Misplaced Pages

#491508

76-513: WECC is geographically the largest and most diverse of the six Regional Entities with delegated authority from the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) and Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC). The WECC Region extends from Canada to Mexico and includes the provinces of Alberta and British Columbia , the northern portion of Baja California , Mexico, and all or portions of

152-478: A boil-water advisory until August 18, four days after the initial outage. One county, Macomb , ordered all 2,300 restaurants closed until they were decontaminated after the advisory was lifted. Twenty people living on the St. Clair River claim to have been sickened after bathing in the river during the blackout. The accidental release of 140 kg (310 lb) of vinyl chloride from a Sarnia , Ontario chemical plant

228-547: A state estimator (SE). At 12:15 p.m., the SE was mistakenly shutdown after producing anomalous results due to old data. Unscheduled grid outages followed. In the Cleveland-Akron area, Eastlake Power Plant unit 5 went offline at 1:31 p.m. In Southern Ohio, Dayton Power and Light 's (DPL) Stuart-Atlanta transmission line tripped from tree contact at 2:02 p.m. The outages did not affect normal operation. However,

304-479: A transient increase in current. Automatic protective relays detect the excessively high current and quickly disconnect the line, with the load previously carried by the line transferred to other lines. If the other lines do not have enough spare capacity to accommodate the extra current, their overload protection will react as well, causing a cascading failure . System operators are responsible for ensuring that power supply and loads remain balanced, and for keeping

380-667: A backup communications link to emergency shelters and hospitals. Amateur radio repeaters were supplied with emergency power via generators and batteries and remained functional. Major U.S. networks ( CBS , NBC , ABC and Fox ) and some cable television channels ( HBO , MTV and Nickelodeon ), centered in New York City , were unable to broadcast normally, so backup stations and flagship transmitters in Dallas were used for prime-time TV. ABC ran their news broadcasts from Washington, D.C. instead. Much of Manhattan , including

456-461: A failure, they are also required to notify adjacent areas which may be affected, so those can predict the possible effects on their own systems. A joint federal task force was formed by the governments of Canada and the U.S. to oversee the investigation and report directly to Ottawa and Washington. The task force was led by then-Canadian Natural Resource Minister Herb Dhaliwal and U.S. Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham . In addition to determining

532-574: A few service delays before returning to normal the next morning. Passenger screenings at affected airports ceased. Regional airports were shut down for this reason. In New York, flights were cancelled even after power had been restored to the airports because of difficulties accessing "electronic-ticket" information. Air Canada flights remained grounded on the morning of August 15 due to reliable power not having been restored to its Mississauga control center. It expected to resume operations by midday. This problem affected all Air Canada service and canceled

608-674: A generating plant in Eastlake, Ohio , a suburb northeast of Cleveland, went offline amid high electrical demand, putting a strain on high-voltage power lines (located in Walton Hills, Ohio, a southeast suburb of Cleveland) which later went out of service when they came in contact with "overgrown trees". This trip caused load to transfer to other transmission lines, which were not able to bear the load, tripping their breakers. Once these multiple trips occurred, many generators suddenly lost parts of their loads, so they accelerated out of phase with

684-530: A joint investigation into a "winter load event" earlier in January that stressed the electrical grids in the Midwest. On January 17, Midwest and U.S. south central grid operators ordered emergency appeals for electricity conservation. This was due to high power demand caused by cold weather. Northeast blackout of 2003 The Northeast blackout of 2003 was a widespread power outage throughout parts of

760-846: A physical separation of the E-ISAC from the rest of NERC. As part of the fallout of the Northeast Blackout of 2003 , the Energy Policy Act of 2005 authorized the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) to designate a national Electric Reliability Organization (ERO). On July 20, 2006, FERC issued an order certifying NERC as the ERO for the United States. In September 2018, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) and NERC opened

836-470: A total of nine reactors were affected. The governor of New York, George Pataki , declared a state of emergency . Verizon 's emergency generators failed several times, leaving the emergency services number 9-1-1 out of service for several periods of about a quarter-hour each. New York City's 3-1-1 information hotline received over 175,000 calls from concerned residents during the weekend. Amateur radio operators attached to New York City ARES provided

