Outages actually down since 2011

April 28, 2013 | By Barbara Vergetis Lundin

In 2012, for the fourth year in a row, California topped the list of states with the most power outages, followed by New York and Texas, according to Eaton's annual Blackout Tracker.

The report is based on a full year of reported power outages across the United States and is organized into two sections: an overview of national power outage data and power outage data by state.

Overall, 2,808 reported outages were used as the basis for the 2012 report, representing a decrease of about nine percent from the 3,071 outages reported in 2011. The amount of people affected by outages also decreased from 41.8 million in 2011 to 25 million in 2012. On average, 13,442 people were affected for 154 minutes per outage in 2012 and power failures caused problems for people and businesses in all 50 states.

The number of outages has gone down significantly since 2011 (109 outages) with just 65 outages in 2012, but is up from 42 outages in 2009 and 52 outages in 2010.

Among the most unusual causes of power outages in 2012:

Los Angeles, California: On October 12, a planned outage was necessary so the space shuttle Endeavor could travel through the streets of Los Angeles to the California Science Center
Gadsden, Alabama: On May 16, a six-foot copperhead snake caused equipment to fail, cutting power to 6,700 people and affecting numerous substations.
Sonoma County, California: On April 8, a wild turkey flew into power lines and knocked out an emergency 911 dispatch system. The bird also crippled operations at the county courthouse and jail until the following day.

For more:
- see the report

http://www.fierceenergy.com/story/outages-actually-down-2011/2013-04-28