List of major power outages

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:

• 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	people affected (millions)	location	date	references
July 2012 India blackout	620	India	2012-07-30 !30–31 July 2012	[1][2][3]
January 2001 India blackout	230	India	2001-01-02 !2 January 2001
November 2014 Bangladesh blackout	150	Bangladesh	2014-11-01 !1 November 2014	[4]
2015 Pakistan blackout	140	Pakistan	2015-01-26 !26 January 2015	[5]
2005 Java–Bali blackout	100	Indonesia	2005-08-18 !18 Aug 2005	[6]
1999 Southern Brazil blackout	97	Brazil	1999-03-11 !11 March 1999	[7]
2009 Brazil and Paraguay blackout	87	Brazil, Paraguay	2009-11-10 !10–11 Nov 2009	[8]
2015 Turkey blackout	70	Turkey	2015-03-31 !31 March 2015	[9]
Northeast blackout of 2003	55	United States, Canada	2003-08-14 !14–15 August 2003	[10]
2003 Italy blackout	55	Italy, Switzerland	2003-09-28 !28 September 2003	[11]
Kenya Nationwide Blackout of 2016	44	Kenya	2016-06-07 !7 June 2016	[12]
Thailand Nationwide blackout of 1978	40	Thailand	1978-03-18 !18 March 1978	[13]
Northeast blackout of 1965	30	United States, Canada	1965-11-09 !9 November 1965	[14]
Sri Lanka nationwide blackout 2016	21	Sri Lanka	2016-03-13 !13 March 2016	[15]

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.^[16]

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 unaffected, 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, stranding passengers in the cars and in tunnels. At Grand Central Terminal power in the terminal was lost, but power on the tracks was retained because it runs on direct current. The New York Daily News was also affected when the blackout caused their printing facility to halt operations.^[17]

1976

On July 4, a major power failure affected most of Utah and parts of Wyoming for 1.5 to 6 hours.^[18]

1977

On 17 May, parts of South Florida were blacked out after a malfunctioning relay caused the Turkey Point Nuclear Generating Station in Miami to go offline.^[19]

On July 13–14 in New York City 9 million people were affected by a power outage. The power outage was a result of lightning striking power lines that resulted in transmission failures. A second lightning strike took place causing the loss of two more overhead power lines and the last power connection between New York City and the Northwest. The power outage resulted in high instances of looting occurring over 26 hours.^[20]

On September 20, almost the entire province of Quebec, totalling 6M people, was affected. Power was restored to scattered rural areas within an hour and within 2 hours, service was brought back to parts of Montreal and Quebec City; it took several hours to fully restore power.^[21]

1978

On March 18, Thailand experienced a countrywide blackout as a result of failed generators in the South Pranakhorn Powerplant in Samut Prakan, which then caused many generators across the country to shut down. The failure started from 07:40 am (GMT+7). Before the isolation of the power grid, blackouts occurred in the northern provinces of Thailand for one hour, the northwestern provinces for 15 minutes, the southern provinces for half an hour, the central provinces for one hour, and Bangkok and its neighboring provinces for more than two hours. Within nine hours and 20 minutes, the authorities were able to restore power across the country.

1980–89

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.^[22]

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.^[23][24]

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.^[25][26]

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.^[27]

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.^[28]

1989

On March 13, the March 1989 geomagnetic storm^[29] caused the Hydro-Québec power failure^[30] which left seven million people in the Canadian province of Quebec without power for over nine hours.^[31]

On October 17, the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake knocked out power to about 1.4 million customers in Northern California, mainly due to damaged electrical substations.^[32]

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.^[33]

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

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.^[34]

1996

On July 2–3 in the United States, Canada and Mexico there were 2 million people that lost power due to a transmission line overheating in Idaho and a 230-kV line between Montana and Idaho tripping. Some customers were with out power for minutes, while others were without for hours.^[20]

On August 10, the Western Intertie buckled under the high summer heat of the 1996 Western North America blackouts, causing a cascading power failure affecting nine western states of the United States and parts of Mexico. Four million people were affected.^[35] Power was out in some locations for four 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.^[36]

1998

The early-January North American Ice Storm of 1998 caused prolonged blackouts in northeastern North America, particularly in Quebec, where many transmission towers were destroyed by ice. Over 3.5 million customers in total lost power during the event.^[37]

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.^[38]

On 31 May, a powerful wind storm knocked out power to nearly two million customers across much of central North America.^[39]

On September 7, a series of widespread derechos in the Northeast (the Labor Day Derechos) knocked out power for hundreds of thousands of customers for several days.