SECTION 10

#1732776885492

912-705: The Cataraqui River at the base of the Rideau Canal . Amtrak 's Northeast Corridor railroad service was stopped north of Philadelphia , and all trains running into and out of New York City were shut down, initially including the Long Island Rail Road and the Metro-North Railroad ; both were able to establish a bare-bones "all-diesel" service by the next morning. Canada's Via Rail , which serves Toronto and Montreal , had

988-588: 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

1064-648: The New York City Subway had resumed limited services around 8 p.m. Some areas lost power for only four to eight hours, these are: Albany and parts of Long Island in New York; three‐quarters of New Jersey ; parts of Pennsylvania, Ohio and Michigan; New London County, Connecticut ; parts of downtown Toronto , Mississauga , and London in Ontario; portions of western Ottawa in Ontario, including Kanata and south to Kingston ; many areas of

1140-575: 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

1216-645: The Portage Bridge which links the capital region (street lights on the bridge were still lit on the Quebec side of the structure). With the power fluctuations on the grid, power plants automatically went into "safe mode" to prevent damage in the case of an overload. This put much of the nuclear power offline until those plants could be slowly taken out of "safe mode". In the meantime, all available hydro-electric plants (as well as many coal- and oil-fired plants) were brought online, bringing some electrical power to

1292-708: The Regional Municipality of Niagara in Ontario; and parts of Southwestern Ontario , particularly areas near the Bruce Nuclear Generating Station . By the next morning (August 15), some areas of Manhattan regained power around 5:00 a.m, Staten Island regained power around 3:00 a.m. Half of the affected portions of Ontario regained power by the morning. By early evening of August 15, two airports, Cleveland Hopkins International Airport and Toronto Pearson International Airport , were back in service. By August 16, power

1368-704: The San Francisco Giants at Shea Stadium was postponed. In New York, all prisons were blacked out and switched to generator power. The two Indian Point nuclear reactors on the Hudson River near Peekskill , the two reactors at Nine Mile Point nuclear plant, the single reactor at Ginna nuclear plant near Rochester, and the FitzPatrick reactor near Oswego all shut down. With three other nuclear plants shut down in Ohio, Michigan, and New Jersey,

1444-594: The State of New York lost power. Exceptions included Freeport and Rockville Centre on Long Island , which relied on localized power plants; the Capital District , where power dipped briefly (a few areas, such as portions of Latham, New York , did not lose power at all); the southernmost areas of the Southern Tier of Upstate New York , mostly near Waverly , which relied on power from Pennsylvania ;

1520-621: The headquarters of the United Nations , was rendered without power, as were all area airports (with the exception of Newburgh's Stewart International Airport , which had once been a military airbase and had its own generators). All New York-area rail transportation including the subway , the PATH lines between Manhattan and New Jersey, NJ Transit Rail Operations , Metro-North , and the Long Island Rail Road , were without power. Limited railroad service resumed early Friday morning through

1596-697: The 14 Western states between. Membership in WECC is open to all entities who meet the qualifications in the WECC Bylaws. WECC strives for transparency and open participation in all of its meetings and processes. WECC has a long history of assuring reliability in the West that began when it was originally formed in 1967 by 40 power systems, then known as the Western Systems Coordinating Council (WSCC). Thirty-five years later in 2002,

SECTION 20

#1732776885492

1672-671: The Electricity Information Sharing and Analysis Center (E-ISAC). E-ISAC offers security services to bulk power system owners and operators across North America. E-ISAC services includes specific cyber and physical security threat intelligence, tailored cyber security knowledge and physical security collaboration. The E-ISAC, which NERC established at the request of the U.S. Department of Energy, works closely with NERC's Bulk Power System Awareness team in Atlanta to monitor real-time cyber and physical security threats to

1748-593: The FE-controlled Cleveland–Akron area; the area was significant because it was a "transmission-constrained load pocket with relatively limited generation." On August 14, a number of power generators in and around the area were offline. This reduced the available resources for voltage control and reactive power management in contingencies but did not affect normal operation. Four or five of the area's capacitor banks—also used to manage reactive power—were also offline for routine maintenance; this did not follow

1824-616: The Reliability Coordinators and the resource owners/operators throughout the Western Interconnection. One of WECC's functions is coordinating high voltage intertie paths throughout the region. North American Electric Reliability Corporation The North American Electric Reliability Corporation ( NERC ) is a nonprofit corporation based in Atlanta, Georgia , and formed on March 28, 2006, as

