ANALYSIS
26
NEW YORK
FEELS THE HEAT
For a city that’s a byword for
bright lights, surely New York
should be able to keep the power
on? Laurie Wiegler investigates
July’s nine-day outage
[Getty]
THIS SUMMER, in the middle of a heat
wave, around 100,000 people in the New
York borough of Queens endured a massive
power failure that lasted over a week and
left the local utility company, Con Edison
(Con Ed), publicly floundering as it struggled
to restore service.
Up to nine days without power in record-
setting heat meant severe hardship for
thousands – and even death for a few.
Moreover, families in the affected
neighbourhoods lost significant amounts of
food or parts of their livelihood (for which
Con Ed is currently offering a partial
reimbursement). Business and transport
were also disrupted.
The regulator for utilities in New York
State is the Public Service Commission,
which organised a series of hearings in
August to investigate the impact of the
blackout. By then, some businesses were on
Engineering & Technology | September 2006 | www.theiet.org/engtechmag
the verge of collapse, while others had
actually filed for bankruptcy, according to
Sunnyside-based Council Member Eric Gioia,
who spoke at one hearing. “What happened
to our community should never happen to
another,” Gioia said, while other speakers
railed against the “antiquated and
inadequate” electrical distribution system
serving north west Queens.
Con Ed, with its people and resources
tied up in restoration efforts and ongoing
investigations into what happened, was
unable to provide a spokesman for
comment at the time of writing, but much
can be learned from its ‘Initial Report on the
Power Outages in Northwest Queens’, dated
2 August and submitted to Mayor Michael
Bloomberg.
The problems occurred within the Long
Island City (LIC) network, an underground
system that provides electricity via the North
Con Ed employees worked round
the clock to cope with the
cascading failures
Queens substation to Astoria, Long Island
City, Woodside, Sunnyside and Hunters Point
as well as La Guardia Airport and the Rikers
Island jail complex. At the height of the crisis,
10 of the network’s 22 primary feeders had
stopped working.
In its report, Con Ed states that at
3.30pm on Monday 17 July, one 27kV
primary feeder went out. In the subsequent
several hours, another five feeders failed.
Following this, the network operator
reduced voltage by 8% to cut demand and
customers using life-support equipment
were contacted. The New York City Office of
Emergency Management was also informed
of the problems and the impact on major
customers such as La Guardia, Rikers Island,
the Bowery Bay Water Treatment Plant and
the Metropolitan Transit Authority.
The next day, after initial repairs were
completed, and with temperatures rising

above 33°C, more feeders began to fail.
Con Ed states that by 8.38pm on Tuesday
18 July it had lost 10 of its 22 primary
feeders, requiring consistent reduction of
electricity usage in the affected areas. The
report states that usage was reduced by an
estimated 43MW on 18 July and 67MW on
19 July. Peak demand fell from 382MW on
17 July to 224MW two days later.
Eventually, with Con Ed staff working
round the clock and back-up support from
other utilities and contractors, all the primary
feeders were restored to service by morning
of Friday 21 July. However, knock-on damage
to the 120/208V secondary grid meant that
around 25,000 customers were still without
power. Most had service restored by Sunday,
but it was not until the morning of Wednes-
day 26 July that every customer had
electricity once more.
In the midst of this, naturally Con Ed was
receiving a flurry of calls from its customers
– nearly 2000 calls by the end of the day on
Wednesday 19 July. Usually a strong
barometer for affected outages, the system
failed the utility this time. For, based on the
number of calls, the utility significantly
underestimated the extent of the problem.
Kevin Burke, CEO of Con Ed, addressing
the New York City Council’s Consumer Affairs
Committee, admitted that the company
needs a better way to monitor failures.
Unlike overhead supply systems, he
explained, a network system provides many
possible paths for electricity to take to supply
the customer. “As a result, on the network
system, while we know that a certain feeder
or transformer is out of service, we do not
necessarily know that any customers are out
unless they tell us,” he said.
