What Really Happened During the 2003 Blackout?

In 2003, one of the most severe power outages in history affected the northeastern US and parts of eastern Canada. This video summarizes the events leading up to and during the blackout.

Errata: (1) A few areas outside of New York and Toronto were without power for more than a day. (2) The graphic showing the outage area includes Quebec, but Quebec is on a separate interconnection that was not significantly affected by the 2003 event. (3) MISO is usually pronounced 'myso,' not 'meeso.' (4) When I said "NERC standards," I should have said "NERC policies." They weren't mandatory until after the 2003 event.

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This is not engineering advice. Everything here is for informational and entertainment purposes only. Contact an engineer licensed to practice in your area if you need professional advice or services. All non-licensed clips used for fair use commentary, criticism, and educational purposes.

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Producer/Writer/Host: Grady Hillhouse
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[jay]

The power plant in the very first frame, next to the United Nations building in Manhattan, that's where I was... in the control room as a very young Engineer. I was actually giving a tour of our control room and flipping through some system graphics, when all 3 units tripped offline at nearly the same time, and the plant went completely dark, which before then was thought to be impossible. One of the operators actually yelled at me because he thought it was my fault, lol... I was relieved when the system operator called a few minutes later, and told us to, "Standby, we just lost the entire Northeast." We overcame a lot of challenges that evening, and for a young Engineer, it was exciting. I slept on the roof that night because it was too hot inside. I remember looking up at the night sky and seeing the stars, and thinking... when was the last time anyone in Manhattan looked up at the night sky and saw the stars like this? Great job on the video, and thanks for bringing back such great memories.

[carnibenz]

This happened when I was 4 and I thought I caused it by watching too much TV. I've lived with the guilt for many years, thank you for explaining what really happened and for clearing my conscience.

[richcast]

Damn...I just remembered how amazing that outage was. A bunch of us kids in the neighborhood had sleepovers, people were just going to each other's houses. We were playing in the streets. There was such a strange and unique coming together of humans where I was. As soon as the power came back, people started to go on about their usual business and that special moment was gone

[MaineJuen]

The power went out above my head as I was boarding a plane in the Toronto airport. Ended up sitting on the tarmac for two hours, not knowing what the cause of the delay was. We were shuffled off the plane and I, a thirteen year old about to embark on their first solo journey, was left alone in an airport. I was too young for a cell phone at that time and the pay phones weren't always working. Managed to get a hold of my parents who brought me home. I can remember the sweltering heat. My elderly dog ended up passing away that night because of this heat. No vets were open because of the blackout. We didn't get power back in my house until 7am the next morning. It was...definitely a bad day for me.

[BaghaShams]

When you learn about the complexity of managing the power grid, it feels like a miracle that we consumers are actually allowed to do whatever we want and use as much power in whatever way we want in our homes. Something to be thankful for, since all the heavy lifting and problem solving is being done by someone else on our behalf.

[ocko]

The Lift Pump Station located near Ludington, Michigan helped save the entire eastern half of the US and Canadian power grids. This facility maintained grid frequency by absorbing most of the nearly 5 GW load imbalance as the disconnects around Lake Erie engaged. The pump station filled itself to the brim, well past its safe design water surface elevation, then ran itself nearly dry, again outside of safe operating levels and at great risk of causing cavitation in the turbines to provide power afterwards. These actions helped prevent catastrophic damage cascading all the way to Denver and gave some time for other stations to reconnect.

If a power station is scrammed, a rapid shutdown, and depending on its type it can take days if not weeks to get a power station back up and running. A pump station can provide nearly immediate power generation.

Thank you to all of the station operators, line workers and service crews who struggled on that day, your actions and quick thinking, kept the lights on east of the Rockies and prevented a far darker outcome.

Both the 2003 and the Texas outages could have been much worse if the load imbalances had been allowed to progress a few minutes or even seconds longer.

The control systems in place now are night and day more robust than what was present in 2003.

[carlosanvito]

I was working at a 2000 MW power plant that day. I recall hearing air blast breakers operating frantically in the switchyard just after 4 pm. Lights blinked and then moments later the plant was black. From my office, I looked across the river and saw two other large power plants also fully tripped. Our plant generators were spinning, but there was no grid to connect to. We hoped to keep the units ready to resynch, but we could not keep up with demin water consumption, and one by one, lost the plant. The grid was partially restored by the next day when we were able to fire our units and resynch, thus rebuilding the grid. Certainly a day etched in my mind!

[matthewmadden]

I was not even 10 at the time. My dad had just walked in the door with 2 weeks worth of groceries when it tripped. I can still remember his “You have GOT to be kidding me!” As we hoped nothing would go to waste.

[Maserati]

I was a kid in Brooklyn during this blackout. It was one of the most memorable nights of my life because we got a full night sky due to no light pollution. You usually never see more than 2-3 stars at night in my neighborhood.

