The Utility Operational Response to the 14 August 2003 Blackout: Analysis and Case Studies

The 14 august 2003 blackout in the United States and Canada was big, but it wasn’t the first big one. On 9 November 1965, at 5:16 p.m., power failed throughout New York state, spreading to seven nearby states and parts of eastern Canada. Up until the blackout of August 2003, the November 1965 blackout was the biggest power failure in U.S. history, leaving 30 million people and virtually all of New York, Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island without power for up to 13 h. The 1965 blackout led to many improvements in the resiliency and reliability of the grid, including the formation of the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) in 1968, the creation of the Electric Power Research Institute in 1972, and perhaps most significantly, the operational robustness gained through the planning and buildout of the 500-kV interconnected electric grid. The 1965 blackout was also the motivation for enhancing the existing grid control systems to include underfrequency relays, automated generation control, as well as supplemental applications to perform network analysis, such as state estimation and training simulators for operators.