Imagine my surprise at about 7:50 am when the power winked off. As far as I can remember, we haven't had a significant outage for 18 months. I come to find out this one was a doozy:
Power Restored To Most Of Bangor Area
Strong Storms Knocked Power Out
POSTED: 10:56 am EDT July 24, 2008
UPDATED: 11:13 am EDT July 24, 2008
BANGOR, Maine -- Power is restored to most of Bangor Hydro-Electric's service area after eastern Maine was left in the dark Thursday morning due to a suspected lightning strike as strong thunderstorms rumbled across the state.What I want to know is how storm effects caused such a widespread outage. This recalls the August 14, 2003 East Coast blackout: a relatively small storm effect cascades through an entire grid.
More severe thunderstorms were predicted for later in the day in much of Maine.
More than 118,000 customers lost their electricity shortly before 8 a.m., but Bangor Hydro spokeswoman Susan Faloon said the total was trimmed to just under 1,300 in scattered areas within two hours. ...
People should understand that our energy systems are more fragile than they appear to be.
Comments