US Blackouts; facts on power outages

U.S. BLACKOUTS THE FACTS ON POWER OUTAGES $ THE POWER GRID THE LARGEST MACHINE IN THE WORLD A POWERPLANTS 5800 major power plants 70% > 25 YRS OLD of key power grid components are more than 25 years old I POWERLINES > 30 YRS OLD 724,050 KM average age of power plants tops 30 years. high voltage transmission lines. Y AMERICA'S "GLASS JAW" O COSTS Many experts refer to the electrical grid as America's "glass jaw" and worry about a well-placed attack's ability to cripple our infrastructure. Power outages and interruptions costs Americans at least $ 150,000,000,000 each year - about $500 for | BLACKOUTS: STARTLING CONSEQUENCES every man, woman and child. 2004-2012 The outage lasted less than 24 hours but shut down two nuclear FEBRUARY 2013: The Super Bowl was inter- rupted for more than 30 minutes due to the failure of a "relay" device, which had just been installed to prevent such incidents. reactors and dumped nearly 12 litres of sewage into local water- ways, closing San Diego beaches. Seven of the 10 costliest storm outages in United States history occurred between 2004 and 2012. $ AUGUST 2005: OCTOBER 2012: The largest Atlantic hurri- cane on record, Hurricane Sandy, left an estimated 8.5 million custo- mers without power across the eastern United States, some for more than two weeks. It was res- ponsible for at least $65 billion USD in damages and 159 deaths, 50 of which were attributed to the power The "costliest hurricane in FREQUENCY U.S. history" according to Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), Hurricane Katrina batte- red the Gulf Region and ravaged the city of New Orleans. Post- storm conditions left some without In the past decade alone, an esti- mated 679 WIDESPREAD POWER OUTAGES occurred due to severe weather. power for more than three weeks, as more than 270,000 sought refuge in shelters with reports of looting and crime. In the end there were more than 1,800 fatalities, many sustained in the horrific post-storm conditions. 124% outages. Non-disaster U.S. power outages JUNE 2012: are up 124 percent since early '90s A windstorm left 4 million people in darkness for up to a week in 10 states. Having coincided with a heat wave, there were 34 extreme ↑ PAST 20 YEARS AUGUST 2003: Tree branches brushing up Blackouts in the United States heat-related deaths in the storm's against power lines brought down power in eight states and Canada in the biggest blackout in North American history. Fifty million people lost power for up to two days, leading to at least 11 deaths and billions of USD in damages. have become more severe in the aftermath, in addition to the 13 past 20 years. people killed during the windstorm. I SEPTEMBER 2011: Loss of a single transmission line in Arizona cascaded into a blac- kout affecting more than 2.7 million people across Southern California, Arizona and Mexico. O WAKA WAKA share the sun Sources: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_major_power_outages http://edition.cnn.com/2010/TECH/innovation/08/09/smart.grid/ http://energy.gov/sites/prod/files/oeprod/DocumentsandMedia/DOE_SG_Book_Single_Pages%281%29.pdf http://www.facethefactsusa.org/facts/were-being-kept-in-the-dark-more-often http://natgeotv.com.au/tv/american-blackout/american-blackout-facts.aspx