Why power outages

Other causes of power outages Car accidents - Car accidents can cause power outages, as they sometimes result in damaged poles and power lines. Animals - Animals can also cause power outages when they climb on equipment, such as transformers and fuses, causing the equipment to shut down. By shutting down, the equipment protects the rest of the system. Planned outages - It is sometimes necessary to interrupt power to homes and businesses, to perform maintenance on our system.

Lightning looks for the quickest path to the ground. It generally searches for the tallest object to serve as a conductor. Utility poles, wires, transformers and other electrical equipment are easy targets for lightning strikes, causing severe damage and loss of power.

Lightning also frequently strikes trees causing tree limbs or even large trees to fall onto utility lines. Wind may cause power lines to swing together resulting in a fault or short circuit that interrupts service. Strong wind can blow tree limbs or entire trees into power lines causing them to fall to the ground.

Severe winds can even break power lines and utility poles, bringing down extensive portions of the infrastructure that delivers power. Winter storms are a threat to electrical equipment when snow and ice build up on power lines and tree limbs. The weight of the snow and ice can cause wires to break. Term of the Day. Best of Techopedia weekly. News and Special Offers occasional.

Power Outage. Techopedia Explains Power Outage. What Does Power Outage Mean? A power outage is also known as power failure, power blackout or simply as blackout. Techopedia Explains Power Outage Power failures in an electric network can be caused by different factors, but the most common are often faults in the power lines and in the distribution stations themselves. Outsets and onsets! B2 an interruption in the supply of electricity :. Storms caused power outages in hundreds of homes last night.

Examples of power outage. Collapsing onto a generator, it signaled the earthquake in the form of a power outage. From the Cambridge English Corpus.

The balloons lifted it, then drifted into power lines, causing a minute power outage across the city. From Wikipedia. One downside to a widely connected grid is thus the possibility of cascading failure and widespread power outage. An induction or any electric stove will not operate during a power outage. Although there was a power outage telecommunications continued to work after the earthquake. The babysitter doesn't come because her car breaks down, there is a power outage , and the boy ends up being chased by his own reflection.

Some models use crank power, in addition to mains electricity and batteries in case of a power outage. Fires and carbon monoxide poisoning can occur after a storm causes a power outage.