Power Failure - Risks? - R+V Versicherung

2011
• 2 February, Texas, forced outages at two major coal-fired power plants and high electricity demand
due to cold weather caused rotating blackouts affecting more than one million customers.
• 3 February, a cyclone hit communities in Queensland, Australia. 170,000 homes lost electricity.
• 4 February, at least eight states in north-eastern Brazil suffered from a major blackout from around
midnight to 4 a.m. It is estimated that 53 million people were affected. Major cities were completely
without out of power.
• 22 February, a 6.3 magnitude earthquake struck the city of Christchurch, NZ damaging large parts of
Orion's sub-transmission and distribution network. Over 80 percent of the city (approximately
160,000 customers) lost power following the quake
• 24 March, nuclear catastrophe following the earthquake and tsunami in Japan – loss of 11% of
country's total power – significant impact
• 30 June, Chennai, India suffered a major power outage affecting many parts of the city for more
than 15 hours
• 11 July, Cyprus a half-week power outage, affected all cities on Greek part of the island after blast
near Vassilikos power plant
• 11 July, the Chicago, USA area was hit by a large windstorm which knocked out power to over
850,000.
• 23 July, failure of a glass insulator caused an outage of most of Northern Saskatchewan for about 4
hrs .
• 27–28 August, Hurricane Irene caused over five million power outages in USA.
• 8–9 September, power failure affected parts of California and Arizona, as well as parts of northwestern
Mexico. Over five million people were affected
• 24 September, nine million people in north and central Chile were affected for at least two hours
• In late October, heavy snow storm on the east coast of the USA caused over two million power
outages. Some residents of Connecticut and western Massachusetts were without electricity for
over seven days.