The Monster 1965 Northeast United States Blackout: Beginning of Addressing the Nation’s Electric Power Reliability Issues

The 1965 Northeast blackout was until 2003 the largest blackout in American history. Beginning at about 5:15 p.m. at the height of rush hour on Tuesday, November 9, 1965, most of the northeastern United States, the most densely populated area of the nation, and Ontario, Canada, suddenly lost its electric power. The power outage lasted from a few minutes in some locations to 13 and ½ hours in New York City. The outage encompassed 80,000 square miles and directly affected some 30 million people in virtually all of New York State, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and small segments of northern Pennsylvania and northeastern New Jersey and substantial areas of Ontario, Canada. New Hampshire and Vermont experienced spotty failures that lasted from three minutes to several hours, and Maine did not experience any failure. (1)

The power failure prompted President Lyndon Johnson (1908-1973; tenure as president: 1963-1969) to write on November 9, 1965: “Today’s failure is a dramatic reminder of the importance of the uninterrupted flow of power to the health, safety, and well being of our citizens and the defense of our country. This failure should be immediately and carefully investigated in order to prevent a recurrence. You [the Federal Power Commission] are therefore directed to launch a thorough study of the cause of this failure. I am putting at your disposal full resources of the federal government and directing the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Department of Defense and other agencies to support you in any way possible.” (2)

Consolidated Edison (NYC) Utility Reacts

“There wasn’t the slighted indication as to what was about to happen,” wrote Dorothy Ellison of the Consolidated Edison Company, the utility that services New York City. (3) “November 9, 1965 was a crisp, clear autumn day. By late afternoon conditions at Con Edison were typical for that time of year. The system had just passed its daily peak demand. Load was starting to drop off. Generators were…producing 4550 megawatts of power (1 megawatt = 1 million watts). Another 220 megawatts of power was coming in over interconnections…to meet our load of 4770 megawatts. And there was a comfortable spinning reserve of 1350 megawatts available from company generators…The system was in good shape.” (3)

The December 1965 Federal Power Commission report noted that: “Consolidated Edison was operating at 5:16:11 p.m. on November 9 with a system load in the range of 4800 megawatts. The capacity of the 47 steam units it had on the line at the time was approximately 5900 megawatts, the difference representing spinning reserve. It was receiving power, according to schedule, from Niagara Mohawk (369 mw), and the PJM pool (40 mw), and transmitting power to the CONVEX pool (35 mw), Long Island Lighting (80 mw), Orange and Rockland (115 mw), and to Central Hudson (35 mw).” (4)

Consolidated Edison Company had direct ties with these six neighboring systems with whom it bought, sold, and exchanged power. These connections between companies occurred at so many points that they reached out over eight states and created a huge Northeast power network,” wrote another observer. (5) Indeed, Con Edison in 1965 was the member of a large confederation of 42 power companies linked in the great power grid known as CANUS (pronounced ka-NOOSE), which covered southern Canada and the northeastern United States. (Another acronym for the same entity is CANUSE for the Canada-United States Eastern Interconnection.) The CANUS territory coincided roughly with the 80,000 square-mile Northeast sector that was plunged into darkness.” (5)   

Within seconds after the initiation of the incident, Consolidated Edison personnel noted the flows into its system from both Niagara Mohawk and PJM had ceased. (4) The utility’s first indication of serious trouble was just minutes before the blackout when the house lights dipped severely. “No, we didn’t see this first on the instruments, declared Edwin, J. Nellis, the official supervising electric circuits at the time. “We saw it on our house lighting.” (6) Under intense questioning from news reporters, Nellis said that he gave the order to cut New York City and Westchester away from the Northeast power grid after other parts of the grid upstate had begun to draw an immense amount of electricity from the Con Edison system (more on this below).

Impact on People

When the power failure occurred in New York City at 5:27 p.m., the daylight had just vanished and electric lights had just lit up the urban scene. Then “the lights dimmed, flickered and went out.” (7) About 800,000 people were trapped for hours in a multitude of everyday situations, which included some more ominous ones such as in darkened crowded subway trains dead on the tracks between stations, elevators stuck between floors, and unlighted halls and stairways. More than 800 hospitals were without commercial power and, in some cases, had no backup sources or power. Planes headed for New York had to be diverted as far away as Bermuda as airports darkened. (3) Fortunately, the temperature that evening was mild and the night sky was cloudless with a full moon. In addition, radios and telephone service, and law enforcement and fire services continued drawing their power from “self-contained generators” at their locations.

