Massive power outage hits state, bay area; nuke plant shuts down

Power has been restored throughout most of Florida, including the Tampa Bay area, after a massive outage this afternoon left more millions of people without electricity.

As of 6:30 p.m., about 40,000 electricity customers still didn't have power, although that number was rapidly declining, according to the state emergency operations center.

The problem was traced to a malfunction at an electricity substation in Dade County that set off a chain reaction that shut down several power plants, including Florida Power & Light's massive Turkey Point power station. Turkey Point, 25 miles south of Miami, is one of the largest power stations in the state, and includes two nuclear reactors.

As of 4:30 p.m., power had been restored to all but 800,000 people, said Jenn Meale, a spokeswoman for the state emergency operations center. The state expected that most of those people will have power by 6 p.m.

The local power outages were spotty, affecting parts of Brandon, Riverview, the University of South Florida and Eckerd College in St. Petersburg, as well as traffic signals scattered throughout the region, including parts of Pasco County.

Tampa Electric said 50,000 of its customers lost power between 1 p.m. and 1:30 p.m. Power remained down for less than an hour and has now been restored to all but 2,000 customers, said Laura Duda, spokeswoman for Tampa Electric.

Progress Energy said that at the height of the outage, about 153,000 customers were without power. Approximately 15,000 remain without power, but most should be restored by 5 p.m., said spokesman C.J. Drake.

Here's why the lights went out:

The massive outage began when an electricity substation in Dade County malfunctioned, said Linda Campbell, vice president of the Florida Reliability Coordinating Council. Transmission lines "opened," making them vulnerable to overloads, she said.

The transmission line issues forced the shut-down of several power plants, removing about 2,500-megawatts of generation from the grid, including two nuclear reactors at Florida Power & Light's Turkey Point power station 25 miles south of Miami. Most of the lost generation belonged to Florida Power & Light, although other utilities, including Tampa Electric, lost power plants.

When the generators stopped producing power, the frequency throughout the state's interconnected transmission lines -- think of it like water pressure in pipes -- dropped to dangerous levels. A drop in frequency can cause catastrophic damage to equipment. To bring frequency back up, the system began dropping customers -- and leaving more than 4-million people without power.

Florida's electric grid is highly interconnected so that utilities can buy and sell power from each other, and move it around the state, Campbell explained. That also means problems can cascade throughout the system, as they did today.

Compounding the problem, Florida Power & Light had several transmission lines down for routine maintenance. With many of its power plants down, it needed power from other utilities. But the line maintenance limited the routes available to get the power to its customers, Campbell said.

The state’s emergency operations center declared a Level 1 emergency, the highest level. At 3:50 p.m., the state’s emergency operations center reported that the outage affected Polk, Alachua, Volusia, Orange, Indian River, Citrus, Pasco, Lake, Collier, Osceola, Hillsborough, Brevard, Charlotte, St. Lucie, Martin, Manatee, Lee, Monroe, Broward, Palm Beach, Sarasota, Highland, and Seminole Counties, and that power had been restored to Martin and Orange Counties.

Pasco's 911 center took about 100 more calls than normal between 1:15 and 1:30 Tuesday, mostly from drivers reporting dark traffic lights. Spokesman Eric Keaton said no major accidents resulted from the outages, and schools and hospitals reported no problems. But because of the outage and expected thunderstorms later today, Pasco public schools canceled after-school activities.

Students at USF said classrooms and an administration building went dark about 1:20 p.m. USF police said the outage affected several buildings across campus and intersections on the north side of campus including those on Fletcher and Fowler avenues. Power returned about 2 p.m., said Sgt. Mike Klingebiel, police spokesman.

Several people had to be evacuated from stuck elevators. At the USF library, a generator failed, prompting police to begin guiding about 1,000 people inside down emergency-lit stairways and evacuation routes. As the evacuation was about halfway through, the power switched back on, Klingebiel said.

Four Hillsborough County schools were blacked out between 1:05 p.m. and 2:05 p.m., said Linda Cobbe, schools spokeswoman. All were in the FishHawk area: Bevis and Buckhorn elementaries, Randall Middle School, and Newsome High School.

In Miami's western suburb of Doral, disappointed office workers sat under an awning at a strip mall, unable to buy lunch or go anywhere else due to a sudden downpour.

Nearby, Panera Bread servers enjoyed the unexpected smoking break at the height of the midday rush-hour while their manager grumbled over lost sales.

Down the block at Starbucks, employees began handing out sandwiches they feared would go bad.

Nelson Suarez, 35, a manager for Asia sales at World Fuel Services, enjoyed the free lunch.

"I can't work anyway since all the power is out, so at least something good came out of this," he said.

Jaime Hernandez, a spokesman for Miami-Dade County Department of Emergency Management, said the county is partially activating its emergency operations center. He said no injuries have been reported so far.

By 2 p.m., most of northern downtown Miami appeared to be back to normal operation, including a campus of Miami Dade College and numerous stores and businesses. Traffic lights were out for a short time but appeared to be back in regular operation. In the Florida Keys, spokesman Andy Newman said areas were without power for about 15 minutes, but it was back up as well.

An official at Miami International Airport says the facility is working on a generator backup but that no airline delays were reported.

In Collier County in the southwestern part of the state, sheriff's spokeswoman Karie Partington said officials were working to determine the extent of the outages.

