Brief Power Outage in NYC Attributed to Faulty Transmission Line

A faulty transmission line caused a brief power outage in New York City Thursday night as some witnessed an “explosion,” according to the utility company Con Edison.

Con Edison President Matt Ketschke spoke to the media following the brief power outage, which affected all five boroughs.

Ketschke attributed the momentary power outage to a “piece of high voltage electric equipment” failing in the substation right before midnight. He explained that it short-circuited, which “caused a large flash that was seen by some residents around the neighborhood.”

Ketschke stated:

The protection, which are basically breakers a lot like the circuit breakers in your house, just much bigger, they opened up to isolate that piece of equipment. There was a voltage dip. Essentially, people saw a flicker in their lights for about a second a little bit before midnight, and then voltage recovered, or kind of went back to normal.

He added that the incident is currently under investigation.

“We’re trying to determine exactly what happened. It’ll probably take us a little while to figure out exactly what failed. But it was some form of short circuit and a piece of high voltage equipment that was isolated,” he said, adding that these are “pretty infrequent events.”

“We have multiple redundant sets of transformers so that the lights stay on. If you have one of these, we actually have one of the most reliable electric systems in the United States. These are pretty rare occurrences, but they do happen every once in a while,” he added.

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According to the New York Times, Con Edison employees were “restoring a transmission line at the substation” before the outage.

While no major injuries were reported, some individuals found themselves stuck in elevators, prompting a response from first responders.

The Long Island Rail Road noted shortly before 1:00 a.m. that “all elevators and escalators at Grand Central are out of service due to an ongoing Con Edison power problem.”

“Train service at Grand Central is operating on or close to schedule. Personnel are working to fix the issue as quickly as possible,” it added.