Personal stories about the ordeal abound and suggest a pall of, of, er, restrained annoyance. For example, Major General Robert E. Condon, director of Civil Defense for New York City, “was stepping into an elevator at the Biltmore Hotel when the lobby lights dimmed and died. He made his way to the street. Seeing that all lights were out in the area, he called his headquarters by car radio and alerted civil defense offices in the five boroughs.

“Mayor Wagner, motoring down the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Drive to a dinner party, noted the gathering gloom. He called the Fire Department on the car radio and upon learning that the blackout was almost citywide, he ordered his chauffeur to proceed to City Hall for a meeting with his Emergency Control Board. He was to stay there until after midnight.

“Stranded in his top-floor suite at United Nations, the Secretary General, U Thant, was to wait five hours before he and his staff tired of the wait and armed with two candles, began walking down the 37 flights to the street.

Mayor-elect John V. Lindsay was about to enter an elevator at Station WEVD, 117 West 46th Street, when the power failed. He was to tape an interview with Victor Riesel, syndicated labor columnist. Mr. Riesel, who had arrived a moment earlier, was trapped in an elevator near the second floor. Mr. Lindsay ran to the second floor and shouted encouragement, then left for a candle-lit dinner engagement with his campaign staff while workers tried to extricate Mr. Riesel. Later, it seemed odd to some observers that Mr. Lindsay had not been invited to the City Hall conferences. An aide said that Mayor Wagner had felt that it was his responsibility to deal with the problems of the city until December 31.

“At 6:55 p.m. some Madison Avenue executives tired of drinking martinis by candle light. Six of them went to the Vanderbilt Avenue exist of Grand Central and hired a cab to take them home to Scarsdale for $30.

“Shortly after 7 p.m., 300 men of the 71st Regiment who were drilling in their Park Avenue armory at 34th Street, were called to the rescue of hundreds of subway riders trapped on the Lexington Avenue IRT between Grand Central Station and 23rd Street.

“Armoires were thrown open to stranded people at 8 p.m. That action gave shelter to the elderly, but did not solve the problem of food. As the hours passed, the crowd began complaining of hunger. National Guardsmen combed the Murray Hill area and found all restaurants and cafeteria closed. After midnight, the Red Cross brought in some food and coffee. ‘They’re getting irritable,’ Captain Edward McGrath of the 42d (Rainbow) told the newsmen before the Red Cross arrived. ‘They are snapping at the men. They keep asking when they are going to be fed.’

“The men in the information booth at Grand Central were tired of answering inquiries about when the trains were going to run and merely shrugged. At 8:30 p.m., the big shed was garishly lighted by police floodlamps. Morale was bolstered for a time by a young lady who perched herself on the counter of the information booth and appealed for help in doing a crossword puzzle. ‘I need a five letter word starting with ‘L’ meaning ‘vertical column,’ she called out. Forty adults clustered nearby frowned in deep concentration. ‘Lally’, cried DeWolf Thompson, who runs the Menemsha Inn at Martha’s Vineyard. It sounded right. Mr. Thompson, in town with his wife for the hotel show at the Coliseum, said lallies were used as props to support beams…

“As the power came back on thousands of sleepers were startled into wakefulness as their bedrooms were flooded with light. They had gone to sleep forgetting to turn the switch. At the 71st Regiment Armory, the strandees had increased to 2,500 when the emergency ended. ‘Most of them just got up and walked out quietly,’ said Lieutenant John Manning of the 42d Division…Back at Grand Central, a big queue formed at a coin-operated electric shaver in the men’s room.” (7)

What Caused the Power Failure?

The initiating cause of the 1965 monster Northeast power outage was traced to the giant, oil-immersed circuit breakers located in the buzzing switch yard of the Sir Adam Beck-Niagara Hydroelectric plants near Queenston, Ontario, less than ten miles north of Niagara Falls, New York. The switch yard, located on small flat windswept island between canals (see more below) was capable of handling 1,350,000 kilowatts of electricity (1 kilowatt = 1 thousand watts) produced by the Sir Adam Beck-Niagara Hydroelectric Plants, as well as other plants in Canada and plants in the United States. (8)

The Sir Adam Beck-Niagara Hydroelectric Plants No. 1 and No. 2 were named for the first chairman of Ontario Hydro-Electric Power Commission of Ontario. Sir Adam Beck No. 1 opened in 1921 and had a capacity in 1965 of producing 403,900 kilowatts. Sir Adam Beck No. 2 opened in 1954 and had in 1965 a capacity of 1,400,300 kilowatts.

