This is a list of notable wide-scale power outages. To be included, the
power outage must conform to all of the following criteria:
The outage must not be planned by the service provider.
The outage must affect at least 1,000 people.
The outage must last at least one hour.
There must be at least 1,000,000 person-hours of disruption.
For example:
1,000 people affected for 1,000 hours (42 days) or more would be included; fewer than 1,000 people would not be, regardless of duration.
One million people affected for a minimum of one hour would be included; if the duration were less than one hour, it would not, regardless of number of people.
10,000 people affected for 100 hours, or 100,000 for 10 hours would be included.
This method is a formula that multiplies the number of hours by the population affected, and does not reflect the nominal time in hours that the outages lasted.
November 9 -
United States and
Canada - The
Northeast blackout of 1965 affected portions of seven
northeastern U.S. states and
Ontario. Most radio and television stations within the area lost power or lost teletype communications, so people within the blackout area relied on broadcasts from other areas to learn information about the blackout.
1969
August 5 - United States - A 50-mile (80 km) 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 vast
traffic jam.
Miami and
Fort Lauderdale downtown areas were offline for almost two hours, with other areas dark for much longer periods.[31]
1970s
1971
February 7 - United States - On that evening, power in parts of the
New York Cityborough of
Manhattan was lost for over four hours. The power outage was originally thought to have been caused by an explosion at
Con Ed's
Waterside power facility on
40th Street and
1st Avenue in Manhattan, but the cause was later suspected to be a result of a fault in a transformer at a substation on 13th Street.[32][33] New York City
television and
FM radio stations that transmit from the
Empire State Building were off the air.
AM radio stations were largely unaffected, as most of their transmitters were 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 insufficient power backups. Several lines of the
IND and
IRT subway lines were affected, stranding passengers. At
Grand Central Terminal power in the building was lost, but power on the tracks was retained because it ran on
direct current. The New York Daily News was also affected when the blackout caused their printing facility to halt operations.[34]
1976
July 4 - United States - A major power failure affected most of
Utah and parts of
Wyoming for 1.5 to 6 hours.[35]
1977
May 10 -
Romania - A nationwide blackout that lasted 5 hours caused US$1 billion losses, larger than
the Vrancea earthquake on March 4. Subsequent investigations showed it was caused by human error.
July 13–14 - United States - In
New York City, 9 million people were affected by a
power outage. It was a result of a transmission failure due to a lightning strike on power lines. A second lightning strike caused 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.[37]
September 20 - Canada - A power outage covered almost the entire province of
Quebec, affecting two million people, after a failure at the
Montagnais Substation along a series of 735kV transmission lines connecting to the
Churchill Falls Generating Station in
Labrador. Power was restored to scattered rural areas within an hour and service was brought back to parts of
Montreal and
Quebec City within two hours; it took several hours to fully restore power.[38]
1978
December 19 - France - A power line overload caused a 4 hour outage in the
French mainland.[39]
1980s
1981
January 8 - United States - Prisoners on a work assignment burning trash and debris at the
Utah State Prison in
Draper, 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.[40]
1982
December 22 - United States - 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.[41][42]
1983
December 27 -
Sweden - Two-thirds of the country's 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.[43][44]
1985
May 17 - United States - 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 affected.[45]
July 7 - United States and Canada - A powerful
wind storm affected a large portion of central North America and caused power outages for about one million customers from
Iowa to Ontario.[51]
1992
August 24 - United States - As
Hurricane Andrew passed over the northern Florida Keys it downed 17 miles (27 km) of power lines, breaking the wooden poles they were strung on, along a path that was in four feet (122 cm) 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 but 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 from the Turkey Point facility.
1995
October 4 - United States and Canada -
Hurricane Opal, which killed at least 59 people, knocked out power to over two million customers across eastern and southern North America.[52]
1996
July 2–3 - United States, Canada and
Mexico - Two million people lost power due to a transmission line overheating (the temperature was around 38 °C/100 °F)[53] in
Idaho and a 230-kV line between
Montana and Idaho tripping. Some customers were without power for minutes, while others were without for hours.[37]
August 10 - United States and Mexico - the
Western Intertie buckled under the high summer heat of the
1996 Western North America blackouts, causing a cascading power failure affecting nine western U.S. states and parts of Mexico. Four million people were affected.[54] Power was out in some locations for four days.
January - United States and Canada - The
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.[56]
January 3 -
Philippines - A broken power line caused by a falling
Meralco utility post in
Laguna led to a power interruption that affected the entire island of
Luzon for almost 7 hours.[57]
May 31 - United States and Canada - A powerful
wind storm caused a power outage for nearly two million customers across much of central North America.[59]
September 7 - United States - a series of widespread derechos in the Northeast (the
Labor Day Derechos) caused a power outage for hundreds of thousands of customers for several days.
