System Power Outages
Author: Clare Duffy, ESBI, Ireland
Analysis of system power outages can help us learn and avoiding similar events in the future. If you have information on any blackouts, please e-mail to editor@pacw.org.
Mombasa, Kenya: At around 3 a.m. local time, a fire broke out at a Kenya Power and Lightning Company (KPLC) substation. The damage caused a widespread power outage throughout the area including Mombasa airport, the Kenya Pipeline, refineries and the port. Many parts of the town of approximately 1 million were without power throughout the following day. It was believed that the fire was due to vandalism.
Yaounde, Cameroon: Armed tribesmen attacked electricity poles in the restive Marib province, triggering a major blackout through most parts of the country, including the capital city. The attack left the country’s main power station standing idle and caused a shortage in electricity to most provinces. Attacks such as these have happened several times since protests began early this year demanding the ouster of Yemen’s President.
Khartoum, Sudan: A major blackout left most of Sudan without power for nearly seven hours. Sudan’s electricity board said the outage was due to the introduction of new infrastructure aimed at improving the efficiency of the electrical supply. This led to an unforeseen interruption in several states. Officials installed an additional capacity of 150 Mega- watts to improve the efficiency of the supply.
San Diego, California: A major power outage that started around 3 p.m. shut down the electricity grid in large parts of southern California, Arizona and northern Mexico. Nearly 5 million people lost power throughout the region, with estimates of 1.4 million customers in San Diego County alone. An Arizona Public Service Co. worker was switching out a capacitor, which controls voltage levels, outside Yuma, Arizona. Shortly after, a section of a major regional power line failed and eventually spread. The outage led to a shutdown of two reactors at the San Onofre nuclear power plant. Also, flights out of San Diego were cancelled and more than 2 million gallons of sewage spilled into the water off San Diego.
Seoul, South Korea: Millions across the country suffered a rare power cut due to unusually high autumn temperatures and scheduled maintenance work. The Korea Power Exchange reported temporary blackouts in many areas around the country, affecting as many as 1.62 million households. The Ministry of Knowledge Economy said the temporary shutdown of power plants for maintenance and unexpectedly high demand may have caused the problem.
Brussels, Belgium: Several areas of the city were left without power after a fire in a transformer caused a loss of power in the European quarter. European Parliament staff had to be evacuated along with buildings housing the Council of the European Union and the European Commission. Other transformers were shut down as a precaution, which spread the blackout to other parts of the city.
Santiago, Chile: A major blackout occurred at 8:30 p.m. local time that affected a 1,300-kilometer stretch of the narrow, coastal country. It affected much of the country’s most populous areas, where around 10 million people live and Chile’s critical copper mines, where the world’s largest producers are located. The outage was said to be caused by oscillation problems in two power lines and failure of a computer system.
Cape Town, South Africa: Most of the peninsula area was without power for at least one hour as half of the city’s electricity supply was lost. Power company Eskom said that the outage was caused by a problem with their main line into Acacia Park substation, the city’s main intake point. They had been conducting maintenance on one line, when the other had tripped due to a faulty “conductor”. The line they had been working on was brought back up as soon as possible, quickly restoring electricity to some areas. In other areas, power was out for several more hours.
Santa Cruz, Bolivia: The Bolivian National Load Dispatch (CNDC), the state entity responsible for the nation’s energy grid, ordered distribution companies and large businesses to ration power because of a reduction of about 170 megawatts in generation supply after a turbine in Santa Cruz ceased operations, in addition to another turbine malfunction in Cochabamba last week. The loss was officially attributed to random failures and maintenance work on generation units of the national interconnected system, which led to blackouts in Santa Cruz, La Paz, Cochabamba, Oruro, Potosí, and Sucre.
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