The guilty switch yard handled all of the 60-cycle electricity produced by the Sir Adam Beck plants, sending it north through Ontario or exporting it south to the US (it also produced 25-cycle electricity to local industries). The Sir Adam Beck hydroelectric plants are driven by water diverted ABOVE Niagara Falls and channeled though canals and huge underground tunnels seven miles down the Niagara River to the plants (recall that Niagara River flows northward and connects Lake Eerie with Lake Ontario).

Five (5) main transmission lines from the Sir Adam Beck plants routed electricity north to Toronto and the rest of Ontario. Each of the transmission lines were 230-kilovolt lines. At 5:16:11 p.m. a backup protective relay on one of the five 230-kilovolt transmission lines operated and caused the circuit breaker to disconnect the line.

Helpful definitions

A transmission line carries electric energy from the generator to the loads within a single utility AND provides paths for electric energy to flow between utilities (called “interconnections”). A faulty line within a transmission system is removed from service by pieces of equipment called circuit breakers, which can switch the lines on and off. The device that determines when a circuit breaker should operate is called a relay or primary relay. “The relays on a power system are complicated devices which continuously measure electric quantities and determine when the power system is in trouble and where the trouble is located. These instruments then relay this information (hence the name) to the circuit breakers which open to isolate the faulty line or other equipment from the rest of the power system.” (9)

During storms, there are often short circuits but the operation of the relays and circuit breakers and related equipment prevents the shutdown of the entire power system. The failure of a circuit breaker to switch a line off during system disturbances causes an extremely hazardous condition. “The consequences are so severe that utilities prove additional relays called back-up relays [backup protective relay] that sense this condition and operate other circuit breakers to clear the faulty facility.” (9)  

Beck Backup Relay Operates as Programmed

As noted above, it was a backup relay on one of the five 230-kilovolt transmission lines taking power from the Beck plant to Toronto that operated as programmed and triggered the circuit breaker, which disconnected the 230-kilovolt line. The flow on the interrupted 230-kilovolt line then shifted to the remaining four (4) 230-kilovolt lines heading to Toronto, each of which was then loaded beyond the level at which its protective relay was set to operate. The four lines then tripped out successively in a similar manner in only 2 ½ seconds. (10)

The relay that caused the disturbance was one of five that had been installed in 1951 as backup protection for the primary relays at Beck, explains the authors of the Federal Power Commission report published less than a month after the monster power failure. (10) The Ontario Hydro officials explained that following the occurrence of a fault on one of these lines in 1956, a circuit breaker failed to open, resulting in a loss of all of Beck’s generation and a power outage in Ontario and northwestern New York. As part of an evaluation of its requirements for backup protection, Ontario Hydro in January 1963 “modified these relays to broaden their protection. The relay setting imposed in 1963 were in effect at the time of the power failure on November 9, 1965.” (10)

The modified relay settings served two purposes. The first was to back up the primary short circuit relays at Beck and the second was ensure that any of the five 230-kilovot lines moving power to the north would be disconnected if its circuit breaker at Beck switching station on the windswept island—or a circuit breaker down the line at Burlington, Ontario, failed to operate. The overhaul of the relay system essentially resulted in two sets of relays protecting the five 230 kilovolt lines going north from Beck.

Each backup relay in 1963 was set to operate at about 375 megawatts. The load-carrying capacity of each of the five lines was above 375 megawatts, but the backup relay was set to operate at a power level well below the capacity of the lines because “its function was to detect faults beyond the next switching point from the Beck plan on the Ontario Hydro system.” (11) As it turned out, between 1963 and 1965, the loads on the lines north out of Beck had increased, because of the winter peak in Ontario approaching and due to emergency outages resulting from a problematic new steam plant—Lakeview—built by Ontario Hydro. When this new plant intermittently failed, a general deficiency of generation reserves in Ontario resulted, and the province relied on imports of power from the United States on the CANUS power grid. Ontario Hydro officials admitted that the personnel operating the Ontario Hydro system at the time of the monster outage were unaware that the relay had been set to operate at the 375 megawatt level.

Surge! and Cascading of Big Trouble

At the time of the initial disturbance in the guilty Beck transmission line on November 9, 1965, the flow of power reached the level at which the backup relay was set. It operated as set to disconnect the 230 kilovolt transmission line. The other four lines went “dead” within seconds, as previously described, which created a full separation of the Ontario generation of electricity at the Beck plants from the loads in Ontario. Where was all this generated electric power slamming into the closed circuits going to go? See below.

