ECN Forum Forums General Topics of the Trade General Discussion Area Any linemen here know the real story with the Queens NY blackout?

In a nutshell, Burke explained, the genesis of the outages was the failure of 'feeder lines' that carry 27,000 volts of electricity through ConEd`s 57 distribution areas. Feeder lines connect to transformers that 'step down,' or reduce the voltage down to the 120 volts found in household outlets.

The system is resilient enough that if two and even three primary feeder lines in a service area fail, there will be enough backup capacity to keep power flowing to the point that consumers don`t even notice it.

Last week, however, the Queens distribution area lost about half of its 22 primary feeders for reasons that were still unclear Sunday.

'We lost at least 10 feeder lines,' Burke noted. 'It`s something I have never seen before.'

The loss of feeder lines was blamed for the Washington Heights outages, which according to a report by the New York State Attorney General was traced in large part to insulation issues in the oven-like environment of underground utility vaults.

But as it did in 1999, the loss of the feeder lines in Queens caused higher volumes of electricity to run through the remaining feeders, transformers, and the lower-voltage lines, which were subsequently fried one-by-one by heavy power loads that they simply were not designed to handle.