Talk:List of major power outages

Previous discussions without headers
Please, do not list minor blackouts affecting only a few thousand people unless thay are otherwise notable. Billhpike 15:07, August 22, 2005 (UTC)

I specifically recall a 1966 blackout (in or about October) of the PJM system that disrupted power starting about 10 am in MD, NJ, DE, and PA on a weekday. That would have been a few million people affected. Unfortunately I cannot locate references to this event.

Table
Does anyone think it would be nice to organize this into a table. I thought I might give it a try. --CoolGuy 05:01, 14 August 2006 (UTC)


 * I think this is a good idea and would be an advantage. Angerdan (talk) 11:32, 10 December 2022 (UTC)

Unbalanced
This list is unbalanced. At least 1/3 is 2006 events and no events before the 60s are mentioned. Too much vividness here. --Jambalaya 15:49, 27 October 2006 (UTC)


 * Maybe the article needs a minimum number of affected customers in order to be considered notable enough for inclusion in this article. And/or number of days they were affected.  Otherwise there's a lot of chaff.  Tempshill 06:11, 1 August 2007 (UTC)


 * A minimum number of people or a certain % of a country's population perhaps? For instance if the power were to go out in the whole of Luxembourg or even someone like Monaco it would still be a big event, even if it is only a small country in terms of population. Cls14 18:51, 31 October 2007 (UTC)


 * This has not got any better. The events listed are haphazard and most of the work on the page seems to be deleting those that don't meet the cut.  I was thinking of adding the recent Havana black out and noticed that the Hurricane Isaac blackouts are not listed.  I don't know if this page is really worth having if it is not going to be at least kept up with current events, much less the pre-2006 missed events. Autkm (talk) 23:17, 10 September 2012 (UTC)

Split into sections for each continent
Hum! This article needs a big clean-up and/or re-arrangement. I would suggest to separate this list into sections for each continent (probably with a table to make it more good-looking. Maybe it the long range we could throw separate articles for each continent if more events from the past adds up.--JForget 01:14, 14 May 2007 (UTC)

Solid criteria for inclusion
I think what is needed is a solid set of criteria that entries need to conform to. Not every outage is notable, so we need a solid, well defined test for significance. To start us off:


 * 1. The outage must not be planned by the service provider.
 * 2. The outage must affect at least 1,000 people AND last at least one hour.
 * 3. There must be at least 1,000,000 person hours of disruption.

A person hour of disruption would be the number of people multiplied by the length of the disruption in hours. The longer the disruption, the fewer people it needs to affect to become significant. The shorter the disruption the more an outage needs. Nailedtooth (talk) 22:23, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

Too many
Are we intending to list every single blackout? We had no power where I live for about 4 hours last Saturday, should I add it to the list? 65.121.141.34 (talk) 16:30, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

Missing Outages
There were two major outages that affected the western united states in 1996, not just the one shown in August. The first was in July. Both have been widely reported in the internet. See for instance http://www.cc.state.az.us/divisions/administration/news/96-1111.htm

I recall a major outage in the western united states in the early 1980's, but I couldn't find any cites on the internet. During a December storm (as I recall), a transmission tower in PG&E's service area (Northern California) collapsed under wind load and took out to lines on the Pacific Intertie. There was a several hour power outage affecting perhaps 20% of Southern California (Disneyland was evacuated) and scattered power outages occured as far away as Phoenix. Perhaps someone has details to corroborate my recollection.