At the time the five northward-bound Hydro lines dropped, 1800 megawatts of generation originating at the Niagara Plant of the Power Authority of the State of New York (henceforth, PASNY--dependable capacity in the range of 2400 to 2500 megawatts) was flowing over the transmission system to the SOUTH and EAST in the United States, supplying places like New York City. Another 1500 megawatts of generation produced by PASNY was serving Canadian loads around Toronto. [This adds up to more than 2400-2500 megawatts of capacity. No explanation is provided in the Federal Power Commission text. Ed.] When the five (5) lines dropped, the flow REVERSED itself and 1500 megawatts superimposed themselves on the 1800 megawatts already on the transmission lines carrying power from PASNY to the SOUTH and EAST of Niagara. “It was this tremendous thrust upon the transmission system in western New York State which exceeded its capability and caused it to break up,” concluded the report. (13) The contingency that all five (5) lines to the north might be lost at the same time was unanticipated at PASNY. (13)

When the five lines dropped, the Beck generators sensed no load and responded with acceleration, which initially sharply reduced their electrical output. “As the speed increased, the electrical power output at the two Beck plants rapidly increased. The instantaneous drop in generation at Beck and PASNY, followed by the rapid buildup, resulted in putting the Beck and PASNY generation out-of-phase with most of the other generation attached to the interconnected transmission system and this situation of ‘transient instability’ was directly responsible for the breakup of the New York State backbone transmission system,” noted the Federal Power Commission investigators. (9)

Three Stages of the Power Failure in the Northeastern United States

The 1965 monster power outage had three phases. (14) The first stage encompassed the initial shock to US transmission systems from the sudden thrust of the 1800 megawatts of power returned to the US when circuits were blocked on the windy Ontario island near Queenston, just miles north of Niagara Falls. A widespread separation of systems through New York and New England followed in seconds. “If this had been the end of the disturbance, the power failure would have touched only on-third of the customers who were eventually affected, and none in southeastern New York and New England,” declared another official report’s authors. (14)

The second stage was the attempt by the electric utilities in eastern New York and New England to survive after being separated from the rest of the interconnected systems of the United States. Individual utilities rarely had sufficient generation power of their own to meet their loads. As a result, after the initial insult on the windy island in Ontario, they became “islands” without connection to the CANUS power grid, and rapidly succumbed in from 3-12 minutes. “During this period, system operators attempted to interpret the information provided by their control center instruments, some of which were operating erratically, and to determine with relatively little information, and some cases with inadequate communications, the extent of the interruption and the appropriate course of action each should take to keep his particular system functioning.” (15)

The third stage of the failure was the difficult process of restoring power. This stage was prolonged, particularly in New York City and Boston, because power was not readily available to restart the steam-electric generating units and substantial delays were encountered in energizing the high-voltage underground transmission networks. The enormous problems of restoring service following the power outage are detailed elsewhere. (16)

Consolidated Edison System Response

There were two ways that Consolidated Edison, serving New York City, could have dealt with the sudden increased demand on the Con Ed system. It could have shed some of its own load by disconnecting some customers, or it could have increased generation by its own generators. Unfortunately, the company had no large industrial customers whose loads could be dropped in an emergency, but it was possible to close down particular sections of its system, and this was belatedly attempted in at least one area, according to reports. “In retrospect it seems likely that a timely shedding of the load in some sections of New York might have avoided a city-wide blackout in New York and the breakdown of service elsewhere, as well as facilitating restoration of service,” noted an official report. (17)

But rather than shed load, Con Ed relied, during the brief period before the system went dead, on the ability of its 47 steam plants then in operation to provide power (their reserve capacity or spinning reserve of about 1100 megawatts). Unfortunately, there was insufficient time to fire up these generators. Thus, despite an initial increase from the generators there was not enough generation to carry the increased load. One after another “the steam plants were taken off the line in order to avoid permanent damage. The result was that after a few minutes of affirmative but inadequate response to its increased load demands, the system reached a point at which it started to disintegrate at an increasingly rapid rate and finally was closed down altogether.” (17)

A third possibility to deal with the crisis was to disconnect from the CANUS, which was what the news reporters were questioning Con Ed Supervisor Nellis about, as noted above. Why hadn’t he given the order to cut New York City and Westchester away from the Northeast power grid? The system operator of Con Ed was instructed in a guide at the time that:

