[–] leonidasrup 2 days ago
[–] lompad 2 days ago
[–] richjdsmith 2 days ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northeast_blackout_of_2003
I had never really considered how stable our grid is until now. I've experienced blackouts in other countries while traveling/living abroad, but Canada has a remarkably well managed grid.
[–] tharkun__ 2 days ago
Also you may not care for Ontario and Quebec but: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2023_Canada_ice_storm Much more recently.
I can count more years where I've used the generator multiple times a year than years where I did not have to use the generator. Given we don't have automatic whole house failover and I have to actually bring it out, fill it, plug a bunch of things into extension cables we run all over the house etc. we only do it for "major" ones i.e. when it's been out for some time and the outage map shows that "it's not just us". And I'm in a part of our town that usually gets the least amount of power outages and is usually the first to get reconnected as well when it does. And our neighbors that do have automatic failovers are what I count as "actually a power outage". That happens even more often. Like the times when I'm like "OK if this goes one more minute I'm gonna 'fold' and go take out the generator". And then it comes back on after half an hour.
This usually happens around the start and end of winter nowadays meaning during storms and especially sleet/ice storms that coat the lines and trees. I.e. I need to remember to fill up the jerry cans soon actually, thanks for the reminder.
Now, vs. say what is being reported of the Philippines there this is still way more reliable but its nowhere near the reliability of what is cited about Germany.
[–] gnabgib 2 days ago
Zero blackouts for me (obviously a different part, but for a while in the one referenced by GP), except a transformer explosion (for me - a very real total lack of power for 7 days, but not the city, province, or Canada). A Canada blackout is impossible right now (we have several separate networks with interties, and each individual network has failsafes preventing an outage spreading). Although, a series of cascading bad decisions could work.. I guess.. if you like that sort of thing.
[–] tharkun__ 2 days ago
The explosions is what we get every single winter. Not necessarily affecting ourselves. But we get "the sky light up" and "loud boom" multiple times every winter. Each time we go like "OK I guess it's starting". Many times it doesn't actually start for us given where we are specifically but I check the outage map and then I see how far away some of those actually are vs. how alight the sky was and how loud it was through closed windows. As in, it seems like it was a street over and it was actually many many kilometers away!
And like I said, big metro area with millions of people. Most of those definitely don't experience this as much as we do here as much of the actual "city" area of that has either buried power lines or when they don't there are no trees nearby (very sad actually). "Out here" in the "boonie but not actual boonies" part of the metro area the power lines do all run above ground and among trees in many parts of the area.
So yeah, while a big 2003 style outage may not be very likely any longer, for my local experience that really doesn't matter a lot in that sense and even in Canada in total, power outages of a half million households plus have happened more recently than your 2003 reference. Not limited to my earlier 2023 example (nicely recent, only 3 years ;) )
2013 ice storm Ontario: over 600,000 customer outages at the storm’s height. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/December_2013_North_American_s...
May 2018 windstorm Ontario and Quebec: over 925,000 customers combined https://cdd.publicsafety.gc.ca/dtpg-eng.aspx?cultureCode=en-...
December 2018 windstorm British Columbia: power knocked out to 600,000 households https://news.gov.bc.ca/releases/2019PSSG0119-002228
Halloween storm, 2019 Quebec: about 980,000 Hydro-Québec customers without power at the peak. https://globalnews.ca/news/6112250/quebec-montreal-high-wind...
November 2020 windstorm Ontario: Hydro One reported over 542,000 customers affected. https://cdd.publicsafety.gc.ca/dtpg-eng.aspx?cultureCode=en-...
May 2022 derecho Ontario: about 586,000 Hydro One outages. Quebec: about 550,000 Hydro-Québec customers affected. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/May_2022_Canadian_derecho
September 2022, Fiona Nova Scotia: over 415,000 customers - Prince Edward Island: over 82,000 - New Brunswick: 44,329. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurricane_Fiona
April 2023 ice storm Quebec: 1,125,000 customers without power at the same time. Ontario: Hydro One reported over 114,000 affected customers. Hydro Ottawa reported 56,000.
https://ottawa.citynews.ca/2023/04/09/more-than-130000-still...
[–] lompad 2 days ago
In many areas solar panels get turned of by grid operators remotely for many hours on sunny days. In an area in the south I worked in around 50-70% of the produced power of larger installations (>30kwp) is essentially thrown away because the grid simply doesn't have enough capacity.
[–] zarzavat 2 days ago
If many houses install off-grid solar, it's still not going to have a negative effect on the grid because the change is spread out over time.
It does mean that less generating capacity is needed over the long term, but decision makers can just get that data directly from the grid. I don't see what extra information the permit is adding.
[–] holgerschurig 2 days ago
And Germany is #4 regarding grid stability (measured in SAIDI) in Europe. There are only some tiny and small countries better than the german grid, and no large industrial country. And, btw, Europe has a WAY higher grid stability than the Americas.
Why is that important? Years ago, I had weekly telcos with a customer in Tucson, Arizona. And more often than not we didn't had one: they had no power over there. So the shabby quality of the public grid influenced in a bad way their economy. Businesses simply couldn't talk and plan during that period. Probably also not produce.
Having a top-notch grid is IMHO a basis for a successful economy.
(And fun thing: the german grid is so good ALSO because of our neighbors. We're all interconnected. In Germany, we don't really have the landscape for massive water pump storage power plants. But when we have excess electricity, the ones in Austria and Switzerland are using "our" power. And we need the power, we get "their" power back. Or France ... in the summer, they now routinely have to power down their nuclear plants due to cooling issues. But in France ... no one notices. We all help each other. In year 53% of the french atomic power was "out" due to climate change and regular maintenance. And it all worked nethertheless. As it should be!)
The Germans manage their electric grid very well, the last major electric blackout in Germany was in 2006. (More than 15 million clients of the Union for the Co-ordination of Transmission of Electricity (UCTE) did not have access to electricity for about two hours on this date.)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2006_European_blackout
On the other hand electric grids in Philippines are quite unreliable and economic losses caused by blackouts are quite high:
" That is a brutal reminder that every blackout doesn’t just kill the lights; it sets the nation’s money, productivity, and economic progress on fire. " https://mb.com.ph/2026/10/26/blackouts-heavy-price-tag-is-ga...