December 8 - United States - In the
San Francisco area, 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 8:17 am 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 the city automatically and immediately shut down. Power was not fully restored until almost 4:00 pm PST the same day. Economic costs were estimated in tens of millions of dollars.[60]
1999
March 11-June 22 -
Brazil - The
1999 Southern Brazil blackout was a widespread
power outage (the largest ever at the time) that involved
São Paulo,
Rio de Janeiro,
Minas Gerais,
Goiás,
Mato Grosso,
Mato Grosso do Sul and
Rio Grande do Sul, affecting an estimated 75 to 97 million people and lasting 103 days.[61][62] A chain reaction was started when a lightning strike occurred at 22h 16m at an electricity substation in
Bauru, São Paulo State, causing most of the 440 kV circuits at the substation to trip. With few routes for the power to flow from the generating stations via the 440 kV system (a very important system to São Paulo, carrying electricity generated by the
Paraná River) a lot of generators automatically shut down because they did not have any load. The world's biggest power plant at the time,
Itaipu, tried to support the load that was no longer being supplied by the 440 kV power plants, but the 750 kV AC lines and the 600 kV DC lines that connected the plant to the rest of the system could not take the load and tripped too.[63] In Rio, the
military police placed 1,200 men in the streets to avoid
looting.[15] In
São Paulo, traffic authorities announced they closed the city's tunnels to prevent robberies. More than 60,000 people were on
Rio's subway when lights went out. At midnight, power began returning to some areas, with fully power restored on June 22.[64]
December 26–28 -
France -
Cyclone Lothar and Martin left 3.4 million customers without electricity, and forced
Électricité de France to acquire all the available portable power generators in Europe, with some even brought in from Canada.[67] 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.[68]
2000s
2000
May 9 -
Portugal - A major power outage left the entire southern half of the country, including
Lisbon, without power for a few hours. The blackout occurred shortly after 10 pm local time. The apagão (translated as "super outage"), suddenly plunged Lisbon in complete darkness. Stalled commuter trains and traffic light failures 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 electricity operator, later reported that the blackout was due to the electrocution of a
stork, which landed "on the wrong place at the wrong time".[69]
October 20 - Philippines - A massive power outage affected most of
Luzon including
Metro Manila, caused by system failures in the transmission lines of the
National Power Corporation in
Pangasinan and
Bulacan; electricity was fully restored 16 hours later.[70]
January 30 - United States - A major ice storm hit
Kansas City, Missouri, knocking trees into power lines and blowing up
transformers throughout the city. The outage affected more than 270,000 people.[74]
July 22 - United States - A severe
wind storm disrupted power to over 300,000 customers in the
Memphis, Tennessee, metropolitan area.[78]
August 14–28 - United States and Canada - The
Northeast blackout of 2003, a wide-area power failure in the northeastern US and central Canada, affected over 55 million people, 14 days fully restored.
September 2 -
Malaysia - The
2003 southern Malaysia blackout resulted when a power failure affected five states (out of 13), including the capital
Kuala Lumpur, for five hours, starting at 10:00 am local time.
September 23 -
Denmark and Sweden - A power failure affected five million people in east
Denmark and southern Sweden.[79][80]
July 12 -
Greece - Two power plants in
Lavrio and
Megalopolis 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.[82]
January -
Brazil - A cyber attack disrupted power service in three cities north of
Rio de Janeiro, affecting tens of thousands of people.[84]
May 25–August 3 -
Russia - The
2005 Moscow power blackouts ten-week-long power outage 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 the
Moscow Metro lost power, stranding people in trains, 10 weeks fully power restored.
August 29 - United States -
Hurricane Katrina caused widespread power outages throughout
Louisiana,
Mississippi,
Alabama, Florida,
Kentucky and
Tennessee. Exact totals are difficult to define, especially in
Louisiana parishes which became unoccupied for months. Power was also disrupted to 1.3 million customers when it passed over Florida several days earlier. In total 2.6 million people across the US were left without power as a result of the storm.
2006
August 1 - Canada - In the
Laurentians of Québec, a large number (146,000, at its peak in the evening) of households were left without electricity for a whole day, and some for up to a week, due to intense thunderstorms that rolled through southern Quebec, including the
greater Montreal area. Over 450,000 customers in total were affected.[85]
August 14 -
Japan - 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. Full restoration was completed four hours and 42 minutes after the start of the incident.[87][88]
November 4 -
Europe - On that night, over 15 million households across the main parts of
Germany, France, Italy,
Belgium,
Spain, and Portugal were left without power after a cascading breakdown of the
2006 European blackout. Power grids of 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.[89]
December 14 - United States and Canada - The
Hanukkah Eve windstorm of 2006 caused widespread damage to the power grid throughout
Washington and into parts of
Oregon,
British Columbia, and Idaho; in some cases, blackouts in the affected area lasted longer than a week.
2007
January 16–March 24 -
Australia - Power was cut to 200,000 people in
Victoria when
bushfires caused the state's electricity connection to the national grid to shut down.[90]
April 26 -
Colombia - A nationwide blackout struck at approximately 10:15 am local time, caused by an undetermined technical failure at a substation in the capital,
Bogotá. Power returned to most parts of the country after several hours.[91]
July 23 -
Spain -
Barcelona suffered a near-total blackout. Several areas remained without electricity for more than 78 hours due to a massive
electrical substation chain failure.
