Dive Brief:
- A blackout left more than 70,000 New York City residents without power Saturday evening, and Consolidated Edison (ConEd) is “investigating the cause of the equipment failures,” the utility said over the weekend.
- The outages began on the west side of Manhattan before 7 p.m. and ConEd said it got the last of six electrical networks back in service shortly before midnight the same day.
- Bloomberg reported the utility suspects a mechanical failure was responsible for the outage. A cyber or physical attack has been ruled out, as has excess demand, according to New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio.
Dive Insight:
ConEd officials describe the weekend blackout as “a significant transmission disturbance,” but are still seeking the root cause — as well as why the system did not take steps to isolate the failure and keep power online.
“Our engineers and planners will analyze why equipment wasn’t isolated the way it would normally be in response to a transmission disturbance of this type,” spokesman Allan Drury told Utility Dive.
The blackout struck on the anniversary of a much-larger event. In 1977, a power outage left much of New York City without power for more than 24 hours.
Consolidaed Edison said that at its height, the weekend blackout left approximately 72,000 customers without power — concentrated in an area that reached from West 30th Street to West 72nd Street, and from the Hudson River to 5th Avenue.
“With all customers back in service, the company will focus on investigating the cause of the equipment failures and on getting the electrical-delivery system back to its normal level of reliability,” the utility said in a statement.
