Blackout Season Getting Busy In Hurry

After New York City experienced a short blackout on Wednesday, which is now being attributed to lightning strikes hitting a substation in Queens that triggered a shutdown of two other substations and affected nearly 500,000 people before power resumed about an hour later, we saw additional outages due to weather around the area last night.

Powerful thunderstorms knocked out power to thousands of people as trees downed lines.

I don't blame the utilities for downed trees unless those trees should have been pruned back to prevent such outages, but when equipment failures and infrastructure failures cause major outages, there is reason to be concerned.

Well, Con Ed is not alone. They've got company: Tempe, Arizona is apparently in the dark due to a blackout.

A massive power outage hit the Valley today. The Mesa Fire Department said SRP lost two substations.

One of the hardest hit was Tempe, where police said the entire city was out.

"There are still some businesses and a few residences without power, but SRP is working very quickly and diligently to get those back into place," said Brandon Banks with the Tempe Police Department.

The Mesa Fire Department said the outage also affected Gilbert and parts of Phoenix.

Once again, we're seeing the folly of ignoring infrastructure problems with the power distribution system in the country. Conservation alone will not keep the system going as demand will continue to outstrip the ability to get the power to where it is needed.