List of major power outages

The list of historical power outages includes events in which there was a large-scale power outage due to an interruption of the supply of electrical energy.

Great historical power outages

In the blackout in North America in November 1965 in the northeastern United States and in many parts of Canada fell on November 9, 1965, 17:45 clock, the stream from. About 30 million people were affected. Many feared in the days of the Cold War that a nuclear war was the cause. Only after six days was the trigger, a defective power relay in Ontario (Canada) found.

On August 14, 2003 there was a widespread power outage in the northeastern United States and parts of Canada. The loss is the result of a Marktaufsplittung and lack of investment after the deregulation of the electricity market. Decades-old networks with poor maintenance could no longer cope with the ever increasing load. The collapse had been predicted for years.

After heavy snowfalls one of the largest power outages in the history of the Federal Republic took place in northern North Rhine -Westphalia and in parts of south-west of Lower Saxony. Particularly affected was the western Munsterland with the circles Borken, Coesfeld and Steinfurt. Of some 250,000 people affected were many up to three days completely without electricity, a few farms and village pieces for five days until they could be supplied with emergency power or temporarily reconnected to the power grid. Initial estimates of IHK Nord -Westphalia came from an economic loss of 100 million euros. Cause of the power failure had been snapped power poles and torn or very low-hanging power lines. The very wet snow sat on the lines exceptionally resistant and coated them with a layer of ice, the diameter assuming a multiple of the diameter of the cables. Added to this was a strong wind, the offset in these vibrations by the increased windage. The high weight of the snow and the oscillations occurring held was not a lot of poles and lines and buckled or torn.

At 22:09 clock, there was a major power failure in Europe. Parts of Germany, France, Belgium, Italy, Austria, Spain were partly up to 120 minutes without electricity, and even in Morocco, the effects were felt. The trigger was the scheduled temporarily shut off by E.ON 380 kV high- voltage line in Weener on the evening of 4 November 2006 for the disembarkation of the Norwegian Pearl, one at the Meyer shipyard in Papenburg built cruise ship.