on High Island(e.g. WCBS-AM) in the Bronx, which was not affected by the blackout. However, several Manhattan AM station studios were affected due to no or insufficient studio power backups. Several lines of the New York City IND and IRT subway lines were affected when the power went out stranding passengers in the cars and in tunnels. At Grand Central Terminal power in the terminal was lost, but power on the tracks was unaffected, because it runs on direct current. The New York Daily News was also affected when the blackout caused their printing facility to halt operations.[14]

1976

On July 4, a major power failure affected most of Utah and parts of Wyoming for 1.5 to 6 hours.[15]

1977

1978

1980–1989

1981

On January 8, prisoners on a work assignment burning trash and debris at the Utah State Prison in Draper, Utah, accidentally caused a major power failure when something they were burning exploded, causing a fireball that shorted out transmission lines above them. 1.5 million people lost power, in almost all of Utah, as well as parts of southeastern Idaho and southwestern Wyoming.[18]

1982

On December 22, a transmission tower near Tracy, California collapsed onto an adjacent tower bringing down two 500-kV lines and a pair of 230-kV lines that passed underneath the 500-kV right of way. Total loss of 12,530 MW affected approximately five million people on the west coast.[19][20]

1983

On December 27, two-thirds of the Swedish network was shut down when a single component in a switching station failed, causing a short-circuit in a transformer. This affected about 4.5 million people in the more densely populated southern half of Sweden.[21][22]

1985

On 17 May, most of South Florida was blacked out after a brush fire in the Everglades damaged overhead transmission lines. Miami, Fort Lauderdale, West Palm Beach, and the Florida Keys lost power for about 3.5 hours. About 4.5 million people were effected.[23]

1987

On October 16, the Great Storm of 1987 the High Voltage Cross-Channel Link between the UK and France was interrupted, and the storm caused a domino-effect of power outages throughout the Southeast of England.[24]

1989

1990–1999

1991

On July 7, a powerful wind storm affected a large portion of central North America and knocked power to about one million customers from Iowa to Ontario.[29]

1992

On August 24, Hurricane Andrew made landfall on Elliot Key. As it passed over the northern keys it downed 17 miles of power lines breaking off the wooden poles they were strung on, along a path that was in four feet of water, stretching from the Turkey Point Nuclear Plant southward to the upper Keys. The shallow depth prevented the use of large construction barge cranes for rebuilding the power pylons and the water was too deep for land based construction vehicles. As a result, the upper and middle keys were largely without power for several months as the Middle Keys Electric Co-op only had generating capacity for 10% of its demand. The power lines heading north to Miami were restored much more quickly as they were strung along the side of US highway 1 on dry land. Key west power was in the process of decommissioning an end of life oil fired plant and was able to restore 75% generating capacity for the lower keys in one day as there was no storm damage that far south Key west power was in the process of converting to sourcing 100% of its electricity sourcing from the Turkey Point facility.

1995

Hurricane Opal approaching Pensacola, Florida in October 1995

On October 4, Hurricane Opal, which killed at least 59 people, knocked out power to over two million customers across eastern and southern North America.[30]

1996

1998

1999

2000–2009

2000

2001

2002

2003

2004

2005

2006

2007

2008

2009

São Paulo, the largest city in Brazil, during November 10 blackout.

2010–2015

2010

2011

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

2012

2013

2014

2015

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Further reading

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