“During this period, operating personnel
were reviewing information from various
systems,” Burke continued. “Individual
feeders were being monitored and the
ongoing feeder repairs, testing and
restoration systems closely coordinated.
Operators continuously assessed the
condition of the LIC network.”
However, as it became apparent that
power losses were much more widespread
than indicated by the number of calls,
Con Ed resorted to surveying the affected
neighbourhoods, looking for buildings with
no lights on.
In general, Burke went on, the network
system is highly reliable. “In fact, our
networks are designed to allow for the loss
of any two primary feeders, at peak summer
consumption levels, without any impact on
customers. But the loss of 10 feeders
caused significant stress that damaged the
secondary system and created a difficult
challenge for our crews.”
That is not the only challenge Con Ed
currently faces. The extraordinary outage, which
was broadcast in media outlets around the
world, created a public relations nightmare.
This is the same utility that could proudly tout
its help as part of the Mutual Assistance
programme in restoring power to New Orleans
last year (see ‘The Challenge For Those in
Power’, IEE Review, November 2005). Con Ed,
with its unique experience in underground
systems, had been brought in by Entergy, the
local utility, to help during the crisis.
A spokesperson for Entergy says of
Con Ed’s situation that “the problem is not
unique to New York in any way, shape or
form. Any electrical company feeding
customers through a substation can
experience a problem like this. New York is
like New Orleans in that there is a huge
concentration of people in a small area, so
when one substation fails it affects a large
number of people.”
The spokesperson called the New York
heat wave and its subsequent power
problems “the perfect storm” in terms of the
ripple effect of outages. Further, unlike
overhead systems – which are the norm in
the US – underground systems take much
longer to repair, because damage isn’t
immediately visible or accessible.
Electrical engineering professor B. Don
Russell, from Texas A&M University, says
“when you have a totally buried cabling
system it takes longer to fix … Most of the
US is served by overhead lines. They’re very
easy to take out … [but the underground
lines are the more] dangerous and difficult
task to fix.”
Russell says he just happened to be in
New York assisting Con Ed when the outage
occurred. As part of a three-person safety
Engineering & Technology | September 2006 | www.theiet.org/engtechmag
ANALYSIS
27
advisory panel, Russell arrived in Manhattan
on the night of 16 July, a trip planned two or
three months in advance of the outage. As
to what caused the record power cuts,
Russell says his comments now are “pure
speculation”, but feels that the cables were
stressed “due to heavy loads by summer
peaks and hot weather”.
Global warming not withstanding – and
New York did endure its share of above-
average days – other hot cities managed to
keep on the lights and air conditioning. The
Paris Metro was still running, as was the
London Underground. Even California, one of
the hottest states in the nation, had some
outs, but didn’t lose as many days of power
as Queens did.
So what went wrong in New York? Russell
says: “Systems are designed with safety
factors so they can withstand the loss of
substations, but if several primary feeders are
out, [the situation is problematic]. And the
outage was caused, to the best of my
knowledge, by the loss of more than the
maximum number of cables that can be
sustained to give service to a given area.”
Perhaps. New York City Attorney General
Elliott Spitzer believes the outage could have
been avoided. Spitzer points out that, in
March 2000, his office issued a report
detailing the causes of a 1999 blackout,
“including Con Ed’s failure to address the
effects of heat on its underground feeder
cables, its inability to identify components at
risk of failure and its failure to recognise the
scope of the problem.”
Six years on, says Spitzer, “it is clear that
Con Ed did not heed the warnings from the
earlier blackout, and that the PSC’s oversight
of the utility has been wholly inadequate”.
Recommending that the PSC should develop
a test for detecting equipment vulnerable to
heat stress, overload or other sudden
failures, establish a protocol for power grid
management, and improve crisis
communications, among other actions, he
concludes: “It is imperative that the steps are
implemented as soon as possible to avoid
problems in the future”. ■
Con Ed’s preliminary report is online at:
www.coned.com/messages/Mayors%20
Report.pdf