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 Pacific Gas and Electric Company placed a San Mateo sub-station online at 08:17 PST, while the station was still grounded following maintenance. This drew so much power from the transmission lines on the San Francisco peninsula that 25 other sub-stations in San Francisco automatically and immediately shut down. Power was not fully restored until almost 16:00 PST the same day. Economic costs were estimated in tens of millions of dollars.^[40]

1999

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.^[41]

On July 29, in Taiwan the #326 transmission tower collapsed due to a landslide, which disconnected around 8.46 million electricity consumers.^[42]

On December 26–28, 1999 Cyclone Lothar and Martin left 3.4 million customers in France without electricity, and forced EdF to acquire all the available portable power generators in Europe, with some even being brought in from Canada.^[43] These storms brought a fourth of France's high-tension transmission lines down and 300 high-voltage transmission pylons were toppled. It was described as one of the greatest energy disruptions ever experienced by a modern developed country.^[44]

2000–2009

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 22:00 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.^[45]

During the 12-month California electricity crisis of 2000–01, there were regular power failures due to energy shortages.^[46]

2001

On January 2, a fault in the transmission system in the state of Uttar Pradesh led to cascading failure throughout northern India.^[47]

On 20 May, a problem on power substation caused the blackout of 2001 in Iran.^[48] 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.^[49] This means it is among the largest blackouts, affecting more than 30 million.

2002

On January 30, a major ice storm hit Kansas City, Missouri, knocking trees into power lines and blowing up transformers overnight throughout the city.

On July 13, Baku and nearly the entirety of Azerbaijan experienced a blackout due to unknown causes.^[50]

On April 30, Nearly all of JEA's 355,000 customers in Jacksonville, FL lost power.^[51]

2003

On July 22, a severe wind storm knocked out power to over 300,000 customers in the Memphis, Tennessee, metropolitan area.^[52]

On August 14, the Northeast blackout of 2003, a wide-area power failure in the northeastern USA and central Canada, affected over 55 million people.

On September 2, the 2003 southern Malaysia blackout resulted when a power failure affected five states (out of 13) in Malaysia, including the capital Kuala Lumpur, for five hours, starting at 10:00 local time.

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 five million people in east Denmark and southern Sweden.^[53][54]

On 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 July 12, two power plants in Lavrio and Megalopolis, Greece, shut down due to malfunction within 12 hours of each other, during a period of high demand due to a heat wave. That led to a cascading failure causing the collapse of the entire Southern (Power) System, affecting several million people in southern Greece.^[55]

2005

The 2005 Malaysia electricity blackout crisis caused electricity to fail in many states of Malaysia's northern peninsula, including Perak, Penang, Kedah, and Perlis. This was due to a fault of the main cable transmission line grid near Serendah, Selangor.^[56]

In January, a cyber attack knocked out power in three cities north of Rio de Janeiro, affecting tens of thousands of people.^[57]

On 25 May to 3 August, the 2005 Moscow power blackouts affected more than two million people in central Russia. The blackout was due to a cascading failure of the power grid started by a transformer failure. Some lines of Moscow Metro lost power, stranding people in trains.

Starting Aug 31, 2005, Hurricane Katrina caused widespread power outages throughout Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Florida, Kentucky and Tennessee. Exact totals are hard to even define especially in Louisiana parishes which became unoccupied for months. Power was also knocked out to 1.3 million customers when Katrina passed over Florida several days earlier. In total 2.6 million people were left without power as a result of the storm across the United States.