192.212.253.17 (talk) 23:00, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

I was looking for the same December 1982 event and found a lot of false positives. The transmission tower was near Tracy, California. I found this: http://cnls.lanl.gov/~chertkov/SmarterGrids/Talks/Tate.pdf which contains the following "December 22, 1982 Blackout: Volume and format of raw data made it hard to gauge the extent of a disturbance and determine the corrective action to take (12,350 MW, 5 million people)"

http://news.findlaw.com/hdocs/docs/ferc/uscanrpt40504ch7-10.pdf (This is from a document prepared by a joint collaboration between the US Department of Energy and the Canadian Ministry of Natural Resources.   I do not believe the US Government copyrights such reports.) December 22, 1982: West Coast Blackout. This disturbance resulted in the loss of 12,350 MW of load and affected over 5 million people in the West. The outage began when high winds caused the failure of a 500-kV transmission tower. The tower fell into a parallel 500-kV line tower, and both lines were lost. The failure of these two lines mechanically cascaded and caused three additional towers to fail on each line. When the line conductors fell they contacted two 230-kV lines crossing under the 500-kV rights-of-way, collapsing the 230-kV lines. There is more in the pdf. The rest of the chapters are linked here:  http://news.findlaw.com/legalnews/documents/  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 15.219.153.75 (talk) 23:29, 11 July 2011 (UTC)

Added December 22, 1982 West Coast Outage. Qwy47 (talk) 06:23, 2 August 2012 (UTC)

Current California Outage/Storm/Crisis (January 2010)
Where is the info about this? Radical Mallard (talk) 21:11, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

Removed the Waltham Outtage
I removed the Waltham, Massachusetts outtage as it did not meet the criteria. Waltham, Massachusetts has a population of 59,226 and the outtage lasted less than one hour and 45 minutes while effecting a few streets of the city. Assuming that the three streets listed contained all of the city's population (they don't) then the man hours of power lost would be 103,645... about ten percent of the required amount. Danpenning (talk) 20:24, 24 March 2010 (UTC)

Removed 2010 Entries
I've removed the May 24th (Provo, Utah) and July 4th (Northern Ireland) outages.

The Provo one lasted roughly 1hr 45min, according to this site, which means that it would have had to have affected 1,000,000 people to be noteworthy. That link and the article linked in the original entry make it clear that only parts of Provo (approx pop. 500,000), meaning that it fails to meet the criteria.

The Northern Ireland one is a bit harder to quantify, as I can't find exact numbers. However, [the BBC link] is from the morning of the 5th and notes that power was restored by that point (and, in most locations, had been restored that same day), well below the likely threshold needed to reach the 1,000,000 customer hours. (Speaking of which: does anyone have more information on the earlier NI entry? The link provided gives no information about the length of the power disruption.) -- g026r (talk) 04:41, 6 July 2010 (UTC)

Toronto July 5, 2010 doesn't quite make it
The Globe and Mail says the fire started at 4:40 PM and power was restored everywhere by 8:30, so just under 4 hours. Only some people were affected for as long as 4 hours. The Globe and Mail says up to 250,000 people affected. This barely makes the cut-off; it's not encyclopediac to record every time the lights flicker. True, it's embarrsasign to have an outage with the Queen in town, but at least she didn't get stranded in the middle of the river like the previous visit to Winnipeg. --Wtshymanski (talk) 21:47, 6 July 2010 (UTC)

DC outages 2011 from January 26th storm
I lost power for 3 days after 8 inches of snow in Rockville Maryland. My house went down to 48 degrees. I have pepco. Why isn't this on the list? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 138.88.128.150 (talk) 21:21, 19 February 2011 (UTC)

this is power cuts love wrong place — Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.24.51.238 (talk) 03:16, 14 August 2011 (UTC)

Hampton Roads Power outage of March 24th
There was a super storm that hit the south east VA area on the 24th and knocked out power to more than 172, 000 people and it took the power company 3 days to restore power. Would that be a good thing to add to the list? Here is the story about the storm. --Akemi Loli Mokoto (talk) 13:25, 28 May 2011 (UTC)
 * Almost 200k sounds like a lot of people, I think it's worth adding. AweCo (talk) 23:24, 14 July 2011 (UTC)

June 5, 1967
There was a power outage in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Maryland that lasted ten hours. It spilled over into New York City, as well. I believe it belongs on the list. ghh 19:04, 22 October 2011 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by George H. Harvey (talk • contribs)