September 26–27 - Brazil - A
cyberattack caused major disruptions affecting more than three million people in dozens of cities in
Espírito Santo.[84]
December 2 - Canada - A winter storm damaged transmission systems, resulting in a blackout over much of Eastern
Newfoundland and Labrador affecting close to 100,000 customers. About 7,500 customers on the
Bonavista Peninsula were without service for almost a week.[92][93]
December 8–12 - United States - A series of
ice events cut power to over one million homes and businesses across the
Great Plains, including large portions of
Oklahoma,
Kansas, and
Nebraska.[94]
February 20 - Indonesia - 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, and the power supply was shut off in several areas to protect the aging infrastructure. This affected the capital,
Jakarta.[96]
February 26 - United States - 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.[97] The failure disrupted 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 on the east coast.[98][99]
April 2 - Australia - 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.[100]
April 8 -
Poland - From around 3:30 am, around 400,000 persons were left without power in the city of
Szczecin and its surroundings (as far as 100 km away). Most power was restored within a day. 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.[101]
May 20 -
Tanzania - The entire island of
Zanzibar suffered a complete shutdown of power. It happened at around 10:00 pm local time, and was caused by a rupture of the undersea cable from mainland Tanzania. Power was restored after one month, on June 18.
September 13 - United States -
Hurricane Ike landed in
Galveston, Texas and left over two 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.[102]
December 11 - United States - Rare winter snowfall in 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.[103]
December 12 - United States - A large ice storm in the Northeast collapsed 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.[104]
December 26 - United States - Power was lost for about 12 hours on the entire island of
Oahu,
Hawaii, starting at about 6:45 pm, where
President-electBarack Obama and his family were vacationing. It occurred due to lightning strikes on power lines, which caused
HECO's system to trip.[105]
2009
January 23 - France - A
severe windstorm knocked out power to 1.2 million customers.[106]
January 27 - United States - An
ice storm hit
Kentucky and in
Southern Indiana knocking out power to about 769,000.[107] As of February 15, about 12,000 were still without power from this storm.[108]
January 27–31 - Australia - 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. 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.[109][110][111]
March 30 - United Kingdom - 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 4:20 pm and power was slowly restored between 5:20 and 6:30 pm.[112]
April 15 -
Kazakhstan and
Kyrgyzstan - A little before 9:00 pm, a severe power cut blacked out up to 80% of
Almaty and northern parts of Kyrgyzstan, affecting a few million people for several hours. Power was not restored until after midnight local time.[113]
July 20 - United Kingdom - Power was cut to around 100,000 homes in the areas of South East
London and North
Kent, 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 about half of the homes for approximately four days, while 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.[114]
October 30 - New Zealand - At around 8:00 am local time, power was cut to the whole of
Northland and most of the northern half of Auckland, 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 11:00 am.[115]
November 10–20 - Brazil and
Paraguay - Starting at 10:13 pm Brasília official time,[116] the
2009 Brazil and Paraguay blackout was caused by the 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 all 20 turbines at the plant to shut down due to the abrupt fall of power demand. Four of Brazil's most densely populated states entirely lost power (including 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 for the system to fully recover. This is regarded as one of the largest blackouts in history, taking 10 days for power to be fully restored.[117][118][119]
2010s
2010
January 30 - Australia - Two separate transmission lines were hit by lightning, blacking out
Darwin, Northern Territory and the nearby cities of
Katherine and
Palmerston starting at about 6:00 am. Power was restored to all areas by 4:30 pm.[120]
February - United States - A pair of blizzards hit the Northeast on
February 5–6 and again just a few days later on
February 9–10. 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 affected.[121][clarification needed]
March 14 -
Chile - The
March 2010 Chile blackout left roughly 15 million people, about 90% of the country's population, 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 not directly related to damage from the
earthquake that hit the country the previous month.[122]
March 14 - United States - A severe windstorm disrupted power to hundreds of thousands of customers primarily in southwestern
Connecticut as well as parts of
Westchester County,
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 closed for up to five days the following week.[123]
June 27 - United Kingdom -
Portsmouth,
England suffered a massive blackout when a substation caught fire.[125]
July 15 - United States - 76,000 people in
Oakland and
Wayne counties in southeastern
Michigan lost power at approximately 7:00 pm during heavy storms.[126]
July 25 - United States - An estimated 250,000
Pepco customers lost power in the
Washington, D.C. area, due to severe storms that swept through the area.[127]
February 3 - Australia -
Cyclone Yasi hit communities in
North Queensland. The cyclone winds reached 300 km/h (186mp/h) and caused widespread damage through many communities. 170,000 homes lost electricity.[130]
February 22 - New Zealand - At 12:51, a
6.3-magnitude earthquake struck
Christchurch. Over 80 percent of the city (approximately 160,000 customers) lost power. Most power was restored within five days, though some central areas were still without power as late as May 1.[132]
April 27 - United States -One of the United States' most
devastating tornado outbreaks disrupted power to most of northern Alabama; some 311 high-tension electrical
