[JustPiper]

On Drudge, Central Main Power Company!
IT HAPPENED IN SAME SPOT, AUTUMN 1965!


The Event

The Great Northeast Blackout of November 9, 1965 began at 5:16 p.m., near the end of an otherwise typical work day.


The event started at the Ontario - New York border, near Niagara Falls.


A single transmission line from the Niagara generating station tripped (opened).


Within 2.5 seconds, five other transmission lines became overloaded and tripped, isolating 1,800 MW of generation at Niagara Station.


After their isolation, the generators became unstable and tripped off-line.


The northeast power system became unstable and separated into isolated power systems (islands) within 4 seconds.


Outages and islanding occurred throughout New York, Ontario, most of New England, and parts of New Jersey and Pennsylvania.


Most islands went black within 5 minutes, due to imbalances between generation and load (generator overspeed/underspeed tripping).


The massive blackout left 30 million people without electricity for as long as 13 hours.

This was "the big one"… and it all started with the operation of a simple overcurrent relay on a transmission line. The design and operation of electric utility systems changed after that, due to the lessons that were learned from this event.

[JustPiper]

Exerpts from Drudge compiled:

FBI: BLACKOUT NOT CAUSED BY COMPUTER WORM...

Not an act of God as Canada claims, at least not at Niagra, no lightening activity showed on doppler.

"We're a superpower with a third-world grid. We need a new grid," New Mexico Gov. and former Energy Secretary Bill Richardson told the CNN television network. "The problem is that nobody is building enough transmission capacity."

Power was returning to some of the affected areas. By early (on) Friday, power had been restored to New York's Bronx borough and suburban Westchester County, TV networks reported.