Unreferenced
Some entries have been unreferenced for 4 years - and some entries no longer meet the arbitrary 10000000 customer-hours cutoff. I have removed these if they didn't link to a main article about that particular outage. --Wtshymanski (talk) 14:43, 4 April 2012 (UTC)

Regarding the 2012 Mid-Atlantic outage, some reports state "up to 4 million households." Using Virginia statistics to calculate, that translates to 10.2 Million people. Someone might want to look into this discrepancy... Foxpoet (talk) 19:55, 4 July 2012 (UTC)

Removed Flathead County, MT June 26, 2012
Article is unreferenced. A search of news websites, even local MT do not show it despite blackouts affecting 5000 people being reported. Flathead County had a 2010 Census population of 90,000 and the comment in this article indicates parts of Flathead County were affected. Even if all 90,000 were blacked out for the entire 9 hours, this does not meet the million threshold. Autkm (talk) 18:16, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

Reconsider Criteria
I think we should reconsider the criteria listed for a power outage's inclusion in this list, for several reasons. First, the inclusion of a list of arbitrary criteria is unencylopedic; basically, we have Wikipedia conducting synthesis on what is considered a "power outage." Possibly, the article should be moved to "List of major power outages," and we should start using a standard of such power outages published by a government agency or major utility company. Second, it seems to me that the criteria listed are inadequate, because they preclude inclusion of yesterday's Super Bowl XLVII power outage, which was only half an hour long but affected over a hundred million people (in the US alone) who were watching the game. It seems clear to me that the circumstances result in this relatively short-duration and small-area power outage actually being a highly significant, noteworthy, and memorable power outage; we should be going by what power outages reliable sources consider notable, rather than our own arbitrary standard. Probably, we should not include any power outages that were not covered beyond local news, while any power outage covered by non-local sources, regardless of smallness of immediate effect, should be considered a candidate for inclusion. --DavidK93 (talk) 19:55, 4 February 2013 (UTC)


 * You bring a good point in mentioning the Superbowl outage. While I think having criteria is a good idea, they are there to prevent insignificant events from crowding the page, not to prevent significant events from being on it. In other words, they are there to create a defined standard of notability an event must meet or surpass. If an event does not meet the criteria, but is otherwise overwhelmingly notable, it should be included. Perhaps the criteria could be amended to make exceptions for highly notable events that do not otherwise meet the minimum standards. In any case, I support the Superbowl power outage being in this page. Nailedtooth (talk) 00:27, 5 February 2013 (UTC)


 * who commented above. It would seem that a short outage, that affects so many may well be worthy of inclusion, particularly if it hasn't happened before. There is quite decent coverag of it at Super Bowl XLVII. It could be mentioned briefly here with a "See Main page" hatnote.
 * I see we have criteria, but there appears to have been little discussion. Were these criteria arbitrarily decided/suggested by someone, and then accepted as consensus because no one objected? Naturally I am raising this because I was without power for nearly 6 hours today In the Sutherland Shire in Sydney, Australia. 40, 000 homes and business were affected for nearly 6 hours.This is, I think highly unusual, at least the longest outage I can remember in the last 25 years. It has also resulted in pollution to Port Botany, as untreated sewage flowed from a treatment plant for 2 hours.
 * Sources:
 * Power outage plunges Sutherland Shire into darkness 9news.com.au
 * Swimmers warned after sewage released into Botany Bay during power outage abc.net.au
 * Notable enough? Discuss! 220  of  Borg 11:00, 14 August 2015 (UTC)

Requested move

 * The following discussion is an archived discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review. No further edits should be made to this section. 

