Report on

HISTORY OF MAJOR BLACKOUTS

Submitted as Assignment-1 for the course

Power System Operation and Control
In

ELECTRICAL AND ELECTRONICS ENGINEERING

To

MRS. K.K. DEEPIKA, ASSISTANT PROFESSOR, EEE

COURSE CO-ORDINATOR
ACADEMIC YEAR: 2017-18, SEMESTER-1

By
REGD. NO. NAME OF THE STUDENT
14L31A0277 K.VEERABABU
14L31A0278 K.SAIKIRAN
14L31A0280 K.REVATHI

DEPARTMENT OF ELECTRICAL AND ELECTRONICS ENGINEERING

VIGNAN’S INSTITUTE OF INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY
A power outage ( called a power cut, a power blackout, power failure or a blackout) is a
short-term or a long-term loss of the electric power to a particular area.​There are many causes of
power failures in an electricity network. Examples of these causes include faults at power
stations damage to electric transmission lines, substations or other parts of the distribution
system, a short circuit, or the overloading of electricity mains.

TYPES OF POWER OUTAGES

Power outages are categorized into three different phenomena, relating to the duration and effect
of the outage:
● A permanent fault is a massive loss of power typically caused by a fault on a power
line. Power is automatically restored once the fault is cleared.
● A brown out is a drop in voltage in an electrical power supply. The term brownout
comes from the dimming experienced by lighting when the voltage sags. Brownouts
can cause poor performance of equipment or even incorrect operation.
● A blackout is the total loss of power to an area and is the most severe form of power
outage that can occur. Blackouts which result from or result in power stations tripping
are particularly difficult to recover from quickly. Outages may last from a few
minutes to a few weeks depending on the nature of the blackout and the configuration
of the electrical network.
CASE STUDIES ON MAJOR BLACKOUTS

Case-1- NORTHEAST BLACKOUT OF 2003

The Northeast blackout of 2003 was a widespread power outage that occurred throughout parts of the
North eastern and Midwestern united states and the Canadian province of ontario on Thursday, August
14, 2003, just after 4:10 p.m.

Some power was restored by 11 p.m. Many others did not get their power back until two days
later. In more remote areas it took nearly a week to restore power. At the time, it was the world's
second most widespread blackout in history, after the 1999 southern brazil blackout The outage,
which was much more widespread than the northeast blackout of 1965, affected an estimated 10
million people in Ontario and 45 million people in eight U.S. states.
The blackout's primary cause was a software bug in the alarm system at a control room of the
First energy Corporation, located in Ohio. A lack of alarm left operators unaware of the need to
re-distribute power after overloaded transmission lines hit unpruned foliage, which triggered a
race condition in the control software. What would have been a manageable local blackout
cascaded into massive widespread distress on the electric grid.
Case-2-2012 INDIA BLACKOUTS

Two severe power blackouts affected most of northern and eastern India on 30 and 31 July 2012. The 30
July 2012 blackout affected over 300 million people and was briefly the largest power outage in history,
counting number of people affected, beating the January 2001 blackout in Northern india. (230 million
affected) The blackout on 31 July is the largest power outage in​ ​history. The outage affected over 620
million people, about 9% of the world population, or half of India’s population, spread across 22 states​ in
​

Northern, Eastern, and North east india. An estimated 32 gigawatts of generating capacity was taken
offline. An article in THE WALL STREET JOURNAL stated that of the affected population, 320 million
initially had power, while the rest of the affected population lacked direct access.

30 July
At 02:35 IST (21:05 UTC on 29 July), circuit breakers on the 400 kV Bina-Gwalior line tripped. As this line
fed into the Agra-Bareilly transmission section, breakers at the station also tripped, and power failures
cascaded through the grid. All major power stations were shut down in the affected states, causing an
estimated shortage of 32 GW. Officials described the failure as "the worst in a decade".More than 300
million people, about 25% of India's population, were without power. Railways and some airports were
shut down until 08:00.It took 15 hours to restore 80% of service.

31 July
The system failed again at 13:02 IST (07:32 UTC), due to a relay problem near the Taj mahal As
a result, power stations across the affected parts of India again went offline. NTPC Ltd.​.​ stopped
38% of its generation capacity.​ Over 600 million people (nearly half of India's population), in 22
]​

out of 28 states in India, were without power.

More than 300 intercity passenger trains and commuter lines were shut down as a result of the
power outage. The worst affected zones in the wake of the power grid's collapse were northern,
north central, east central, and east coast railway zones, with parts of eastern, southeastern and
west central railway zones. The delhi metro suspended service on all six lines, and had to
evacuate passengers from trains that stopped mid-journey, helped by the Delhi Disaster
Management Authority.
About 200 miners were trapped underground in eastern India due to lifts failing, but officials
later said they had all been rescued.
The National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA), not normally mandated to investigate
blackouts, began to do so because of the threat to basic infrastructure facilities like railways,
metro rail system, lifts in multi-storey buildings, and movement of vehicular traffic.
The following states were affected by the grid failure:
● states on the northern grid: delhi, Harayana, himachal pradesh, jammu and kashmir,
punjab, rajasthan, uttar pradesh, uttarakhand
● states on the eastern grid: bihar, jharkhand, odisha, west bengal
● states on the northeast grid: Arunchal pradesh, assam, manipur, meghalaya, mizoram,
nagaland, sikkim.

References
1.​https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_India_blackouts
2.​https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_major_power_outages
3.​ of the Largest Power Outages in History – and What They Tell Us About the 2003 Northeast Blackout - The
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