1900-560: The WSCC became WECC when three regional transmission associations merged. WECC was designated a Regional Entity for the Western Interconnection in 2007 after NERC delegated some of the authority it had received from FERC to create, monitor and enforce reliability standards. Today, WECC is an independent organization that works with entities across the West to further the common theme of electrical grid reliability . Through its various reliability-related activities, WECC provides critical support to

1976-440: The affected device is disconnected from the network if an overload is detected. The electrical resistance of a power line causes it to produce more heat as the current it carries increases. If this heat is not sufficiently dissipated, the metal conductor in the line will expand and lengthen, so that it sags between supporting structures. If the line sags too low, a flash over to nearby objects (such as trees) may occur, causing

2052-542: The air before returning with backup power. Cable television systems were disabled, and in areas that had power restored (and had power to their television sets), cable subscribers could not receive information until power was restored to the cable provider. Those who relied on the Internet were similarly disconnected from their news source for the duration of the blackout, with the exception of dial-up access from laptop computers, which were widely reported to work until

2128-621: The alarm system at the control room of FirstEnergy , which rendered operators unaware of the need to redistribute load after overloaded transmission lines drooped into foliage. 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

2204-485: The areas immediately surrounding the plants by the morning of August 15. Homes and businesses both in the affected area and in nearby areas were requested to limit power usage until the grid was back to full power. Some areas lost water pressure because pumps lacked power. This loss of pressure caused potential contamination of the water supply. Four million customers of the Detroit water system in eight counties were under

2280-443: The batteries ran out of charge. Information was available by over-the-air TV and radio reception for those who were equipped to receive TV and/or audio in that way. The blackout affected communications well outside the immediate area of power outage. The New Jersey–based internet operations of Advance Publications were among those knocked out by the blackout. As a result, the internet editions of Advance newspapers as far removed from

2356-527: The best practice of performing such maintenance during low-demand periods, and their status was not reported for regional planning purposes because FE had deemed them to be non-critical infrastructure. Incidents contributing to the blackout began after noon on August 14. FE's reliability coordinator was the Midwest Independent System Operator (MISO). MISO maintained a regularly updated model of its area of responsibility with

Western Electricity Coordinating Council - Misplaced Pages Continue

2432-479: The blackout area as The Birmingham News , the New Orleans Times-Picayune , and The Oregonian were offline for days. Amateur radio operators passed emergency communications during the blackout. Large numbers of factories were closed in the affected area, and others outside the area were forced to close or slow work because of supply problems and the need to conserve energy while

2508-410: The blackout because current U.S. law does not require electric reliability standards. Abraham stated, "The absence of enforceable reliability standards creates a situation in which there are limits in terms of federal level punishment." In April 2004, the U.S.-Canada Power System Outage Task Force released their final report, placing the causes of the blackout into four groups: The report states that

2584-609: The blackout due to their on-site self-generating power plant. Power was also available at the Kodak Park facility and its surrounding neighborhood in the city. Power was lost at the Oak Hill Country Club in nearby Pittsford , where the 2003 PGA Championship was being played, which caused minor interruptions to the tournament. Also, that evening's Major League Baseball game between the New York Mets and

2660-620: The bulk power grid. In April 2006, NERC applied for and was granted the designation of the ERO by FERC in July 2006. NERC also filed the first set of mandatory Reliability Standards with FERC, as well as filing the same information with the Canadian provincial authorities in Alberta, British Columbia, Manitoba, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Ontario, Quebec, Saskatchewan, and with the National Energy Board of Canada. NERC also operates

2736-578: The cascade started minutes later. The following is the blackout's sequence of events on August 14, 2003 (times in EDT ): * Ottawa-Gatineau is a special case in that it is divided by a provincial boundary and the Ontario and Quebec grids are not synchronously connected. This resulted in Gatineau having power while Ottawa did not. Locals may have witnessed the drastic cutoff when they were crossing

2812-413: The causes of significant power system disturbances in order to help prevent future events. NERC's standards for generating resources require that sufficient generating capacity be provided such that customers will need to be disconnected less often than once every ten years. These standards are mandatory for only some of the regional entities. Originally formed as a voluntary organization in 1968 by

2888-455: The city of Plattsburgh ; Starrett City, Brooklyn , which has auxiliary power; most of the city of Buffalo ; and pockets of Amherst in the Buffalo area, running off university power . There were also some small pockets of power in the suburbs of Rochester , as a few smaller power companies operating in those areas were able to keep running. The North Shore Towers complex was unaffected by