In Central Florida, the Orange and Volusia county sheriff's offices confirmed power outages at traffic signals across their jurisdictions.

"I don't have a handle on whether we're experiencing residential or commercial outages," said Gary Davidson, Volusia sheriff's spokesman. "I know we're receiving reports of traffic lights out virtually throughout the county, from DeLand, Deltona, Ormond Beach, South Daytona to Debary."

- Asjylyn Loder and Mike Brassfield, Times staff writers. Information from the Associated Press was used in this report.

(AP Photo/Lynne Sladky)

Comments

[Clay T]

Could it somehow relate to this story on a secret deal signed in Texas?
http://www.canada.com/topics/news/story.html?id=403d90d6-7a61-41ac-8cef-902a1d14879d&k=14984

[USF]

Emergency lit Stairways? They completely were completely dark. Not a single light was on in even the emergency stairwells at the USF Library.

[Marc]

And FP&L wants to build more Nuclear power plants...insane! Let's stick to wind and solar, at least they won't blow up and cause Florida to be irradiated.

OMG!!! We're under attack! Re-elect Bush!!

[In favor of increased nuclear power]

Marc: We need more energy than wind and solar alone can provide for the foreseeable future. By the way, the article says that the power failure was not caused by any kind of problem at the nuclear plants.

[Idiots R Us]

Idiots will use anything to make a cause against nuclear power. They read nuclear power as causing this mess, when in it was a substation failure and from the sounds of it the nuclear plant did what is was supposed to, put itself in a safe condition.

[peggy arvanitas]

Jeb Bush pushed through the NRC Turkey Point nuclear power plant hearings for the license renewal. Even though there were concerns about construction design, leaking water...

One of the things excluded in the record? It seems the Whole South Florida area-St Lucie on down had nuclear sludge power waste illegally dumped in the neighborhood dumps..And there was a cluster of leukemia in children, and brain tunor cancers.

Call Mr. Moses, I talked to him after the lawsuit went to appeals for the Firestone boy. Moses got back from his aniversary, but he spent most of the last 20 years assisting in the epidemiology studies for cancer clusters in St Lucie. Nancy Lavista said Jeb Bush's new judge pick tied her up most of Jeb's reign of terror as Governor of Florida.

But dont forget, the Miami Dade St Lucie et all area has the highest I mean 80% more children with Stronium-90, nuclear residual in their teeth.
The evidence Jeb Bush squashed to re-approve FP&L's aging Turkey Point nucklear reactor? It was the Tooth Fairy Project Teeth study by renowned scientists all across America, especially in the SE and NE.

We are a danger zone here, maybe FP&L's MILLION DOLLAR contribution so Crist could jump on a buss and toot a pathetic property tax cut isnt so good.
I pray for Bradley, Crist's very good friend who is the NEW lobbyist for Crist. Sorry Criwt had to come home from big party bashes with Stipanovich, Bradley and Sembler and actually be the People's Governor...

[theloneconsumer]

If it is FP&L's nuclear reactor, they cant lie about ut. The NRC makes them file a report...Now, I am going home to watch the CHINA SYNDROME

[Jay]

After 15 minutes of scrambling around to turn off all our servers...the power came back on and it took 30 minutes to restart. Go figure.

Fox news had this story on like it was WWIII. What a joke. They were talking about looting, chaos. Of course, the power was back up in a few hours.

[Alex]

Our infrastructure needs serious investment. Privatization and tax cuts aren't going to fix problems like this.

[Chris]

Alex you are exactly right. We should tax ourselves into oblivion and rely on the same government that gave us Social Security, Medicare and Welfare to resolve our infrastructure problems.

[Bob]

Chris, I think you are off the mark!!!

The problem is that the private industry would rather take the money that should be used for infrastructure, and give it to their stockholders.

[Chris]

Thats What regulation does for you! How many alternatives do you have for power or water? Make Companies compete and everyone is better off.

[kimchee breath]

Good to see power has been restored. No loot'n for the criminals tonight.

yea thats a project to believe, just like the Tooth Fairy.. imagination.

http://neinuclearnotes.blogspot.com/2005/03/real-science-refutes-tooth-fairy.html

[Monday]

That plant is lazy

[George]

Fpl and the all the other power companies are short of tech expertise, manpower and money for training and maintenance. Just a bunch of suits with excel spread sheets trying to appease the shareholders. This will become the norm with deregulation. BTW this happened after the new Regulations from the dept of energy from the FERC after the northeast blackout.. Scary but, garbage in, garbage out

[Tuesday Night]

You conspiracy theorists drive me crazy. Just enjoy your electricity. If you don't like nuclear power (or any for that matter), then go off the grid, call each other Sunflower or Moonbeam and live with pigs on a farm while you dance around in week-old underwear because you didn't shower.

Come on.

What happens when a light bulb goes out in your house? Do you rant about how the government is to blame because you think that Bush started a war in the exact country where we import the metal that goes into making the filament in the bulb? OR, do you just change the bulb and move on?

You can't blame ANY of the Bush's for what happened, so calm down.

And there was no looting because we're all (mostly) civilized here. Don't think bad stuff and compare us to Katrina and New Orleans. Different situations. They had a disaster happen to them. We had an inconvenience.

Power is on. Surf the net. Watch some TV. No need to eat all of your ice cream in one sitting before it goes bad. (Unless you just wanted an excuse to do that.)