The result of the move request was: moved. Jenks24 (talk) 12:06, 4 April 2013 (UTC)

List of power outages → List of major power outages – This list does not include smaller power outages and explicitly states a minimum "size" of a power outage to be includable. So the new name would make more sense and would be clearer to editors about the intent of the article. CodeCat (talk) 17:49, 24 March 2013 (UTC)


 * Comment I think the list should be restricted to notable outages, like most other lists are restricted to notable ones. Some larger outages are not notable, so can be trimmed off the list. Each entry in the list should meet some notability threshold. Some smaller electrical outages are more notable that many large ones. If the restriction change is made, then no rename is needed. For example, a power outage for 1 hour at a nuclear powerplant that only affects 100 plant workers is significantly more notable than the standard outage, since it could result in a nuclear meltdown. -- 65.92.180.137 (talk) 00:18, 25 March 2013 (UTC)
 * I still prefer "major" in the title because "notable" is ambiguous and vague. It can be defined when something is major, but how do you define notability? You can't, and that's one of the reasons why I think it's a bad criterium in general. It basically prevents editors from making any kind of informed decision about content and instead puts it at the mercy of anyone who disputes the notability of one thing or another. CodeCat (talk) 02:31, 25 March 2013 (UTC)
 * Support move to either List of major power outages or List of notable power outage. The lede states This is a list of notable wide-scale power outages so notable would seem perfectly acceptable. Zarcadia (talk) 20:40, 25 March 2013 (UTC)
 * We should avoid a name like the latter while other alternatives are available. See WP:LIST. --BDD (talk) 18:07, 1 April 2013 (UTC)
 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

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South Australia 2016 Failure.
It's in all the media - even being twisted by CC Deniers that it was the Wind Power Gen that caused it, denying that about 30 towers down and 80,000 strikes blacked out about 1 million for about 24 + hours .... :-) 60.242.247.177 (talk) 13:35, 29 September 2016 (UTC)

Many reports, this is just the latest http://reneweconomy.com.au/s-a-blackouts-dud-forecasts-lousy-software-failing-gas-plants-46047/

AEMO report discussed https://www.aemo.com.au/Media-Centre/Unified-approach-to-power-system-security-required 210.185.74.190 (talk) 01:10, 16 February 2017 (UTC)

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February 25 2017, Scranton storm
Moved from article page. Only citation I could find listed "thousands" without power, not 285,000. Stono rebellion (talk) 08:01, 26 August 2018 (UTC) On February 25, convective winds of 110 mph (180 km/h) from a severe storm struck near Scranton, Pennsylvania in the United States[158] and caused 285,000 to go without electricity for at least 3 days.

Reverted Edits?
There were recently a couple of major outages in the United States. I note had initially added them, with this:

Between July 19th and July 23rd, large systems of thunderstorms moved through the Great Lakes and Mid-Atlantic regions of the USA, causing over 2.7 million electric customers to loss power, effecting over 6 million people.

However, that was almost immediately reverted by without any comment and as a 'minor' edit. Can we get clarification as to why such significant power outages are being removed?


 * Thanks, I agree! also reverted a change I made on another page Hurricane Michael, only saying "Ths isn't an rs" without explaining why he feels that way, I tried started a discussion over there and have not heard anything back yet. Jason Bluefire (talk) 17:42, 25 July 2019 (UTC)


 * I'm new here, so I'm guessing, but maybe the 'rs' is an abbreviation for "reliable source"? I actually tried to revert to your edit, but it said it had to be done manually, and I figured I'd check here in talk first. So, if you're game, maybe try putting your edit again, but quote some of the major papers/networks coverage, instead of using poweroutage.us? Cheers. ;)
 * RS does indeed mean reliable source and your repeated URL addition is not a reliable source. Please stop adding it. Praxidicae (talk) 21:43, 25 July 2019 (UTC)
 * Why do you feel like it is not a reliable source? Poweroutage.us is used by almost every major news network in the United States to source power outage information for major events. It is a primary source, WP:USEPRIMARY Jason Bluefire (talk) 03:52, 26 July 2019 (UTC)
 * - Thank you for clarifying. I'm somewhat taken back by your methodology, though. Why zoink a contribution, instead of just putting in a proper source? This page is outdated: There have been more than a few very notable outages. If you're a contributor to this page, then why not give an example of proper sourcing? If you're not a contributor, then just blanket removing an edit seems unproductive, as well as a way to discourage people who would like to get involved with Wikipedia from doing so. I'm not very good with writing, but I'll add entries if need be. There should be at the very least the Great Lakes and now New Jersey. Both have affected hundreds of thousands of people.  The outage in New York last weekend may also qualify.  Here are some sources:
 * Utility crews again worked though the night and by early Thursday morning, the power outages have dwindled to several thousand homes and businesses after 360,000 were left in the dark from the fierce storms on Monday night.
 * New Jersey / July 22nd - July 25th