2006

On August 1, in the Laurentians, in the province of Québec, Canada, a large number (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.^[58]

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.^[59]

On August 14, a floating crane hit and broke a transmission line across the Edo River, interrupting power to 1,391,000 customers in the Tokyo Metropolitan Area, including Tokyo, Yokohama and part of Kawasaki and Ichikawa. Power was restored to all but 15,000 customers within an hour. The full restoration was complete four hours and 42 minutes after the start of the incident.^[60][61]

On the night of November 4, in main parts of Germany, France, Italy, Belgium, Spain, and Portugal, over 15 million households were left without power after a big cascading breakdown. Power grids several other nations (Belgium, Netherlands, Poland, Switzerland, Czech Republic, Greece and Morocco) experienced minor local outages. 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.^[62]

On December 14, 2006, the Hanukkah Eve windstorm of 2006 caused widespread damage to the power grid throughout Washington and into parts of Oregon, British Columbia, and Idaho; blackouts across the affected area lasted longer than a week in some cases.

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.^[63]

On April 26, Colombia experienced a nationwide blackout at approximately 10:15 local time, caused by an undetermined technical failure at a substation in the capital city, Bogota, Colombia. Power returned to most parts of the country after several hours.^[64]

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 September 26–27, a cyber attack caused major disruptions affecting more than three million people in dozens of cities in the Brazilian state of Espírito Santo.^[57]

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.^[65][66]

From December 8 to 12, a series of ice events cut power to over one million homes and businesses across the Great Plains of the United States, including large portions of Oklahoma, Kansas, and Nebraska.^[67]

On December 12, a Royal Netherlands Air Force AH-64 Apache Attack helicopter, on a routine training mission, crashed into High Voltage power lines. This resulted in a blackout affecting over 50,000 households in the Tielerwaard and Bommelerwaard region in the Netherlands. Power was restored after three days.^[68]

2008

On February 20, coal supplies to some power plants in Java were stopped, as ships could not dock at ports due to large waves. This resulted in an electricity deficit of about 1,000 megawatts that affected the Indonesian capital, Jakarta.^[69]

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.^[70] 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.^[71][72]

On April 2, 2008 around 420,000 households were left without power in Melbourne and in other parts of Victoria after the state was hit by winds of up to 130 km/h.^[73]

On April 8, from around 03:30, 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.^[74]

On 20 May, 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 September 8, 2008, Hurricane Ike landed in Galveston and left over 2 million customers without power in the Greater Houston area. Power to one million homes was restored by day 6 and to two million homes by day 16.^[75]

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 one million people to lose their power.^[76]

On December 12, a large ice storm in Northeast USA took out power lines from Maine to Pennsylvania due to ice buildup on wires and trees and branches falling on power lines. At the peak of the outages, about 1.5 million people were without power. It took about two weeks to restore power to all locations.^[77]<

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.^[78]

2009

On January 23, a severe windstorm knocked out power to 1.2 million customers in parts of France.^[79]

On January 27, an ice storm hit Kentucky and in Southern Indiana knocking out power to about 769,000.^[80] As of February 15, about 12,000 were still without power from this storm.^[81]

On January 27–31, 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 January 30, 2009. The outage 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 January 30, Energy Minister Peter Batchelor announced consumers who lose power for more than 20 hours would be eligible for compensation^[82][83][84] It is estimated that over 500,000 residents in Melbourne were without power for the evening of January 30, 2009.

On March 30, a major power cut hits homes and business in Glasgow and parts of western 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.^[85]

On April 15 a little before 9:00pm a severe power cut blacked out up to 80% of the city of Almaty, Kazakhstan and northern parts of neighboring Kyrgyzstan affecting a few million people for several hours. Power was not restored until after midnight local time.^[86]

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 four days, whilst other homes were given three-hour allocations of power followed by six 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.^[87]

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 customers (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.^[88]

On November 10, 22:13 Brasília official time,^[89] 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 seven hours to the system to fully recover. This is regarded as one of the largest blackouts in man's history.^[90][91][92]