transmission towers were destroyed by multiple, violent tornadoes. The
Browns Ferry Nuclear Plant, the largest in Alabama and second largest nuclear plant in the US was also disconnected by the tornadoes, leading the operators to shut down all 3 reactors following the event.[133][134]
June 30 - India -
Chennai suffered a major power outage that affected many parts of the city for more than 15 hours.[135]
July 11 - United States - The
Chicago area was hit by a large
derecho which disrupted power to over 850,000.[136]
July 11 -
Cyprus - A half-week power outage affected all cities on the Greek part of the island. The outage was caused by an explosion next to the Vassilikos power plant.[137][138]
July 23 - Canada - the failure of a glass insulator caused an outage of most of Northern
Saskatchewan for about four hours.[139]
August 27–28 - United States -
Hurricane Irene caused over five million power outages.[140]
September 8–9 - United States and Mexico - the
2011 Southwest blackout affected parts of
Southern California and
Arizona, as well as parts of northwestern Mexico. The failure initiated after maintenance of a 500 kV line brought it offline, and subsequent weaknesses in operations planning and lack of real-time situational awareness at multiple power stations led to cascading outages.[141] Power restoration was generally effective, but also affected by communication issues, with 100% power restoration occurring from 6–12 hours depending on location.[141] Over five million people were affected.[142]
September 16 -
South Korea - The country experienced a widespread blackout due to hot weather.[143]
September 24 - Chile - Nine million people in the north and central region were affected by the
2011 Chile blackout which lasted for at least two hours.[144]
January 14–April 27 -
Turkey - A 380 kV transformer failure in Bursa Natural Gas Fueled Combined Cycle PP, was accused of voltage deviations in the interconnected power grid that resulted in a blackout. Another failure occurred in 154 kV
Babaeski substation which caused a blackout in
Thrace. Six cities and more than 20 million people were affected by the
Marmara blackout of 2012. The power was back in all cities in the evening. The blackout disrupted metro and tram operation in Istanbul. Also gas heating systems did not work during the blackout. The problem was resolved by getting electricity from
Bulgaria to Thrace and feeding lines in
Istanbul from Ambarlı Natural Gas PP in Istanbul, it took 104 days before power was fully restored.
April 4 - Cyprus - A blackout hit every city in the island after the
Dhekelia Power Station failed from 4:42 to 9:20 am.[146]
April - United States - PG&E customers in
Oakland, California and surrounding areas in
Alameda County suffered a heat-related power outage.
July 31 - India - the
2012 India blackout left half the country without electricity supply. As of 2020[update] it is the biggest power failure in history. 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.[149]
October 29–30 - United States -
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.[150][151]
2013
January 26–February 5 - Australia - Ex-Tropical
Cyclone Oswald caused the loss of power to over 250,000 customers in
South East Queensland. Power was gradually restored over about 10 days.[152]
February 8–9 - United States - Some 650,000 homes and businesses in the northeast lost power as the result of a
powerful nor'easter that brought hurricane-force wind gusts and more than two feet (60 cm) of snow to New England.[153]
March 22 - United Kingdom - 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.[154]
March 28 -
Trinidad and Tobago- A nationwide blackout occurred, which was reportedly caused by low gas pressure around 12:37 am AST. The outage stemmed from two causes: a problem with the gas supply from Phoenix Park Gas Processors Ltd, which affected
Trinidad, and a subsequent problem at the Cove power plant, which affected
Tobago. T&TEC was able to restart the generators at Cove soon after, restoring power to the island from as early as 1 am. The final customer came back on at approximately 3 am. In
Trinidad,
T&TEC said the restoration started at approximately 4.45 am, as there was some delay in restarting the generators at the PowerGen plant in
Point Lisas. Around 11 am, approximately 90% of customers in Trinidad were back on with their electricity supply.[155]
April 1 - Poland - 100,000 people suffered under power outages due to heavy snowfall.[156]Warsaw Airport found the snow difficult to operate in.[157]
May 5 -
Philippines - 40–50% of
Luzon suffered power outages after several transmission lines tripped out, resulting in the isolation of Santa Rita, San Lorenzo, Calaca, Ilijan and Pagbilao Power Plants.[158]
May 21 -
Thailand - A power failure affected fourteen provinces (out of 76) for four hours, starting at 7:00 pm local time.[159]
May 22 -
Vietnam and
Cambodia -
2013 Southern Vietnam and Cambodia blackout. When moving a tree in
Binh Duong, a 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, it took 8 hours before power was fully restored.[160]
September 24 - Turkey the
Trakia region lost electric power. According to TREDAS (Power distribution utility of Trakia region), a failure in the substation of Hamitabat Gas Fueled Combined Cycle Power Plant in
Lüleburgaz in
Kırklareli Province caused a power outage in the
TEİAŞ((in Turkish)) 154 kV interconnected power transmission grid. Affected places included
Tekirdağ,
Edirne,
Kırklareli provinces and
Silivri in
Istanbul Province. The affected population was about 1.5 million citizens. Power was fully restored after two hours (by 00:24 on 25 September).[161]
December 22- Canada - The
December 2013 North American storm complex, covering an area from Ontario to as far east as the maritime provinces, caused power failures. According to reports, as many as 300,000 customers in
Toronto lost power.[162] Later reports placed the peak number in Ontario without power at 600,000[163] 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.[164]
2014
February 27 - Philippines - Parts of
Mindanao suffered power outages for six hours.[165]
July 15 - Philippines - 60% of the power grid in Luzon was lost due to
Typhoon Rammasun (Glenda) that devastated the Southern part of the island where many power plants are located, such as the Geothermal Plant in
Bicol and the Coal Plant in
Batangas.