 * After two rounds of severe thunderstorms this weekend knocked out electricity to more than 800,000 across Michigan, some people won’t see their power restored until sometime Wednesday, utility officials said late Sunday.


 * As of Sunday afternoon, about 350,000 DTE customers remained without power, largely in the Southeast Michigan area. At one point in the immediate aftermath of Friday night and Saturday’s storms, nearly 600,000 DTE customers lost power.


 * Consumers Energy had about 67,000 homes and businesses still without power tonight, compared to the 220,000 of its customers affected overall
 * Michigan / July 19 - July 25th (?)


 * Between WPS in central and Northeast Wisconsin, and We Energies in the Fox Valley, the companies say they have restored power to more than 277,000 customers since violent storms hit last Friday and Saturday.
 * Wisconsin / July 19 - projected July 26th


 * The Michigan and Wisconsin outages actually are different areas from the same storm, which is why I believe just grouped them together under the Great Lakes. Perhaps you or someone else can help place these notable outages in the page and nurture instead of squashing enthusiasm to contribute. :)

Without any apparent further response or guidance forthcoming from, I'll go ahead and add these outages myself. If any actual editors are still involved in this, please feel free to clean them up. I'm still rather befuddled why 's initial edit (using a very well known source) was removed instead of being fixed, given these outages are very well documented.

Longest?
This section heading is misleading. Surely when someone sees it they're going to expect results measured in real time rather than "customer hours". (Analogy: Just because there were more people around to experience it, was last Christmas Day longer than the one in 1919? Of course not!) Best fix for this would be to have incidents ranked by how long they *actually* lasted. (By all means, retain the existing info in this or its own section.) Alternatively, rename the section to be more descriptive of what it actually contains. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2A02:C7F:961C:1F00:3457:DCB4:2142:64C5 (talk) 13:32, 21 June 2019 (UTC)

To me this just suggests and additional "Elapsed Duration" column for the table. Although that implies that you have to determine where to source that number. SomeIOTSecGuy (talk) 18:14, 21 June 2019 (UTC) SomeIoTSecGuy

Adding (approximate) figures for person-hours of disruption in the table?
The criteria for inclusion include the following: “There must be at least 1,000,000 person-hours of disruption.”

Given one of the four conditions is specified in person-hours, would it not make sense for us to include (approximate) figures for person-hours of disruption in the table? My thinking is that this could help to give readers a better sense of the overall impact of the events listed, as well as another way to rank the disruption caused (if desired).

Let me know what you all think. Qofif (talk) 13:51, 24 September 2022 (UTC)

August 9 2019 England and Wales
This paragraph, which is about major blackouts in parts of England and Wales, mostly references one source, but uses the same source excessively in inline citations. Could we possibly cite the source just once at the end of the paragraph to reduce clutter?

Scotty2083 (talk) 02:37, 22 November 2022 (UTC)

Does Memphis, August 1978 meet criteria
I'm not sure what numbers to look for to see if this event meets the criteria. Sorta cool it was caused by one security guard wandering in and flipping a switch.

https://www.google.com/search?q=August+of+1978%2C+memphis+blackout+

Lent (talk 13:54, 21 December 2022 (UTC)