2010–2016

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 06:00. Power was restored to all areas by 16:30.^[93]

In early February, a pair of blizzards hit the Northeastern US on 5–6 February and again just a few days later on 9–10 February. 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.^[94]

On March 14, 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.^[95]

On March 14, 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.^[96]

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.^[97]

On June 27, Portsmouth UK suffered a massive blackout when a substation caught fire.^[98]

On July 15, 76,000 people in Oakland & Wayne counties in southeastern Michigan lost power at approximately 19:00 during heavy storms. As of 12:00 on July 16, power still had not been fully restored.^[99]

On 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.^[100]

On September 1, Iceland experienced a massive power outage.

2011

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.^[101]

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.^[102]

On 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 00:00 to 04:00. It is estimated that 53 million people were affected. Major cities like Salvador, Recife, and Fortaleza were completely out of power.^[103]

On February 22 at 12:51, 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 were still without power as late as 1 May; more than two months after the initial earthquake.^[104]

On April 27, one of America's most devastating tornado outbreaks knocked out power to most of northern Alabama; some 311 high-tension electrical transmission towers were destroyed by multiple, violent tornadoes.^[105][106]

On June 30, Chennai suffered a major power outage that affected many parts of the city for more than 15 hours.^[107]

Starting on July 11, Cyprus suffered a half-week power outage, affecting all cities on Greek part of island. The outage was caused by an explosion next to the Vassilikos power plant, knocking out the plant.^[108][109]

On July 23, failure of a glass insulator caused an outage of most of Northern Saskatchewan for about four hours.^[110]

On the morning of July 11, the Chicago area was hit by a large derecho which knocked out power to over 850,000 according to ComEd.^[111]

On August 27–28, Hurricane Irene caused over five million power outages.^[112]

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.^{[113][114][115]} As of 17:08, power had been fully restored in the Yuma, Arizona area. Over five million people were affected.^[116]

On September 16, South Korea experienced a great blackout due to hot weather, the blackout came suddenly and caused disruptions of traffic signals, elevators and machines.^[117]

On September 24, nine million people in north and central Chile were affected by a blackout that lasted for at least two hours.^[118]

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.^[119]

2012

On January 14, a 380 kV transformer failure in Bursa Natural Gas Fueled Combined Cycle PP in Turkey, was accused of voltage deviations in the interconnected power grid that resulted in a blackout. Additionally, another failure occurred in 154 kV Babaeski substation caused blackout in Thrace. During the outage 6 cities in the Marmara Region of the country, approximately more than 20 million people were affected. The power was back in all cities in the evening. The blackout knocked out metro and tram operation in Istanbul. Also gas heating systems did not work during the blackout. Industrial production was hurt badly too. The problem resolved by getting electricity from Bulgaria to Thrace and feeding lines in İstanbul from Ambarlı Natural Gas PP in İstanbul. Ref: Marmara blackout of 2012

On April 4, a blackout hit every city in Cyprus after the Dhekelia power station failed (with a lack of electric power from 04:42 to 09:20).^[120]

On June 29, a line of thunderstorms with hurricane-force winds swept from Iowa to the Mid-Atlantic coast and knocked out power to more than 3.8 million people in Indiana, Ohio, West Virginia, Pennsylvania, Maryland, New Jersey, Virginia, Delaware, North Carolina, Kentucky, and metropolitan Washington, DC.^[121]

On July 30, due to a massive breakdown in the northern grid, there was a major power failure which affected seven north Indian states, including Delhi, Punjab, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir, and Rajasthan.^[122]

On July 31, the July 2012 India blackout, which is being called the biggest ever power failure in the world, left half of India without electricity supply. This affected hundreds of trains, hundreds of thousands of households and other establishments as the grid that connects generating stations with customers collapsed for the second time in two days.^[123]

