Huge blackout hits Florida

[Schuyler Colfax]

http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/02/26/florid ... index.html

MIAMI, Florida (CNN) -- Power outages were reported from Miami to Jacksonville on Florida's east coast and as far north as Tampa on the Gulf Coast, police and utility officials said.

As many 800,000 Florida Power & Light Co. customers are without power Tuesday afternoon, the company said.

Mike Stone, a Florida Department of Emergency Management spokesman, said 2 million to 3 million people were affected. Power began returning to many of those areas within an hour and a half, officials reported.

The outage struck shortly after 1 p.m. ET. A strong cold front and scattered thunderstorms moved through the region, including one that prompted a tornado warning for Fort Lauderdale, the National Weather Service reported.

But the cause of the outage was not immediately known.

National Weather Service meteorologist Barry Baxter told the South Florida-based Sun-Sentinel that there were no major storms in the area at the time electricity went out that would cause such a large failure.

In Washington, officials at the Department of Homeland Security said there was no immediate concern that terrorism was behind the outage.

Stan Johnson, a spokesman for the North American Electric Reliability Council, said eight power plants were off-line across the region.

He said that officials believe the outage has been contained.

Both nuclear units at the Turkey Point power plant in Miami-Dade County were off-line as of about 2:30 p.m., Florida Power & Light nuclear-plant spokeswoman April Schilpp told the Palm Beach Post.

The units shut down after off-site power to the plants was halted, Schlipp told the Post. Another Miami-Dade County power plant, which isn't nuclear, also lost power, the Post reported Schilpp as saying.

Detective Robert Williams, a Miami-Dade County police spokesman, said power was out across the entire county.

In Palm Beach County, spotty outages ranged from Riviera Beach to Boca Raton, said sheriff's spokeswoman Teri Barbera.

Outages stretched into neighboring Broward County, which includes Fort Lauderdale, he said.

Dade, Broward and Palm Beach counties are home to nearly 6 million people.

The Orlando Sentinel is reporting that local schools, businesses and intersections are without power Tuesday afternoon.

According to the Orlando newspaper, about 7,000 customers of Kissimmee Utility Authority lost power for about 20 minutes Tuesday.

[FSTargetDrone]

In Washington, officials at the Department of Homeland Security said there was no immediate concern that terrorism was behind the outage.

Funny. My first thought wasn't terrorism(!).

Maybe I'm hopelessly naive, but every time there's a train wreck or bridge collpase, I don't automatically think it's anything related to terrorism(!).

[General Zod]

Funny. My first thought wasn't terrorism(!).

Maybe I'm hopelessly naive, but every time there's a train wreck or bridge collpase, I don't automatically think it's anything related to terrorism(!).

It's Florida. My first thought was "What? Did a hurricane hit? Again?"

[Sea Skimmer]

My first thought was a bird in a transformer; I'm sure its something stupid on those lines.

[Mr. Coffee]

Looks like they had some troubles at the local Nuclear Power Plant.

Link

Reactor shutdown causes power outages

Last Edited: Tuesday, 26 Feb 2008, 3:48 PM EST
Created: Tuesday, 26 Feb 2008, 1:53 PM EST

TAMPA - More than three million people across the state suffered through sporadic power outages Tuesday.

It happened when generating units at Turkey Point nuclear reactor south of Miami automatically shut down. Both the power station's coal burning and nuclear reactors were affected.

Florida Power and Light - which runs the plant - wasn't immediately sure what caused the problem.

"We don't know whether the grid disturbance caused the units to shut down or that their shut down caused the grid disturbance," said Kenneth Clark, a spokesman at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission regional office in Atlanta. "There are no safety concerns. The reactors shut down as designed."

Power was coming back online by the early afternoon Tuesday, and everyone was expected to have power again by 6 p.m.

While most of the outages were concentrated in south Florida, just about every county in the Bay Area reported some level of problems - from darkened traffic lights to homes and businesses without power.

Local law enforcement agencies did their best to handle traffic control while traffic lights were out.
They remind drivers that a malfunctioning traffic light means the intersection becomes a four way stop.

[KlavoHunter]

*Waits for the inevitable "ZOMG problems with a NUKE power plant! It could have melted down and killed us all!" screeching of environuts.

[TithonusSyndrome]

We already had a thread discussing that there was a possibility of droughts causing problems for reactors in the Southeast USA, and that's where my money is.

[phongn]

Sea Skimmer may well be closest to the mark - a substation failed and that trigged automatic shutdown of several power plants (including the Turkey Point reactors). As it happens, I was affected by this for a brief period, though my university was partially shut down for buildings not on generator power.

Also, I was going to post my local newspaper's report on it, except the comments following the story were so mind-blowingly moronic that I decided against it.

The power went out over a wide area of South Florida on Tuesday afternoon, leaving three million to four million people without electricity, the Florida Division of Emergency management said.

The utility company that supplies electricity to the region, Florida Power & Light, said it expected to restore power to customers by 5:30 p.m., a utility spokeswoman said at a news conference just before 4 p.m.

The company and state officials said the blackout began with a failure in an electrical substation near the Turkey Point nuclear station south of Miami, the division of emergency management said. That failure caused other parts of the system to shut down to protect the integrity of the electrical grid.

The division of emergency management said by 4 p.m. power had been restored for many residents, but about 800,000 people remained without power. No injuries were attributed to the blackout, state officials said.

The division said the affected area included Miami, Fort Lauderdale and surrounding areas. Florida Power & Light said the power failure began shortly after 1 p.m.

The Miami Herald reported that both reactors at the Turkey Point nuclear station, south of Miami, went off line at the time of the problem, but the Nuclear Regulatory Commission was unsure whether the reactors were shut down before the power failure began or in response to it. Officials said there were no safety concerns at the nuclear station.

[Admiral Valdemar]

It's obviously the Scientologists retaliating for Project Chanology.

Or Peak Oil. Or al-Qaeda.

One of the three.

On a serious note, this kind of thing is to be expected more in the future given the state of the US power grid overall. While this instance is likely down to an accidental SCRAM via a silly avian encounter or line being felled or somesuch nonsense, the idea of heavier loads causing more of the kind of event that hit Columbia in the summer of 2003 is not without precedent. The loss of major freshwater tributaries will also hit hydro as well as nuclear, which turned out to manifest in France not long ago too.

[CaptJodan]

Few transformers around us blew, but no power outage in the northern suburbs of Orlando as far as I know. Course my place has always been a pretty stable grid (I think we might be on the same grid as the fire station down the road, which is why it was one of the first back up after Charlie).

[Broomstick]

*Waits for the inevitable "ZOMG problems with a NUKE power plant! It could have melted down and killed us all!" screeching of environuts.

I would think it demonstrates the functionality of the systems designed to shut down potentially dangerous power plants in the event of an emergency... but, of course, it's impossible to make people happy.

[Darth Wong]

My first thought was a bird in a transformer; I'm sure its something stupid on those lines.

I remember we once had a rural-area blackout where I was living more than 10 years ago, and they tracked it down to a bicycle that someone had somehow hurled into a transformer. A fucking bicycle.

Rural asshole kids with nothing better to do, I guess.

[LadyTevar]

Maybe someone was trying to steal copper wire for scrapmetal?

It's what causes a lot of the blackouts (and electricution deaths) here

[MKSheppard]

I remember we once had a rural-area blackout where I was living more than 10 years ago, and they tracked it down to a bicycle that someone had somehow hurled into a transformer. A fucking bicycle.

That's awesome in a stupid kind of way.