Power Outages Continue, Mainly in Williamsburg

Starting last night, power went out in parts of Brooklyn, Queens and the Bronx, and Con Ed is still working to get the juice flowing again so that customers can continue paying through the nose for the supplier's slapdash service. Yesterday afternoon Con Ed kindly requested that customers in parts of Brooklyn and the Upper West Side turn off all non-essential appliances to avoid a brownout, but the ~~brownout~~ "voltage reduction" began anyway within hours. Con Ed reduced voltage to the area by 8 percent, making it difficult to operate A.C. during the summer's first heat advisory. (This handy map shows where the power outages were.)

The company cited "problems with electrical cables" as the source of the brownout, which in English translates to "typical incompetence." South Ozone Park was without power for most of the night, ABC reports, but crews are starting to restore electricity. According to Con Ed, there were 88 customers without power in the Bronx, but most of the outages were in and around Williamsburg, where 1,312 customers are still without power, down from 5,000 without power last night. As of 9 a.m., Con Ed's voltage reduction ended, and customers are no longer requested to turn off non-essential appliances.

Con Ed spokesman Bob McGee tells us that the company plans for a peak demand of 12,000 megawatts, and yesterday was the 34th time in history that demand rose above that, to 12,680 megawatts at 3 p.m. We asked what these outages bode for the rest of the summer, seeing as we're only in June, and McGee told us, "We're well prepared, but from heat wave to heat wave there are certainly variations. There are different feeders affected by the heat, but we have multiple redundancies so if one feeder goes out, another one can compensate. Hopefully we'll have a good summer."

Greentechgrid says the situation shows why we need a "smart grid," and also points out that "many consumer electronic devices and other digital equipment starts to malfunction, and can become damaged, when they are 'fed' power with voltage below 114V."

Contact the author of this article or email tips@gothamist.com with further questions, comments or tips.

By John Del Signore in News on June 29, 2010 10:06 AM

Comments [rss]

greeen

this is cuz of all the FECKING over-develpment everywhere. Screw the infrastructure, the developers just give the city a b-job and the city lets them do whatever the * they want.

Let's see the power go out in the subway. feck it all. Im moving.

Stevennnn

And it's suppose to get back up in the 90 starting Sunday into most of next week...

ckl

Yeah, seriously. I've never lost power in NYC unless it was on account of not paying my bill. And that they bothered to call and warn people of the possible problem is pretty decent as well.

aydiosmio

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2006_Queens_blackout

Hey, at least they paid for our spoiled food, right?

Automocar

Thank you. I shouldn't be surprised that people forgot about that, but I am.

RevWaldo

Not to go out on a limb defending ConEd, but how does reliably supplying power well over 99.9% of the time translate into "typical incompetence"?

mikro

unfortunately, they have the same ethic of "run till failure" as our friends BP do.

they also are simply lying about existing infrastructure being able to handle the 50,000 + new condo units in brooklyn. the upside is a decent majority of these new units are currently empty (and luckily some are in foreclosure), the downside is there are thousands more still in progress, soon to be filled with happy power hungry family units.

while this is obviously not wholly coneds fault, and likely due to loose regulatory oversight, it's still going to hurt current residents substantially.

what would be great is if old buildings get priority of power, first, and new condos later... but yeah that will never happen.

JacqueMehoff

when we're paying the highest Kwh rates in the nation.

we get a couple of posters mentioning how reliable our electricity is compared to other places.

The news mentioned the affected areas may have their power reduced by 8 percent.

RoboticInsides

Great, now all the hipsters will smell even worse.

TrippinJoJo

maybe it's an attempt drive the hipsters outta the "burg.

Crapola

They're still sleeping, they don't know the power's out. Even when they realize at 1PM, they'll call their parents to drive them to the Red Hook Ikea to cool off.

TrippinJoJo

ha! excellent.

ProudLiberal1947

Why aren't you folks Questioning these White Supremacist,Nazi, Anti American Trash. Hey you have Alternet Electricty coming to completion an almost ready to come on line, notice how the LOSERS can NOT provide the service, now check h Executive [ay raises for the last 18 months. Watch out they are piece mealing hyou please check Colorado they are limiting people to 500 Kilo watts DUH! then hitting them with additional >17 centa for every kilo watt after.

Look folks I know these Clowns have your BEST interest at heart you Wallet Interest, period start your National Research NOW, and see have INCOMPETENT THESE iDIOTS ARE UBLESS IT IS FOR A pay raise ON THE EXECUTIVE lEVEL..

ohnose

You're not fooling anyone into thinking you're actually a liberal.

Automocar

Um, I think you meant to visit nydailynews.com.

pal

don't you love that they approved the new hideous domino condo project? our powergrid can barely supply enough electricty to the point of brownouts and eventually blackouts in williamsburg but bloomberg just twisted arms to get this project approved. what a joke.