2964-459: The control room failed first, followed by some remote terminals and data links, then the primary and backup EMS servers. Control room operators were unaware of the alarm failure for over an hour. Operators began to suspect a failure after receiving a notification from American Electric Power (AEP) at 2:32 p.m. about a short AEP line outage that the FE EMS had failed to raise an alert for. FE IT

3040-468: The drastic price increases. Many oil refineries on the East Coast of the United States shut down as a result of the blackout, and were slow to resume gasoline production. As a result, gasoline prices were expected to rise approximately 10 cents/gallon (3¢/L) in the United States. In Canada, gasoline rationing was also considered by the authorities. Cellular communication devices were disrupted. This

3116-693: The electricity industry and called the National Electric Reliability Council, the name was changed to include "North American" in place of "National" in 1981 in recognition of Canada's participation and the broader scope of NERC's footprint. The name was changed from "Council" to "Corporation" in 2007. In 2000, NERC established the Electricity Sector Information Sharing and Analysis Center, which provides industry with timely responses and alerts on cyber and physical security threats that have

Western Electricity Coordinating Council - Misplaced Pages Continue

3192-603: The failure of the Hanna-Juniper line. The failures in the MISO SE and FE EMS prevented either from recognizing and responding to the failures. FE observed the loss of voltage after 3:32 p.m, but it was not until 3:45 p.m. that it recognized an emergency was occurring. Next, the 138 kV lines failed between 3:39 p.m. to 4:08 p.m. The loss of voltage shutdown industrial equipment used by customers and blacked-out Akron and its surroundings. The MISO SE

3268-779: The four Bruce B units were able to throttle back their output without a complete shutdown, then reconnect to the grid within five hours: the portion of New York state including parts of Albany and north and west of Albany, a small pocket of mid-east Michigan, the Upper Peninsula of Michigan , and small pockets in New Jersey. The unaffected area was protected by transmission circuit devices at the Sir Adam Beck Hydroelectric Generating Stations in Niagara Falls (coincidentally,

3344-461: The greater loss of functionality during the reboot procedure. The servers were offline again at 3:46 p.m. to 3:59 p.m. as they were rebooted in another attempt to re-enable the alarms. FE failed to notify MISO of its degraded situational awareness. Cleveland-Akron area transmission lines began failing shortly after 3:00 p.m. Three 345 kV transmission lines failed between 3:05 p.m. to 3:42 p.m. due to tree contact. The first

3420-491: The grid at different rates, and tripped out to prevent damage. The cascading effect that resulted ultimately forced the shutdown of at least 265 power plants. A software bug known as a race condition existed in General Electric Energy's Unix -based XA/21 energy management system . Once triggered, the bug stalled FirstEnergy's control room alarm system for over an hour. System operators were unaware of

3496-472: The grid was being stabilized. At one point a 7-hour wait developed for trucks crossing the Ambassador Bridge between Detroit and Windsor due to the lack of electronic border check systems. Freeway congestion in affected areas affected the " just in time " (JIT) supply system. Some industries (including the auto industry) did not return to full production until August 22. Almost the entirety of

3572-686: The grid". NERC oversees six regional reliability entities and encompasses all of the interconnected power systems of Canada and the contiguous United States , as well as a portion of the Mexican state of Baja California . NERC's major responsibilities include working with all stakeholders to develop standards for power system operation, monitoring and enforcing compliance with those standards, assessing resource adequacy , and providing educational and training resources as part of an accreditation program to ensure power system operators remain qualified and proficient. NERC also investigates and analyzes

3648-413: The grid. The E-ISAC, through capabilities including its Cybersecurity Risk Information Sharing Program (CRISP), works with critical asset owners and operators to analyze real-time cyber and physical security data for patterns of incidents with the potential to affect the bulk power system. NERC has a "firewall" separating the E-ISAC and NERC's compliance and enforcement activities. The separation extends to

3724-400: 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. It was a hot day (over 31 °C, or 88 °F) in much of the affected region, and the heat played a role in the initial event that triggered the wider power outage. The high ambient temperature increased energy demand, as people across