“When a system disturbance occurs, a prime consideration is to maintain parallel operation throughout the interconnected system if at all possible. This will permit rendering maximum assistance to the system in trouble and may prevent cascading of trouble to other parts of the interconnection and assist in restoration of normal operation.” (17) In addition, the guide noted: “If an overload persists on a tie toward a neighboring system or pool: a.) the affected system or pool shall notify the neighboring system or pool of the magnitude of the overload and request immediate relief, and b.) if intolerable overload continues and equipment is endangered, the affected system or pool may open [disconnect] the overloaded ties.” (18)

The premature opening of ties with other systems could work to the detriment of other systems that were in trouble, and the criteria under which pooled systems chose to abandon mutual assistance to save themselves was not consistent throughout CANUS. As it turned out, the Con Ed system operator did not make an immediate clear-cut decision in this crisis other than turning up the generators owned and operated by Con Ed. All of this stress to save its customers at Con Ed took about 12 minutes, measured from the initial relay signal on the windy island to when most of lower New England and southern New York went dark.

Beginning of Addressing Electric Power Reliability Issues

The northeastern power outage in 1965 underscored the need for utilities participating in the CANUS to coordinate power flow. As a result, the voluntary membership entities--Northeast Power Coordinating Council (NPCC) (19) and National Electric Reliability Council (NERC) (20)—were formed in 1966 and 1968, respectively. But it was not until July 20, 2006, that the US Federal Regulatory Energy Commission (FERC--the 1977 reorganization of Federal Power Commission, which wrote all the reports on the 1965 outage) approved the NERC’s application to become the Electric Reliability Organization (ERO) for the United States. As the ERO, NERC finally has the legal authority to enforce reliability standards on all owners, operators, and users of the bulk power system, rather than relying on voluntary compliance. The creation of an ERO was authorized under the US Energy Policy Act of 2005, which was triggered in part by concerns generated by the August 2003 blackout—even greater than the 1965 blackout--that affected 40 million people in the midwestern and northeastern United States and 10 million people in eastern Canada. (21)

Sources:

1. US Federal Power Commission. “Northeast Power Failure: November 9 and 10, 1965.” Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, p. 2. Available online at:  http://blackout.gmu.edu/archive/pdf/fpc_65.pdf; accessed August 13, 2006.

2. Ibid, p. ii.

3. Gordon D. Friedlander: “What Went Wrong VIII: The Great Blackout of ‘65”. IEEE Spectrum:83-86. Available online at: http://blackout.gmu.edu/archive/pdf/wwwrong.pdf; accessed August 13, 2006.

4. US Federal Power Commission. “Northeast Power Failure: November 9 and 10, 1965.” Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, p. 8. Available online at:  http://blackout.gmu.edu/archive/pdf/fpc_65.pdf; accessed August 13, 2006.

5. McCandlish Phillips: “Behind the light switch lies complex power network covering entire Northeast” in The New York Times, November 15, 1965, p. 42.

6. Edward C. Burks: “The men at Con Ed tell their story” in The New York Times, November 13, 1965, p. 23.

7. Homer Bigart: “A night of confusion, frustration, and adventure” in The New York Times, November 11, 1965, p. 1.

8. Paul L. Montgomery: “Maverick power station lies on a windy Ontario island” in The New York Times, November 16, 1965, p. 58.

9. US Federal Power Commission. “Northeast Power Failure: November 9 and 10, 1965.” Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, p. 20. Available online at:  http://blackout.gmu.edu/archive/pdf/fpc_65.pdf; accessed August 13, 2006.

10. Ibid, p. 6.

11. Ibid, pp. 7-8.

12. Ibid, p. 3.

13. Ibid, p. 9.

14. Federal Power Commission: “Prevention of Power Failures. Volume 1—Report of the Commission, July 1967”, Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, p. 7. Available online at: http://blackout.gmu.edu/archive/pdf/fpc_67_v1.pdf; accessed August 13, 2006.

15. Ibid, p. 8.

16. Ibid, pp. 29-36.

17. Ibid, p. 14.

18. Ibid, p. 16.

19. For more on the Northeast Power Coordinating Council, see its website at: http://www.npcc.org/default.cfm; accessed August 13, 2006.

20. For more on the North American Electric Reliability Council see http://www.nerc.com/; accessed August 13, 2006.

21. See press statement “NERC Approved as the United States Electric Reliability Organization” at: ftp://www.nerc.com/pub/sys/all_updl/docs/pressrel/07-20-06-NERC-Named-ERO.pdf; accessed August 13, 2006.