Northeast Blackout Strikes: Grid Vulnerability Exposed
A transmission line relay near Niagara Falls tripped at 5:16 p.m. on November 9, 1965, cascading across the interconnected power grid and blacking out 30 million people across ten U.S. states and Ontario, Canada. New York City went completely dark for up to 13 hours. Eight hundred thousand subway riders were stranded underground. Airports closed. Hospitals switched to emergency generators. The failure originated at the Sir Adam Beck generating station in Ontario, where a relay protecting one of five transmission lines from overload was set too low. When one line tripped, the load shifted to others, which also tripped, creating a domino effect that spread in seconds. The blackout led to the creation of the North American Electric Reliability Corporation and mandatory reliability standards for the entire interconnected grid.
November 9, 1965
61 years ago
Key Figures & Places
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