[phuturephunk]

I'm not gonna lie, as someone who was in NYC during this, Manhattan specifically, it was actually really fun. Gas service was still going so restaurants were cooking and effectively giving away all the food they had built up, everyone was out on the street ( who wasn't trudging across a bridge) was drinking. Driving...yes driving...was actually really easy because traffic was self moderating. It was a very surreal experience, all told. Spent the day after that first night out in Brooklyn by the water drinking with friends and then hung out at my friend's place on the west side and watched them switch the super blocks back on one by one. Looking up 8th avenue, it was kind of amazing. From the horizon you could see entire sections of Manhattan switch on, I wanna say like 10 block squares at a time coming towards where we were down in the 30's.

[Spica]

I loved this day. I lived beside a valley with a river. After so many hours, and seeing that everything was down, i set up a campsite beside the river. Will never forget how bright the stars were. I was actually sad when the city glow returned.

[joshuafunk]

For additional context to anyone who isn’t hip to this story. The companies who were responsible to manage things (FirstEnergy and others) also had plenty of shady activities going on internally. So as you follow along with this wonderful walkthrough, keep in the back of your head the vision of your neighbor who has that old lawnmower that barely works. But it works so he won’t replace it even though he spends 5 hours every time just to get it running.

Apply that exact mental visual to the scale of a company that is responsible for managing the grids as you listen to him talk about how these tiny pockets of problematic issues slowly domino effect

[AllThingsMech]

This is fascinating to me. That spring, I had began my public safety career as a police officer at the Cedar Point Police Department in Sandusky, OH. For those unfamiliar, Cedar Point is a MASSIVE amusement park about an hour east of Toledo right on Lake Erie. It was an incredibly busy day that day, right in the middle of the peak season, and the park was nearly at capacity. When the outage hit, we obviously had to shut everything down and close the park. You want to talk about insanity...try getting 50k upset people out of a 350 acre area located on a peninsula, with only one causeway going in and out. I got a lot of opportunities to work on my people skills that day, haha. I never knew the details of how that blackout happened until now. Thanks Grady!

[mikefochtman]

When first learning grid operations it was explained to me thus:

Imagine the ceiling in a room has a wide variety of hooks embedded. Each hook can only support a different weight and will pull out if overstressed. Now imagine you have a wide variety of weights that you must suspend from these hooks. You attach them with rubber bands of varying strengths. You link a bunch of hooks and weights with bands. But if one hook pulls out, the weights stretch rubber bands and shift and you need to keep things suspended. Now, plan things out so you never drop a weight, regardless if a hook pulls out, or a band breaks.

[spadeyspacely]

The sound of nearly the entire neighborhood cheering when the lights came back on, man you had to be there to hear it. A timeless sound that will forever be etched in my head. I remember how it all began and how it ended. We definitely were all still pretty shook thinking the worse because of 9/11.

My parents scared the hell out of me saying ppl were likely going to loot houses (we lived in the suburbs in bumblef*ck nowhere) I as a dumb 12 year old, imagined it all going down. We all slept in one room burning UP that summer, lol. Anyway! Very interesting information here! I wonder if anyone lost their job. Salute to those who put their back into fixing this.

[neelvk]

I am a software guy and I LOVED this video. Really shows how much our work, when done improperly, can have an impact.

[JRBlood]

I'll always remember that day fondly. I was the admin of our companies servers and all of the battery backups were going nuts! First the brownouts, then blackouts, then when power stayed on within that hour all of the battery backups stayed on battery because of an over-voltage (it stayed over 130 volts for almost an hour!). Confusion set in since I had power, but they refused to switch back to online power and the batteries would not recharge. On a whim I turned on the fans on all three AC units, along with all the lights since everyone had gone home by then. That managed to get the power draw down below 130 so the battery backups went off battery and back on-line. From that point all I had to do was monitor the voltages until they stabilized below 130 volts and I could shut off the lights and fans on the AC units.
Thanks to your video I now know what was causing the over-voltage issue, and now most newer UPS are built so they won't go completely onto battery when over-voltage issues occur.

[oceancon]

I recently retired from the FERC and one thing that didn't get noticed is that typical fossil plants do not have black start capability and therefore cannot get the grid back up on their own (generally speaking). That means they need power fed into them before they can power up and generate back onto the grid. However, our hydro units in upstate NY, specifically the Raquette River projects do have that capability and were one of the main components that brought the grid back up. I know hydro has gotten a bad name environmentally but there are certain attributes such as black start, spinning reserve and voltage stabilization that should be worth more than acknowledged.

[Martin_from_SC]

Thanks for bringing back the memory. I was working at a printing shop in Toronto and the press ground to a halt, we had no idea what happened. Thankfully radio stations had backup power and within 30 minutes or so it became clear that it's not just a squirrel that got into a transformer. Getting home was brutal, the traffic was nuts. But the evening/night was cool, with zero light pollution and clear sky, it was an amazing full moon casting shadows at midnight, and people walking around with flashlights. We got power back the next day and life resumed...

Much worse power outage came in 2013 ice storm, we had no power for 7 days during really cold temps in the winter just before Christmas.

[MetroidFREAK]

I remember this. Me and my friends were swimming when the pool tank shut off... we went home and realized we had lost power. My house didn't have any power for 4 days. We lost everything in the fridge and had to use flashlights to go about the house. It was dark everywhere and we couldn't go anywhere. It was a crazy few days... I was 11 going on 12 when it happened. I'm now 31. Amazing how much time has passed since then. Thanks for this