On October 29–30, Hurricane Sandy brought high winds and coastal flooding to a large portion of the eastern United States, leaving an estimated 8 million customers without power. The storm, which came ashore near Atlantic City, New Jersey as a Category 1 hurricane, ultimately left scores of homes and businesses without power in New Jersey (2.7 million), New York (2.2 million), Pennsylvania (1.2 million), Connecticut (620,000), Massachusetts (400,000), Maryland (290,000), West Virginia (268,000), Ohio (250,000), and New Hampshire (210,000). Power outages were also reported in a number of other states, including Virginia, Maine, Rhode Island, Vermont, and the District of Columbia.^[124][125]

2013

Over the weekend of January 26–27 ex-Tropical Cyclone Oswald caused the loss of power to over 250,000 customers in South East Queensland, Australia. Power was gradually restored over about 10 days.^[126]

On February 8–9, some 650,000 homes and businesses in the northeastern US lost power as the result of a powerful nor'easter that brought hurricane-force wind gusts and more than two feet of snow to New England.^[127]

On 22 March 2013 200,000 homes in the Greater Belfast area lost power as the result of a fault with the high voltage transmission network during a snow storm^[128]

On April 1, 2013, 100,000 people in Poland suffered under power outages due to heavy snow falls.^[129] Warsaw Airport found the snow a bit difficult to operate in.^[130]

On May 5, 2013, 40-50% of Luzon island in the Philippines was suffered in power outages because of several transmission lines tripped out, resulting in the isolation of Sta. Rita, San Lorenzo, Calaca, Ilijan, QPPL [Quezon Power Plant Philippines, Ltd.].^[131]

On 21 May, the 2013 southern Thailand blackout resulted when a power failure affected fourteen provinces (out of 76) in Thailand, for four hours, starting at 19:00 local time.^[132]

On 22 May the 2013 Southern Vietnam and Cambodia blackout occurred. A careless move of a truck deployed to plant trees in New Binh Duong City urban area was the direct cause for a massive power outage in the southern region of Vietnam. When moving a tree on Wednesday afternoon, the truck driver let the tree bump onto a line in the national power grid (500 kV), causing an outage in 22 provinces and cities in the southern part of Vietnam, said the Electricity of Vietnam group (EVN).^[133]

On 24 September the Trakia region of Turkey lost electric power. According to TREDAS (Power distribution utility of Trakia region), a failure in the substation of Hamitabat Gas Fueled Combined Cycle PP in Lüleburgaz city of Kırklareli province caused a power outage in TEİAŞ 154kV interconnected power transmission grid of the region. Affected places include Tekirdağ, Edirne, Kırklareli provinces and Silivri city of İstanbul. Affected population was about 1.5 million Trakia region citizens and Silivri citizens. Power was started to be restored gradually after an hour and at 00.24 all the region had been electrified.^[134]

On December 22, a major ice storm covering an area from Ontario to as far east as the maritime provinces in Canada, caused power failures. According to reports, as many as 300,000 customers in Toronto lost power.^[135] Later reports placed the peak number in Ontario without power at 600,000 ^[136] The storm also caused widespread power outages in mid-Michigan. According to reports, as many as 500,000 lost power with restoration efforts expected through December 29.^[137]

2014

On February 27, parts of Mindanao, an island in the Philippines, suffered power outages for 6 hours. As of 12:00PM (PST+8) around 70 percent of its entire grid has been restored. The Department of Energy (DOE) are in question of what caused the widespread blackout in Mindanao.^[138]

On July 15, 60% of the power grid in Luzon island in the Philippines was lost due to Typhoon Rammasun (Glenda) that devastated the Southern part of Luzon where many power plants are located like the Geothermal Plant in the Bicol Region and the Coal Plant in Batangas.