3800-464: The highway. Gas stations operating in pockets of Burlington, Ontario , that had power were reported to be charging prices up to $ 3.78 per US gallon (99.9 ¢/Litre) when the going rate prior to the blackout was lower than $ 2.65/gallon (70¢/L). Customers still lined up for hours to pay prices many people considered price gouging . Station operators claimed that they had a limited supply of gasoline and did not know when their tanks would be refilled, prompting

3876-406: The increased demand triggered by the blackout left many 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. Many cell sites were out of commission due to power outages. Television and radio stations remained on the air, with

SECTION 50

#1732776885492

3952-501: The initial cause of the cascading failure, the investigation of the incident also included an examination of the failure of safeguards designed to prevent a repetition of the Northeast blackout of 1965 . The North American Electric Reliability Corporation , a joint Canada-U.S. council, is responsible for dealing with these issues. On November 19, 2003, Abraham said his department would not seek to punish FirstEnergy Corp for its role in

4028-609: The loss of the Eastlake unit put the FE system at risk of overloads in certain contingency scenarios; the danger was not noticed by FE. At the time of the Eastlake unit outage, FE was asking for and receiving significant additional voltage support, but the situation was not unprecedented. FE's situational awareness was reduced by the development of faults in its General Electric Harris XA21 energy management system (EMS) from 2:14 p.m. to 2:54 p.m. The alarm and logging software in

4104-424: The malfunction. The failure deprived them of both audio and visual alerts for important changes in system state. Unprocessed events queued up after the alarm system failure and the primary server failed within 30 minutes. Then all applications (including the stalled alarm system) were automatically transferred to the backup server, which itself failed at 14:54. The server failures slowed the screen refresh rate of

4180-558: The most heavily traveled flights to Halifax and Vancouver . At Chicago 's Midway International Airport , Southwest Airlines employees spent 48 hours dealing with the disorder caused by the blackout's sudden incidence. Many gas stations were unable to pump fuel due to lack of electricity. In North Bay, Ontario , for instance, a long line of transport trucks was held up, unable to go further west to Manitoba without refueling. In some cities, traffic problems were compounded by motorists who simply drove until their cars ran out of gas on

4256-625: 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

4332-454: The operators' computer consoles from 1–3 seconds to 59 seconds per screen. The lack of alarms led operators to dismiss a call from American Electric Power about the tripping and reclosure of a 345 kV shared line in northeast Ohio. But by 15:42, after the control room itself lost power, control room operators informed technical support (who were already troubleshooting the problem) of the alarm system problem. The cascading failure began in

4408-428: The plant would have to shut down in order to facilitate the reboot of the whole system. Orrville, Ohio , was able to restore power within an hour disconnecting the local utility from the larger grid and restarting the coal-fired generator. The load on any power network must be immediately matched by its supply and its ability to transmit that power. Any overload of a power line or generator can cause costly damage, so

4484-515: The potential to impact the bulk power system. The ES-ISAC, which changed its name in 2015 to Electricity Information Sharing and Analysis Center, shares timely information with industry through its secure web portal. In August 2003, North America experienced its worst blackout to date, as 50   million people lost power in the Northeastern and Midwestern United States and Ontario, Canada. A United States–Canada Power System Outage Task Force

4560-735: The region turned on fans and air conditioning. This caused the power lines to sag as higher currents heated the lines. In areas where power remained off after nightfall, the Milky Way and orbiting artificial satellites became visible to the naked eye in metropolitan areas where they cannot ordinarily be seen due to light pollution . Most of the Amtrak Northeast Corridor service was interrupted, as it relied on electricity for its signaling and crossing systems; electrified commuter railways also shut down. Via Rail in Canada

4636-542: The starting point of the Northeast blackout of 1965 ) at a switching station of the hydroelectric power station in Cornwall, as well as central New York state. Philadelphia and the surrounding mid-Atlantic areas were also completely unaffected because PJM disconnected them. The Saint Clair power plant in East China Township, Michigan , remained online for about 36 hours, and residents were informed that

SECTION 60

#1732776885492

4712-515: The successor to the North American Electric Reliability Council (also known as NERC). The original NERC was formed on June 1, 1968, by the electric utility industry to promote the reliability and adequacy of bulk power transmission in the electric utility systems of North America . NERC's mission states that it "is to assure the effective and efficient reduction of risks to the reliability and security of

