August 14 2003 Power Outages - NERC Announcement

Sean Donelan sean at donelan.com
Thu Aug 14 23:36:42 UTC 2003


Starting at about 4:15 PM EDT, major losses of electric load occurred in
the northeastern U.S. and Canada in the Eastern Interconnection.

No cause is known at present, but the outages do not appear to be the
result of a  terrorist attack.

The areas most affected center around the Great Lakes plus New York City,
northern New Jersey and parts of New England. We do not know if these
blackouts are related  for sure, but it is likely.

Con Edison in New York lost its entire system, it is not known when
service will be restored.

Immediate outages totaled about 28,000 MW, at this time 5-10,000 MW remain
out of service.

The power in Ontario is being brought back on line through connections
with Manitoba.

In Ohio, Perry Nuclear plant went off-line. Major transmission lines were
out of service at the time of the disruption. It appears that ten nuclear
plants went offline, probably as a result of fluctuations in frequency.

Preliminary indications are that the problems may have started in either
Ohio or the Niagara Falls area.

Although the event was felt throughout the entire Eastern Interconnection,
the south and midwest were unaffected.

NERC is having regular conference calls among the NERC reliability
coordinators and will provide additional information as we know more.

We do not know the cause of the disturbances at present but will continue
to evaluate the situation throughout the rest of the day and evening.

8/14/2003 6:13 PM




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