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In practice, we often end up going above and beyond this goal (i.e. These programs are designed to prevent power outages due to supply shortages by planning into the future to ensure we have enough power plants on the grid. Many parts of the country strive to meet this “once every ten years” standard through resource adequacy programs. In fact, national grid reliability standards dictate that this type of outage should happen only once every ten years.
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This type of power outage is rare because we spend a lot of time and effort (and money!) trying to prevent them. For example, one of the outages during the California Electricity Crisis affected tens of thousands of people, while another outage affected millions of people. While supply shortages occur across entire cities and states, the number of people affected by resulting outages can vary widely. Rolling blackouts do not affect everyone – the grid operator chooses to turn off power only to a limited number of customers, which reduces electricity demand back down to manageable levels. Grid operators take many different actions to prevent outages when supply is short, but when worst comes to worst, rolling blackouts are the last resort. This type of power outage is the rarest of them all. Supply shortages occur when there is not enough electricity generation to meet demand.
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But because transmission systems are usually connected across many different states and even countries, transmission system failures can result in widespread power outages if not managed properly. This is admittedly an extreme example, and the investigations that followed that incident ultimately led to the creation of new reliability standards designed to prevent similar outages from reoccurring.Īgain, outages due to transmission failures are relatively rare. That disturbance spiraled out of control into a massive blackout due in large part to faulty computer systems. In 2003, roughly 50 million people in the northeastern United States were left without power when a transmission line made contact with a tree branch. Many transmission system failures are caused by weather, but this type of outage can also happen due to equipment failure, computer problems, and human error. Transmission failures are much rarer than distribution failures, but when they happen, they can have huge consequences. For example, about 100,000 Florida electricity customers were without power for over a week when Hurricane Irma struck the state in September 2017.Ĭompared to the other types of power outages, distribution failures are the most common – most of the outages the average person experiences are due to problems with the distribution system. electricity customer experiences roughly 1.3 outages and four hours without power each year, outages caused by severe weather can last much longer. But sometimes these outages affect entire cities, and sometimes for long stretches of time. Outages on the distribution system usually have a limited impact, affecting just a few blocks or a neighborhood. Utility workers repair a downed power line on the distribution system right outside my home. More recently, a new type of power outage has emerged – caused by power companies intentionally shutting off portions of the transmission or distribution network to reduce the risk of triggering even more catastrophic outcomes. Power outages can happen because of failures at any point in that process: distribution failures, transmission failures, or insufficient electricity generation can all lead to power outages. Finally, the last leg of the journey happens on the distribution network, which delivers electricity to customers. Then high voltage transmission lines move that electricity over long distances. First, power plants generate electricity. There are many steps involved in delivering electricity to customers, and a power outage can be caused at any step along the way. Almost always, power outages are due to other causes.
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Electricity supply shortages like this are extremely rare the last time this happened in California was nearly two decades ago. Instead, California’s recent rolling blackouts are historic because of their cause: the power went out because there simply was not enough electricity to go around. On the contrary, these outages were relatively well-contained, affecting only hundreds of thousands of Californians for only hours at a time. They are not historic because they affected a large number of people, nor because they lasted a really long time. These power outages are truly historic, but not for the usual reasons. In the midst of a global pandemic and a sweltering heatwave across the western United States, California experienced two consecutive days of rolling blackouts this past weekend. Western States Energy Manager/Senior Analyst