2003 Blackout Essay

The 2003 blackout was the largest power failure in North America to date, with close to 50 million losing power, many for up to two days. With the lack of power, many people lit candles for light, which inevitably started fires. 3000 such fires were reported in New York alone. The blackout is responsible for at least 10 deaths; one in Ontario, six in New York, one in Michigan, one in Detroit, and one in Connecticut. The loss of electricity for two days cost $6 million dollars in damages, aid, and manpower. In its final report, the joint U.S.–Canada Power System Outage Task Force that launched to determine the cause of the blackout, included a list of 46 recommendations for the Canadian and US Governments. The hope was that these recommendations would, in theory, reduce the risk of future large-scale blackouts. The recommendations were divided into four main sections: 1. Institutional issues related to reliability (Recommendations 1 – 14)
2.

And there still had lots of back-up power can be used. However, many people came home and the usage of power increased, which was a cause of the overload. Then, it made a part of the transmission line short circuit . With this situation in mind, the government should do some advertisements to reduce consumption, people should try to realize their usage, it can decrease the voltage overload use. Thus, it is very good to protect the wire. Countries also require to build more back-up power to cope with this special case. Countries and companies also take some measures to prevent chain reaction, ensure that these measures and actions can be used in the emergency situation. These electric companies are not only independent, but also they are cooperation. If one company’s transmission or power station has problem, other companies can provide power to avoid blackout. When the blackout occurs, it can prevent all of the electric companies interact with each