Power outage hits up to 5M in US Southwest, Mexico

AP via Yahoo! News ^ | September 8, 2011 | By JULIE WATSON

[jonrick46]

"The outage was likely caused by an employee removing a piece of monitoring equipment that was causing problems at a power substation in southwest Arizona."

What would happen if our power grid was hit by terrorism? The failure would take longer to fix. Or, are we being given a cover story for what really happened . . .

[toomanylaws]

“Life is good.”
Your description sounds wonderful. I’m glad you turned your lemons into lemonade. If everyone could do as you did the world would be a much happier place.

[stayathomemom]

The blackout of Aug. 14, 2003 affected an estimated 10 million people in Ontario and 45 million people in eight U.S. states. Wiki has an article which discusses media coverage. I have no idea what it was like because I was on the periphery of the the affected area. It was hot and muggy in the Detroit area! The daughters' cousins came over and played scrabble out on the deck until it was too dark to see and the mosquitoes got too bad. I've forgotten how long we were without power, but I do know my sisters, who live less than a mile from me, got theirs back a half a day before mine came back on. I was extremely envious!

[rickyc]

They should make a comedy movie about this = some stupid cable-guy dicking around and pulling the wrong lever”)))

[DivineMomentsOfTruth]

So one employee messing around with some equipment can cause five million people to go without power for a day or so?

My thoughts Exactly! They are lying to us.. again.

[lgjhn23]

“I noted that the outage knocked 2 nuke stations offline. I have to wonder why the nuke stations cannot continue to deliver power without outside power coming in? Can they not use some of their own generated power to maintain whatever equipment needs it (presumably transmission/transformer systems)?”

For safe shutdown/cool down, a nuke needs to have a reliable, independent source of electricity from the outside. IF that source is interrupted for any reason, by Federal regs, they need to declare an “unusual event” and commence a shutdown. They also have huge emergency diesel-powered generators available to them to ensure a source of power for shutdown/cool down should they loose that outside source. Some of these regs were the outcome of Three Mile Island. They take no chances with the nukes. Anything unusual for any duration, they’re probably coming down.