On August 12, Malta suffered a nationwide power outage for almost 6 hours. Power was lost across Malta and Gozo at 7:50 PM and restored to most areas by 1:30 AM. Due to problems with emergency generators Malta International Airport had to close the runway and several flights were diverted to Catania and Palermo. Outage was caused by the damaged cable which caused explosion of the electricity distribution centre and automatic shut down of both power stations. Previous nationwide power cut occurred January 9, 2014 and was caused by a Delimara power station fault.^[139]

On September 4, Egypt woke up in darkness after a major blackout hit the capital and other cities nationwide at 6am and then continued for hours, bringing some key services to a halt. The power outage cost the strategic facilities of the Suez Canal an estimated LE100 million, as naval traffic and industrial activity came to a halt along the vital waterway. Some television channels were halted for nearly two hours due to the outage.^[140]

On October 5 at 02:15, a cable trench fire at Transpower's Penrose substation in Auckland, New Zealand, disconnected supply to Vector's local distribution network. Over 85,000 customers in Auckland's central-eastern suburbs lost electricity for over 12 hours. 50% of customers were reconnected by evening and 75% by the following morning.^[141]

On November 1, Bangladesh suffered nationwide power outage for almost 10 hours. Power was lost all over Bangladesh at around 11:30 AM and restored to most areas by 11:00 pm.^[142][143]

On Friday 21 November, South Africa experienced rolling blackouts which were implemented nationwide, and continued for the duration of the weekend. This followed similar outages earlier in the same month, all of which were triggered as a result of a collapsed coal silo at Eskom's Majuba Power Station, during a period when the state's power company was already experiencing severe supply strain on the national grid due to further technical difficulties affecting some of its other major turbines.^{[144][145][146]}

2015

On 26 January, 80% of Pakistan without power (some 140 million people) due to some technical fault at a power station in Sindh.^[5]

On 11 February, a technical problem in one of the main power grids in Kuwait caused most of the country to lose power.^[147]

On 27 March, a technical problem in one of the main power grids in North Holland caused 1 million households to not have power for at least one hour.^[148]

On 31 March, because of technical problems, over 90% of Turkey (about 70 million people) went without power. Unaffected regions were Van and Hakkari provinces which are fed by electricity from Iran.^[9]

On 29 August, A powerful windstorm knocked out power to 710,000 customers (Nearly 50% of BCHydro's Customers) on Vancouver Island and Vancouver's lower mainland. 705,000 customers had power restored within 72 hours of the storm. This was BCHydro's single largest outage in BCHydro's history.^[149]

On 17 November, a powerful wind storm that downed power lines left more than 161,000 customers without electricity in Spokane County, Washington, USA, plus more in neighboring counties. It exceeded the ice storm that occurred 19 years previous, almost to the day.^{[150][151][152]}

On 21 November 2015, a power outage left 1.2 million people in disputed Crimea with reduced or no power after transmission towers in Ukraine were blown up.^[153]

2016

On 7 June, about 100% of Kenya (over 40 million people) went without power for over 4 hours. The nationwide blackout^[154] was caused after a rogue monkey got into a power station and triggered a nationwide blackout.^[155]

On Thursday, September 1, Hurricane Hermine swept across the big bend area of Florida as a Category 1 storm, directly affecting the state's capital of Tallahassee. Hermine knocked out power for more than 350,000 people in Florida and southern Georgia, many of whom have not had their power restored as of a week later.

On September 21, 2016, a full power system collapse occurred on the island of Puerto Rico affecting its 3.5 million inhabitants. The power outage, popularly referred to as the "Apagón" (translated as "super outage") has been labeled as the largest in Puerto Rico history not caused by an atmospheric event. The outage occurred after two transmission lines, with power running up to 230,000 volts, failed.^[156]

On September 28, the entire state of South Australia (1.7 million people) lost power following severe storms due to two tornados that destroyed three elements of critical infrastructure, which led to the power system protecting itself with a shutdown.^[157] While some politicians and commentators have tried to link this power failure with the state's high mix of renewable energy sources (particularly wind energy) to more conventional power sources, some experts have indicated that the blackout had nothing to do with this.^[158] A number of technical reports in the previous 18 months expressed concern that the reliability and security of power supply in South Australia had decreased following the introduction of substantial wind power, and the consequent withdrawal of major conventional power stations.

References

Further reading

Wikinews has related news: Category:Disasters and accidents

• Hordeski, Michael F. (2005). Emergency and backup power sources: preparing for blackouts and brownouts. Fairmont Press. Retrieved February 4, 2012.  ISBN 0-88173-485-3