Equipment failure, fire caused statewide power outages

Wednesday, February 27, 2008

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Many stop lights were out in south Florida and some stores closed because they were without power Tuesday afternoon.

MIAMI (AP) -- Florida's largest utility said equipment failure and a fire at a Miami substation led to power outages that affected up to three million people Tuesday afternoon.

Florida Power & Light said the company is still trying to determine what caused the failure and fire. The company said such equipment failure should not have caused the widespread blackouts.

The problem caused a nuclear plant south of Miami to automatically shut down.

Officials with the company said just about 20,000 people remained without power by 5:30 p.m., and most of those were due to outages caused by storms.

Meanwhile, Progress Energy Florida has restored power to all customers who lost service earlier today.

The company's automated system went into effect to stabilize the statewide supply of electricity and dropped some customers from service.

The peak number of customers without power was approximately 153,000 out of 1.7 million throughout Progress Energy's 35-county service area in Florida. Most customers affected by the incident were restored to power by 2:10 pm and all had service restored by 3:37 pm.

No Progress Energy Florida power plants were affected.

Progress Energy Florida provides electricity to 1.7 million customers in Florida. The company serves a territory encompassing more than 20,000 square miles including the cities of St. Petersburg and Clearwater, as well as the Central Florida area surrounding Orlando.

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Earlier in the day, the mechanical failure to two nuclear power units at the Turkey Point facility south of Miami caused statewide power outages Tuesday afternoon.

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Map of the outages
Previous outages
Florida Division of Emergency Management
Miami traffic
Parts of Miami, Doral, Westchester and Pembroke Pines were without power, as well as the Port of Miami.

Service from multiple agencies, including Progress Energy, Tampa Electric and Florida Power & Light was affected.

The State EOC in Tallahassee activated to a Level 2, partial activation, in response to the current power outage in the state. The state's emergency activation center will be partially staffed.

There were approximately three million people without power in the Florida Power and Light system.

Callers in Bay News 9's coverage area reported outages in parts of Pinellas, Pasco and Polk counties. Orlando and parts of Tallahassee and south Florida experienced a widespread power outage.

About 4.4 million customers across South Florida were affected, Florida Power and Light officials said.

The outage struck shortly after 1 p.m., as scattered thunderstorms passed through the region.

In Washington, officials at the Department of Homeland Security said there was no immediate concern that terrorism was behind the outage.

Stan Johnson, a spokesman for the North American Electric Reliability Council, said eight power plants were off-line across the region, but officials believe the outage has been contained.

Police officers directed traffic at intersections in downtown Miami. Many stop lights were out and some stores and schools closed because they were without power.

C.J. Drake, head of Corporate Communications for Progress Energy, said no Progress Energy Florida power plants were affected and their system performed as expected.

"The company's automated system went into effect to stabilize the statewide supply of electricity and dropped some of our customers from service," Drake said.

Drake said he expected a majority of Progress Energy's customers to already have power restored by approximately 3 p.m.

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