Huge power outage plunges Manhattan into darkness

NEW YORK - A power outage gripped New York's Manhattan on Saturday, sending Broadway theaters plunging into darkness, subways grinding to a halt and flicking off billboards in Times Square.

About 42,000 customers lost electricity in the early evening, according to the Con Edison utility.

Mayor Bill de Blasio said on Twitter that the outage was caused by a "manhole fire," but later told CNN it was under investigation.

"This appears to be something that just went wrong in the way that they transmit power from one part of the city to another to address demand," de Blasio said.

On social media, dozens of users posted photos of subway stations bathed in darkness.

"While Con Edison works to restore power in Manhattan, we encourage everyone to avoid below-ground subway stations," New York's Metropolitan Transportation Authority said on Twitter.

Firefighters said they were responding to numerous requests for help, particularly from people trapped in elevators.

New Yorkers took Saturday's outage in stride, with passersby standing in intersections to direct traffic and a disrupted Carnegie Hall concert continuing in the street.

The cut affected the western chunk of Manhattan, particularly the Hell's Kitchen neighborhood and the Broadway theater district.

It took place on the anniversary of the 1977 "Blackout" power cut that affected virtually the entirety of New York in the midst of an economic crisis.

Looting and vandalism then broke out, affecting more than a thousand businesses.

Twenty-five hours and several hundred arrests later, the lights came back on.

source: news.abs-cbn.com

San Francisco goes dark amid major power outage

SAN FRANCISCO, United States - Equipment failure at a utility station and a subsequent fire pulled the plug on San Francisco on Friday, cutting power to downtown businesses and homes for hours.

An outage that began late in the morning and continued into the afternoon cut power to about 88,000 customers in the busy heart of the city, according to Pacific Gas and Electric spokesman Paul Doherty.

"We deeply apologize for the inconvenience this has caused around the city," Doherty told AFP.

"We know it was an equipment failure. It is premature to speculate on a specific cause," he said, while discussing the cause of the fire.

Traffic lights were out of service and shops plunged into darkness. But many people seemed to take the outage in stride, leaving offices or apartments to socialize on streets where traffic was more subdued than on typical work days.

Some cafes or shops continued to serve customers, with people using cash or mobile payment services such as Square that let credit or debit cards be processed through smartphones or tablets.

Public transit operator BART temporarily closed its underground metro station in the city center.

Firefighters said on Twitter that they received more than 100 calls, 20 of them related to people trapped in elevators.

By shortly after 4 pm (2300 GMT), electricity had been restored to all but approximately 3,000 customers, PG&E spokeswoman Andrea Menniti said in a message on Twitter.

The bulk of the outage lasted about seven hours.

source: news.abs-cbn.com

CamSur electric coop gets extension on debt deadline

MANILA, Philippines - Power was restored in Iriga City and other parts of Camarines Sur after its electric cooperative won an extension to next week to pay its supplier San Miguel Global Power.

Camarines Sur was supposed to be cut off from the power grid Wednesday after failing to meet a 12 noon deadline to settle its unpaid electricity bills. It did experience a power outage that lasted 15 minutes.

In a text message, Energy Secretary Jericho Petilla said an extension to the November 4 deadline was granted after negotiations between him, Camarines Sur mayors, the management of Camarines Sur Electric Cooperative 3 (Casureco 3) and San Miguel.

"I have negotiated with [San Miguel] for extension due to holidays. This means debt will be further incurred at a rate of P1.3 million per day until disconnection happens or debts are settled," he said.

Petilla, hower, says the extension will further bloat Casureco's P100 million debt by P1.3 million a day until it pays its debt.

Iriga Mayor Ronald Alfelor said Wednesay Iriga itself has not been remiss in paying its electric bills because these should be offset against the taxes owed by Casureco 3. - ANC

source: www.abs-cbnnews.com

Power outage hits Palace, too

MANILA - Power also went out in Malacañang Wednesday afternoon.

Deputy presidential spokesperson Abigail Valte was fielding a question in the Palace press briefing room when the power dipped, causing an audio feedback before the lights went out.

A generator then automatically came on.

The power outage also resulted in the suspension of operations of the Light Rail Transit Lines 1 and 2, an official said.

A message on the official MERALCO Twitter account read: "At 1351H, a widespread power outage occurred within the franchise area of Meralco. Cause is still being checked."

source: www.abs-cbnnews.com

S. Korea issues power shortage alert amid heatwave

SEOUL - South Korea's state power company issued a shortage warning Monday, meaning that reserves are dangerously low, as electricity consumption rose sharply due to an unusual heatwave.

The warning from the Korea Electric Power Company (KEPCO) was aimed at averting power cuts, the knowledge economy ministry said, urging households, factories and other users to cut consumption voluntarily.

Temperatures have stayed above 35 degrees Celsius (95 F) for 10 consecutive days in many parts of the country, driving up air-conditioning use.

Power consumption on Monday reached a record high of 74.29 million kilowatts in the afternoon, the ministry said.

It was the first such warning since last September, when more than 2.1 million households and other premises were hit with rolling power cuts lasting up to one hour.

The ministry also resumed operations of the country's oldest nuclear power plant at Gori. It had been closed for months due to scrutiny over its safety and protests by civic groups.

"We are relieved to resume operations of the Gori reactor at a time when power consumption is expected to reach its peak," Knowledge Economy Minister Hong Suk-Woo said in a statement.

In February the Gori plant, built in 1978 near the southern city of Busan, briefly lost mains power and the emergency generator failed to kick in.

The incident did not result in any radioactive leaks but it sparked an extensive probe amid concerns over nuclear safety following last year's atomic crisis in Japan.

South Korea operates 23 nuclear power plants which meet more than 35 percent of its electricity needs.

Analysts say successive governments have failed to authorise major increases in the relatively low cost of electricity, encouraging wasteful consumption.

KEPCO last Friday decided to raise rates by 4.9 percent, yielding to government pressure to limit the increase to less than five percent.

source: interaksyon.com

There Goes The Weekend! Pinterest, Instagram And Netflix Down Due To AWS Outage [Updated]

Are you out at a Friday night dinner somewhere, trying to take a filtered picture of some fancypants dessert and post it to Instagram to no avail? Are you currently making futile efforts to pin said dessert to your “Fancy Dessert” board on Pinterest but failing?

Well you’re out of luck, digital hipsters! Because of storms in North Virginia, power outages have impaired Amazon Web Services data centers in the region tonight, which means no Pinterest, Instagram, Netflix, Heroku and other sundry AWS-dependent services for you.

According to the AWS outage dashboard the company is ONIT, yet, as of 12:31AM PST, it is only at 50% recovery.

This service outage inevitably begs the question: If someone takes an iPhone pic of a Friday night artisanal beer, and it’s not posted on Instagram, does it make a sound?

As one HackerNews commentator put it, “No matter how powerful we become as a species with our technology, we are still at the mercy of the clouds. Pretty cool if you think about it.” Too true.

‘Night guys.

Also: It’s also worth pointing out that these outages seem to affect services in other markets like Europe — meaning that, despite Amazon having more local hubs in Europe, Asia Pacific and South America, these services appear to be routed through only one of them, in North America. We’ll keep checking and updating the blog with any more news.

Update: As of 9.34AM GMT today (1.34AM Pacific), selected services running through Amazon’s North Virginia servers are back up. Instagram still appears to be down, though.

Update 2: At about 12:45 PM PST it looks as though Crunchbase, Instagram and others are slowly regaining their full-functionality. Quick, somebody find me a coffee with some sweet foam art!

source: techcrunch.com