July 21 - United Kingdom - A major power outage left London,
Essex, Kent and surrounding areas with no power for about half an hour. The cause was revealed to be schoolchildren who set fire to books near power lines in
Havering,
East London.
August 12 -
Malta - A nationwide power outage lasted for almost six hours. Power was lost across Malta island 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. The cause was a damaged cable which caused an explosion at the electricity distribution centre and automatic shutdown of both power stations. A previous nationwide power cut occurred on January 9, caused by a fault at the
Delimara Power Station.[166]
September 4 -
Egypt - A major blackout struck
Cairo and other cities at 6 am, continuing 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.[167]
October 5 - New Zealand - At 2:15 am, a cable trench fire at
Transpower's
Penrose substation in Auckland 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.[168]
November 1 -
Bangladesh - A nationwide power outage lasted for almost 10 hours. Power was lost at around 11:30 am and restored to most areas by 11:00 pm.[169][170]
November 21 -
South Africa -
Rolling blackouts 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 power company was already experiencing severe supply strain on the national grid due to technical difficulties affecting some of its other major turbines.[171][172][173]
2015
On January 26 -
Pakistan - 80% of the country (some 140 million people) were without power due to technical fault at a power station in
Sindh.[9] (
2015 Pakistan blackout)
February 11 -
Kuwait - A technical problem in one of the main power grids caused most of the country to lose power.[174]
March 27 - Netherlands - A technical problem in one of the main power grids in
North Holland caused 1 million households to lose power for at least an hour.[175]
March 31 - Turkey - Due to technical problems, over 90% of the country (about 70 million people) lost power. Unaffected regions were
Van and
Hakkari provinces which were fed by electricity from Iran.[citation needed]
August 29 - Canada - A powerful wind storm disrupted 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.[176]
November 17 - United States - A powerful wind storm that downed power lines left more than 161,000 customers without electricity in
Spokane County, Washington and in neighboring counties. It exceeded the ice storm that occurred 19 years previous, almost to the day.[177][178][179]
November 21 -
Crimea - A power outage left 1.2 million people in
Crimea with reduced or no power following explosions at transmission towers in
Ukraine.[citation needed]
June 7 -
Kenya - A nationwide blackout which lasted for over 4 hours[181] was caused by a monkey entering a power station. Only about 10 million citizens were affected by the outage as the
World Bank estimates that only 23% of the population have access to electricity.[182]
September 1 - United States -
Hurricane Hermine swept across the
Florida Panhandle, directly affecting the state capital,
Tallahassee. Hermine disrupted power for more than 350,000 people in Florida and southern
Georgia, many of whom were without power for a week.
September 21 -
Puerto Rico - A full power system collapse occurred on the island which affected its 3.5 million inhabitants. The outage, popularly referred to as the "Apagón" (translated as "super outage") has been labeled as the largest in Puerto Rico not caused by an atmospheric event. The outage occurred after two transmission lines, with power running up to 230 kV, failed.[183]
September 28 - Australia - The
2016 South Australian blackout affected the entire state of
South Australia (1.7 million people), owing to two tornados that destroyed three critical elements of infrastructure, and the power system protected itself by shutting down.[184]
2017
March 8 - United States - A severe winter windstorm interrupted power for about 1 million customers in Michigan. About 730,000 were still without power the next day.[185]
July 1 -
Central America - Countries in the region suffered a 6-hour power outage affecting millions.[186]
July 27 - United States - A crew working on the replacement for the
Herbert C. Bonner Bridge in the
Outer Banks of
North Carolina, severed a power cable and caused a blackout on the Outer Banks islands which affected more than 7,000 people during the peak of tourist season.[189] The outage lasted eight days.[190]
August 26 -
Uruguay - Half the population endured a 4-hour outage. No cause was reported besides bad weather.[192]
September 20 - Puerto Rico -
Hurricane Maria knocked out power to the entire island. Restoration efforts involved rebuilding significant parts of the already dilapidated power grid. Only 55% of residents had power back after three months,[193] and as of August 2018, electricity had finally been restored to the entirety of the island.[194]
October 30 - United States and Canada - A combination of the remnants of
tropical storm Philippe and an
extratropical system resulted in approximately 1.8 million power outages in
New England. The storm was particularly bad in
Midcoast Maine where roads became impassible for almost a week, leaving many schools to close for five to six days. Many people did not get their power back on for over ten days in some of the worst hit areas.[citation needed] In Canada,
Hydro-Québec reported 200,000 customers losing power because of damages due to strong winds produced by the storm.[195]
January 10, January 21, and February 27 -
Sudan - The entire country suffered a complete power outage on those days.[197]
March 2 - United States - A
Nor'easter struck the East Coast, leaving over two million people without power.[198]
March 21 - Brazil - A power outage struck large swathes of the country, affecting tens of millions of people, especially in the northern and northeastern regions. The blackout was due to the failure of a transmission line near the Belo Monte hydroelectric station.[199]
