Electricity Blackout in Germany on November 4th 2006 -even France, Italy, Spain and other countries were affected.
One of the worst and most dramatic power failures in three decades plunged millions of Europeans into darkness over the weekend, halting trains, trapping dozens in lifts and prompting calls for a central European power authority. The blackout, which originated in north-western Germany, also struck Paris and 15 French regions, and its effects were felt in Austria, Belgium, Italy and Spain. In Germany, around 100 trains were delayed.
Additional Power Outages
09/24/2006 On September 24th afternoon 1.30pm Pakistan was hit by a nationwide blackout. Millions of homes across Pakistan were left without power for several hours. Power has been restored in capital Islamabad after over a two-hour breakdown. The outage was caused due to a fault that occurred during maintenance of a high-tension transmission line.
07/12/2006 Electricity Blackout in Auckland (New Zealand) - 700,000 people without electricity for up to 10 hours. An earth wire, which snapped in high winds, fell into Transpower's Otahuhu substation, damaging 110 kilovolt supply lines. The cause - a simple metal shackle.
11/25/2005 Electricity Blackout in Münsterland - 250,000 people without electricity for up to six days. Ice and storm had caused serious damage to the network , leading to the blackout.
10/24/2005 -11/11/2005 Hurricane Wilma caused loss of power for most of South Florida and Southwest Florida, with hundreds of thousands of customers still powerless a week later, and full restoration not complete.
09/12/2005 A blackout in Los Angeles affected millions in California.
08/29/2005 Millions of Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama residents lost power after a stronger Hurricane Katrina badly damaged the power grid.
08/26/2005 On 1.3 Million People in South Florida lost power due to downed trees and power lines caused by the then minimal Hurricane Katrina. Most customers affected were without power for four days, and some customers had no power for up to one week.
08/22/2005 All of southern and central Iraq, including parts of the capital Baghdad, all of the second largest city Basra and the only port Umm Qasr went out of power for more than 7 hours after a feeder line was sabotaged by insurgents, causing a cascading effect shutting down multiple power plants.
08/18/2005 Almost 100 million people on Java Island, the main island of Indonesia which the capital Jakarta is on, and the isle of Bali, lost power for 7 hours. In terms of population affected, the 2005 Java-Bali Blackout was the biggest in history.
05/25/2005 On most part of Moscow was without power from 11:00 MSK (+0300 UTC). Approximately ten million people were affected. Power was restored within 24 hours.
09/04/2004 On five million people in Florida were without power at one point due to Hurricane Frances, one of the most widespread outages ever due to a hurricane.
12/20/2003 Apower failure hit San Francisco, affecting 120,000 people.
09/27/2003- 09/28/2003 Italy blackout - a power failure affected all of Italy except Sardinia, cutting service to more than 56 million people.
09/23/2003 A power failure affected 5 million people in Denmark and southern Sweden.
09/02/2003 A power failure affected 5 states (out of 13) in Malaysia (including the capital Kuala Lumpur) for 5 hours starting at 10 am local time.
08/28/2003 There was a 2003 London blackout on which won worldwide headlines such as "Power cut cripples London" but in fact only affected 500,000 people.
Direct Causes and Contributing Factors to power outage:
- Failure to maintain adequate reactive power support
- Failure to ensure operation within secure limits
- Inadequate vegetation management
- Inadequate operator training
- Failure to identify emergency conditions and communicate that status to neighboring systems
- Inadequate regional-scale visibility over the bulk power system.
- Conductors contacting trees
- Ineffective visualization of power system conditions and lack of situational awareness
- Ineffective communications
- Lack of training in recognizing and responding to emergencies
- Insufficient static and dynamic reactive power supply: FACTS
- Need to improve relay protection schemes and coordination
- On-Line Monitoring and Real-Time Security Assessment
- Increase of Reserve Capacity : HVDC / Generation