4788-421: The system into balance. To assist the operators there are computer systems, with backups, which issue alarms when there are faults in the transmission or generation system. Power flow modeling tools let them analyze the state of their network, predict whether any parts of it may be overloaded, and predict the worst possible failure remaining, so that they can change the distribution of generation or reconfigure

4864-494: The system within safe operational limits such that no single fault can cause the system to fail. After a failure affecting their system, operators must obtain more power from generators or other regions or "shed load" (meaning to intentionally cut power or reduce voltage to a given area) until they can be sure that the worst remaining possible failure anywhere in the system will not cause a system collapse. In an emergency, they are expected to immediately shed load as required to bring

4940-405: 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's proximate cause was a software bug in

5016-401: The transmission system to prevent a failure should this situation occur. If the computer systems and their backups fail, the operators are required to monitor the grid manually, instead of relying on computer alerts. If they cannot interpret the state of the power grid in such an event, they follow a contingency plan, contacting other plant and grid operators by telephone if necessary. If there is

5092-677: The use of diesel trains. More than 600 subway and commuter rail cars were trapped between stations. New York's Metropolitan Transportation Authority (which operates the subway) and the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey (which operates the PATH lines) reported that all passengers were evacuated without serious injury. PATH resumed service on the Uptown Hudson Tubes by 9:45 p.m. that evening; system-wide service resumed at 11 p.m. By comparison, full service on

5168-401: Was able to continue most of its service. All airports in the affected area closed immediately, there were no departures, and incoming flights had to be diverted to airports with power. The reliability of the electrical grid was called into question and required substantial investment to repair its shortcomings. Most places restored power by midnight, as early as 6 p.m. on August 14, and

5244-434: Was automatically notified of the remote terminal and server failures. IT performed a "warm reboot " the primary server at 3:08 p.m. but did not realize that the alarm function remained broken. The control room notified IT of the alarm problem at 3:42 p.m. A "cold reboot"—later discovered to be the vendor-recommended action—was rejected because the power system situation was precarious and operators were concerned about

5320-417: 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

5396-444: Was formed to investigate the causes of the blackout and to make recommendations to prevent future blackouts. The Energy Policy Act of 2005 (US) called for the creation of an Electric Reliability Organization (ERO) to develop and enforce compliance with mandatory reliability standards in the United States. This non-governmental, "self-regulatory organization" was created in recognition of the interconnected and international nature of

5472-563: Was fully restored in New York and parts of Toronto. Within the area affected, about 200,000 people continued to have power—in the Niagara Peninsula of Ontario; the easternmost corner of Ontario (centered on Cornwall ); northwestern Ontario (west of Wawa); and the Buffalo, New York area, excluding southern Erie county, along the shore of Lake Huron via a feeder line to Owen Sound from Bruce Nuclear Generating Station . Three of

5548-516: Was mainly due to the loss of backup power at the cellular sites where generators ran out of fuel. Where cell sites remained up, some cell phones still went out of service as their batteries ran out of charge without a power source to recharge from. Wired telephone lines continued to work, although some systems were overwhelmed by the volume of traffic, and millions of home users had only cordless telephones depending on house current. Most New York and many Ontario radio stations were momentarily knocked off

5624-552: Was not revealed until five days later. Cleveland also lost water pressure and instituted a boil water advisory. Cleveland and New York had sewage spills into waterways, requiring beach closures. Newark, New Jersey , and northern cities had major sewage spills into the Passaic and Hackensack rivers, which flow directly to the Atlantic Ocean. Kingston, Ontario lost power to sewage pumps, causing raw waste to be dumped into

5700-478: Was reactivated at 2:40 p.m, but the results confused operators because the model did not match empirical data. The discrepancy was caused by the SE being unaware of the DPL line outage at 2:02 p.m; DPL's reliability coordinator was PJM , so DPL did not automatically report data to MISO. MISO operators had the SE modelling correctly again by 4:04 p.m. It was too late for MISO to address FE's critical status;

5776-620: Was the Harding-Chamberlin line. Most of the load from the Harding-Chamberlin line was transferred to the Hanna-Juniper line, which then failed at 3:32 p.m. PJM and AEP began mitigation efforts to prevent the Star-South Canton line connecting FE and AEP from overloading; they had incomplete data on the status of FE's system and underestimated the severity of the situation. The Star-South Canton line failed at 3:41 p.m. after its loading increased from 82% to 120% after

#491508