April 12 - Puerto Rico - 870,000 customers lost power when a tree fell on a major power line near
Cayey while workers were clearing vegetation.[200] A week later, on April 18, power was lost to all of Puerto Rico when an excavator repairing 2017 damage from
Hurricane Maria hit a line connecting two major power plants.[201] After a request by
GovernorRicardo Rosselló, the government electricity monopoly,
PREPA, terminated its relationship with D. Grimm, the subcontractor responsible for both incidents.[202]
July 3 - Azerbaijan - From around 00:20 till around 8:00, nearly the whole country, except
Nakhchivan (which had its own independent station),
Nagorno-Karabakh and other areas controlled by Armenian forces, had a major power outage. The reason was unexpectedly high temperatures which could not be handled by
Mingachevir Electric Station (the country's main electricity supplier).[203]
September 21 - Canada - A severe thunderstorm, with wind gusts up to 260 km/h, hit the
Ottawa/Gatineau region. The storm caused large scale damage to the power infrastructure, with 80 poles broken and one transformer station damaged. The destruction caused power outage for about 172,000 customers for intervals between few hours and several days.[205]
October 15 -
Venezuela - A fire in La Arenosa electrical station in
Carabobo caused a massive blackout which affected 16 states varying from 1 to 3 hours, although some reported that it took 18 hours in some zones. The Electrical Energy Minister
Luis Motta Domínguez reported that the cause of the fire was because of an explosion.[206]
November 15 - Indonesia - A power outage struck
South Sulawesi,
West Sulawesi and parts of
Central Sulawesi leaving an estimated total of nine million people without electrical supply. The blackout was due to the interference with the transmission path of the Makale-Palopo line.[207]
December 4 - Canada - Transmission line failures in south Saskatchewan caused widespread outages to 175,000 to 200,000
SaskPower customers for several hours. The outage was caused by significant frost collection on grid equipment.[208]
December 20 - Canada - A windstorm caused outages to 600,000
BC Hydro customers across the
Lower Mainland,
Vancouver Island and
Gulf Islands. The storm damaged 300 power poles and 170 transformers. Power was fully restored December 31.[209][210] Winds reached speeds of 100 km/h.[211]
2019
February 24 - United States - A wind storm in the Lower Great Lakes caused by a very tight pressure gradient around a low pressure system caused hundreds of thousands of power outages, with Ohio and Pennsylvania being the hardest hit. Restoration efforts lasted for up to five days.
March 7 - Venezuela - The first in a
series of concurrent, nationwide blackouts. The first large outage was partially resolved by March 14,[212][213] but smaller outages persisted in some regions for days afterwards,[214] and a second multi-day outage began on March 25.[215] In March, the country was without power for at least 10 days overall.[216] The blackouts stemmed from the failure of
Simón Bolívar Hydroelectric Plant (Guri Dam) in the state of
Bolívar, and left most of the country in darkness.[217] By March 12, power began returning to some parts of the country, but
Caracas remained only partially powered and western Venezuela remained dark.[26] Government officials claimed the blackout was "an act of sabotage," while experts attributed the failure to aging infrastructure and insufficient maintenance.[26][218] At least 43 deaths were attributed to the initial wave of blackouts.[219] The last reported blackout occurred on July 22, but was resolved the following day.[27]
June 9 - United States - 350,000 people in
Dallas County, Texas lost power after a severe thunderstorm downed hundreds of trees across the area. 200,000 remained without power on the evening of June 10[220] and 16,000 on the afternoon of June 12 restored.[221] 41% of traffic signals in the city of Dallas were affected; 496 were temporarily inoperable and 168 reverted to flashing red signals.[222]
June 16 -
Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay[223] were affected by a
blackout - The entirety of those countries suffered a massive power outage, leaving an estimated total of 48 million people without electricity. The cause was operative error.[224][225][226]
July 19–20 - United States - Severe thunderstorms, tornadoes and floods caused damage and power outages throughout
Wisconsin disrupted power to more than 277,000 customers.[227] Governor
Tony Evers declared a statewide state of emergency, with preliminary estimates of damage and cleanup costs of $5.3 million.[228] Some affected customers were still without power a week later.[229]
July 19 - United States - Storms and high winds in Michigan caused loss of power to roughly 600,000 to 800,000 customers[230] and left many still without power for six days,[231] the second highest number of storm related outages in Michigan power company
DTE Energy Co.'s history.[232]
July 22 - United States - Over 300,000 people went without power in
New Jersey following a storm.[233]
August 4 - Indonesia - More than 100 million people[234] were affected by a
massive blackout that affected most of Java; particularly
Banten,
Jakarta,
West Java, parts of
Central Java, and the
Special Region of Yogyakarta. The blackout began as early as 11:50 local time, when
Jakarta MRT authorities began to detect the loss of electrical supply,[235] rendering its trains inoperable and requiring people stuck inside to evacuate from it.
Jakarta LRT and
KRL Commuterline also suffered from the blackout making
TransJakarta the only mass transit transportation remaining in operation at the time of the blackout.
