Utility faces inquiry calls after NYC blackout
NEW YORK — The Consolidated Edison utility apologized Sunday for a power failure that left a large swath of the country’s most densely populated urban area steaming in the dark for five hours.
The blackout left utility executives with lingering questions, and elected officials called for investigations.
Officials of Consolidated Edison, which operates the city’s power grid, said there was “a significant electrical transmission disturbance” Saturday evening that darkened more than 40 blocks of Manhattan, including
Times Square and Rockefeller Center. It left 72,000 of its customers in Midtown Manhattan without power until late into the night.
Consolidated Edison officials said Sunday that the utility would conduct an investigation “to determine the root cause of the incident,” which came on the 42nd anniversary of one of the most infamous blackouts in the city’s history.
John McAvoy, Consolidated Edison’s chairman and chief executive, suggested there had been a mechanical failure, but he emphasized that the utility would not know the cause until an investigation was completed.
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo was more specific, saying the failure started with an explosion and fire at a substation that caused other substations to “lose power and malfunction.”
Consolidated Edison President Tim Cawley said Saturday night’s blackout wasn’t due to high demand on the electrical grid, but that it would take some time to determine what exactly did happen.
He said the system is prepared to deal with high demand, and there are redundancies built into the power grid to prevent failures from cascading, but “this event sort of got past that and resulted in a large outage at the westside station.”
“We think the grid is sound,” Cawley said Sunday, adding, “If there are lessons we can apply, we will.”
Mayor Bill de Blasio and other officials ruled out any form of terrorism.
“This was not a cyberattack, and this was not an act of physical terrorism,” de Blasio said. He added on Sunday afternoon that “there are no remaining disruptions to either traffic or transit” and that “things are back to normal.”
No one was injured as a result of the power failure, but it was a bad time to be on an elevator, according to the Fire Department.
Firefighters and paramedics responded to about 900 emergency calls stemming from the blackout, including structural fires and automatic alarms, according to agency data. About 400 of the calls involved people stuck on elevators, Fire Department Commissioner Daniel Nigro said.
“Some of them were quite difficult involving breaching and blind shafts,” he said, adding that everyone was removed safely.
The sudden loss of power disrupted five subway lines and shut down many of the city’s most popular sources of entertainment, including Carnegie Hall. It cut off performer Jennifer Lopez, midsong, during a sold-out concert at Madison Square Garden.
Thousands of people crowded the streets, using their cellphones as flashlights while they tried to stay cool on a humid evening with temperatures in the low 80s. Most Broadway musicals and plays canceled their Saturday night shows, though some cast members staged impromptu performances in the street.
About 700 of the emergency calls came over the city’s 911 system, while the remaining 200 were verbal requests made as firefighters and paramedics were tending to other calls.
Midtown Manhattan’s police and fire departments called in personnel and equipment from other parts of the city to help, including 400 police officers, 100 traffic agents and 93 additional ambulances.
Jim Long, a New York Fire Department spokesman, said the additional resources assisted with the “very large spike” in calls.
“There were no injuries, no fatalities, no one got crushed,” Long said, adding that “we responded to many of them and dealt with them in short order.”
GRID CONCERNS
The questions raised by the blackout extended to politics as de Blasio was criticized for being in Iowa on the Democratic presidential campaign trail when the power failure happened.
The mayor returned to the city on Sunday and insisted that the situation had been well-managed and that he had been in touch with his staff and started his trip back as soon as it became clear the blackout would not be quickly resolved.
“You have to take charge wherever you are, and I did that,” he said Sunday at a Consolidated Edison control center in Manhattan.
U.S. Sen. Charles Schumer said Sunday that the Department of Energy’s Office of Electricity should investigate the work being done by Consolidated Edison to maintain and upgrade the city’s power grid.
“This type of massive blackout is entirely preventable with the right investments in our grid,” Schumer said Sunday, encouraging a thorough investigation that he said could shed light on wider electricity issues that could have national effects.
Cuomo and de Blasio both said they would be directing agencies under their control to look into what happened.
Richard Berkley, executive director of the Public Utility Law Project of New York, a consumer advocacy group, said the power failure raised the question of whether Consolidated Edison had placed enough emphasis on the resilience of its system.
Consolidated Edison is asking state regulators for electric- and gas-rate increases that add up to about $1.5 billion, Berkley said, and Saturday night’s failure could affect the outcome of that case.
Gregory Reed, a professor of electric power engineering at the University of Pittsburgh who once worked at Consolidated Edison, said the utility had done a good job in restoring power quickly. But he said the incident underscores a need throughout the country to invest more in infrastructure.
“We have a lot of networks that have aging infrastructure and antiquated systems,” he said. “We have to build higher levels of resiliency.”
Regulators have penalized the company for blackouts in the past. In 2007, the state Public Service Commission hit the company with an $18 million penalty for power failures, including a nine-day blackout in western Queens in 2006.
Before Superstorm Sandy struck the city in 2012, the utility spent what it called “a tremendous amount of money” on the reliability of its system. But the storm proved there were serious problems with its resiliency, showing that the utility needed to work on “keeping one area of failure from taking down the whole system,” Berkley said.
Cuomo faulted the utility on that score Saturday night, saying it should be better able to contain trouble.