Go-Jek and
Grab had major problems due to lack of internet services. Most of traffic lights stopped functioning, causing congestion. The initial blackout lasted around 9 hours where at 21:00 local time power to most of the affected areas was restored,[236] with almost 20 hours of blackout in total. Initially, the
PLN (Indonesia's state electricity company) stated that cause of the outage was due to disruptions in a number of plants in Java,[237] but later said that the cause was due to a disruption in the Ungaran-Pemalang high-voltage power line.[238]
August 9 - United Kingdom - A major power blackout hit parts of England and
Wales, affecting over a million customers and causing widespread travel disruption. Power cuts were reported in north
Oxfordshire,[239][240] the Midlands, Wales, London, the North and South East.
Oxfordshire County Council issued a statement saying
traffic lights had failed in parts of the county and one victim said the failure had caused '
gridlock' in
Banbury.Train services were affected across South East England causing trains to be delayed and canceled when departing from London stations after a 'surge' on the grid cut off the controls to many
railway signals. The blackout was blamed on a
lightning strike and subsequent failure to remain operational by energy providers
Hornsea Wind Farm,
Npower and
UK Power Networks, who were later fined £10.5m.[241][242][243][244][245]
September 1 - United States, Canada and the
Bahamas -
Hurricane Dorian damaged transmission systems and caused extensive lengthy power outages along the Atlantic seaboard of North America.
September 29 - Spain - A power cut struck the entire island of
Tenerife, affecting almost one million people and carrying out dozens of emergency services, most of them people trapped in elevators.[246]
November 1 - United States and Canada - A major storm left nearly 2,000,000 people without power. In some areas of eastern Ontario and most of southern Québec, 964,000 people were affected.[247] The same storm also cut power to over 800,000 customers in 14 US states between Thursday, October 31 and Saturday, November 2, with 420,000 still without power after three days.[248] On November 2, 600,000 Canadian homes had been reconnected, though over 200,000 still remained disconnected. Many flooded areas—like Sherbrooke—were left without power even longer.
November 3 - France - Around 140,000 people were without power for over nine hours in the
Pyrénées-Atlantiques region.[249]
November 18 -
Barbados - Approximately 130,000 people on the island lost power for over 13 hours starting at 7:29am.[250] The outage continued into the following day.[251]
November 25 - Australia - A wind storm ripped through
Sydney, leaving 76,000 homes without power,[252] with 24,000 still in the dark on Wednesday, November 27.[253]
2020s
2020
January 19 - Indonesia - A power outage struck
Central and
South Kalimantan, leaving an estimated total of 6.8 million people without electrical supply due to a thunderstorm.[254]
April 12–14 - United States - A
tornado outbreak moved across the US from Texas to
Maine, causing 4.3 million customers to lose power, and affecting an estimated 9.3 million people.[196] The system created 140 confirmed tornadoes including three rated EF4.[255]
August 3–5 - United States -
Hurricane Isaias pushed through the US from
South Carolina to New England then up into Canada, causing 6.4 million customers to lose power, affecting an estimated 13.8 million people.[196] With 1.65 million customers affected in New Jersey and 1.19 million customers affected in
New York.[196]
August 10 - United States - a
derecho moved through the US across
Nebraska, Iowa,
Illinois, and Indiana, leaving more than 1 million customers without electricity access; including 250,000 customers in the Chicago area.[citation needed]
October 12 - India -
Mumbai suffered one of its worst blackouts in decades as technical glitches caused its power-transmission network to shut down, leaving millions of people without power for hours.[256]
October 26–28 - United States - An
ice storm, bringing snow from
New Mexico into
Oklahoma and northern Texas, left over 400,000 people without power in Oklahoma for multiple days, with over 40,000 still without power 10 days after.
Oklahoma Gas & Electric called it "the worst storm in our company's history". The storm was especially damaging because leaves were still on the trees and other tall vegetation, causing large limbs to break and fall onto power lines and city streets due to the extra weight.[257]
2021
January 9 - Pakistan - A power outage struck almost the entire country, leaving around 200 million people without electrical supply. The blackout was due to a frequency drop resulting from a "fault" at Guddu at 11:41 p.m.[258]
January 10 - United States - Outages related to snowfall were experienced across eastern Texas, affecting over 100,000 customers.[259]
January 19 - Philippines - The entire Western Mindanao area experienced a total blackout starting at 8:30am PST.[260] According to
NGCP, the incident has been blamed on maliciously planted vegetation.[261]
February 14–15 and 17–18 - United States - A
first and
second winter storm and associated cold wave caused over five million inhabitants to lose power across the US, with Texas alone having over
4.3 million customers without power.[262]
May 21 -
Jordan - A blackout left the entire population of 10 million people without electricity for three hours.[263]
May 25 - Australia - Almost 400,000 customers in
Queensland lost power at around 2pm AEST after a fire in a turbine at a power station in Central Queensland. Power was gradually restored over the following hours into the evening.[264]
May 27 - Indonesia - At 13:39 PM there were blackouts in
East, Central and South Kalimantan provinces. The cause of the blackout was a disruption in the Tengkawang–Embalut 150 kiloVolt (kV) transmission network. The disruption caused 29 substations to experience blackouts. More than half of Kalimantan's population was affected.[265]
June 10 - Puerto Rico - A fire at a transformer substation in
Monacillos, interrupted power to 400,000 customers.[266]
August 11 - United States - Severe thunderstorms knocked out power to more than 830,000 people in Michigan.[267]
China - Persistent blackouts in the second half of the year reduced factory output, hitting millions of factories and homes[268] in more than half the nation[269] and impacting 44% of industrial activity.[270] Factories were cut off from power for 3 to 7 days at a time.[271] Sales of candles "skyrocketed".[272]
29 October - Australia - A severe windstorm hit Melbourne, knocking out power to more than 520,000 customers. Victorian energy minister
Lily D'Ambrosio said that this was the largest number of customers without power in the state's history.[273]
2022
January 25 - Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and
Uzbekistan - The Kyrgyz capital
Bishkek, Uzbek capital
Tashkent, and Kazakhstan's economic center Almaty were hit by a severe power outage caused by a grid stressed by summer drought and a recent boom in
cryptocurrency mining.[274]
May 21 - Canada - A
derecho, with peak winds of around 190 kilometres per hour (120 mph), ravaged through parts of Ontario and Quebec.[275] At its peak, it caused roughly 1.1 million customers to lose their power and thousands were still without power a week after. It cost approximately
C$70 millions to repair the damage.[276]
June 13–14 - United States - The Great Lakes Derecho[277] pounded portions of Indiana, West Virginia and Ohio with wind gusts up to 95 miles per hour, as a result more than 600,000 households lost power across these three states. The situation was worsened by a following heat wave, causing high demand on electrical infrastructure which resulted in additional outages and making conditions difficult for those without power. Some of those affected by this storm did not get power restored for nearly a week.
October 4 - Bangladesh - 140 million people lost power.[278] It started shortly after 2:00 p.m.[6] Government spokesman Shamim Ahsan alleged it was caused by a technical malfunction.[6] The country was unable to import enough fuel for all its power stations to use, so some of them were recently shut down.[6]
October 22-present - Ukraine and
Moldova -
Air and missile attacks by Russian forces as part of
its invasion of Ukraine have devastated much of the country's infrastructure and left millions without electricity. Outages also affected Moldova, which is heavily interconnected with the Ukrainian grid
November 4 - United States - 190,000 customers (more than half of the county's 365,000 households) in
Snohomish County, Washington were without power for several days after a windstorm swept through the area with wind speeds of up to 80 mph.[279]
January 23 - Pakistan - 220 million people[281][282][283] were without power from 7.34 am local time due to chronic power frequency fluctuations in the south of the country,[283] up to 05:15[282] the next day.[282]
March 1 - Argentina - Parts of
Buenos Aires and the provinces of
Buenos Aires,
Santa Fe,
Neuquén,
Córdoba and
Mendoza, experienced blackouts, plunging millions of people into darkness for at least two hours during a heatwave as traffic lights went out of order and
Buenos Aires Metro stations underwent total darkness. The outage was believed to have been caused by a fire in a field near high-tension lines connected to the
Atucha Nuclear Power Plant[284][285]
March 14 - United States - Nearly 300,000 people[286] in the
San Francisco Bay Area, California were without power after strong wind storms.[287]
April 5 - Canada - over 1.1 million customers were left without power due to a major ice storm that covered
Montreal in ice and left hundreds of thousands without power well into the weekend.
9 April -
South Africa - over 2.5 million people were left with out power in the capital
Pretoria after vandalised high voltage 132kv power lines caused 7 pylons to collapse onto the
N4 Highway.[288][289][290][291]
8 May -
Botswana - the entire country was plunged into darkness after midnight following a “grid disturbance” at
Morupule A and B Power plants, as well as the Transmission Power Line that connects the country to South Africa. Load-shedding was implemented across the country while repairs were conducted.[292]
14 September-
Nigeria - a “total system collapse” resulted in widespread blackouts that affected the entire country.[293]
20 September-
Tunisia - a "sudden breakdown" at the
Radès power station in the southern suburbs of
Tunis caused a nationwide power outage that lasted for up to four hours.[294]
January 2 - Philippines - The entire
Western Visayas region experienced a massive blackout starting at 2:19 pm PST. The cause of the outage was being investigated by the
NGCP.[296][297][298]
^Chien-Hsing Lee; Shih-Chieh Hsieh (2001). "A technical review of the power outage on July 29, 1999 in Taiwan". 2001 IEEE Power Engineering Society Winter Meeting. Conference Proceedings (Cat. No.01CH37194). Vol. 3. pp. 1353–1358.
doi:
10.1109/PESW.2001.917283.
ISBN978-0-7803-6672-5.
S2CID110465120.
^"Apagão atinge parte do Nordeste" [Blackout reaches part of the Northeast]. G1.globo.com (in Portuguese). February 4, 2011. Retrieved November 7, 2012.
^Leischner, Michael (July 21, 2019).
"Power still out for many after weekend storms". WSAU. Archived from
the original on August 6, 2019. During its peak more than 176,000 WPS and 100,000 WE Energies customers were without power after powerful storms moved through Wisconsin