There are moments in history where we all have that “where were you when” story.
Psychologists call this a “flashbulb memory” – a highly vivid and detailed “snapshot” of a moment in which a consequential, surprising and emotionally arousing piece of news was learned. For example: the moon landing, the fall of the Berlin Wall, the end of a war or even a royal wedding.
In some cases, the flashbulb memory is a moment in time where people faced great adversity and have a personal story to share how their life was forever changed. The 9/11 terrorist attacks and Superstorm Sandy are good examples.
Today is the anniversary of a big flashbulb memory for me and millions of Americans – especially fellow power providers.
Twenty years ago today, Aug. 14, was the most widespread power outage in North American history and a major turning point for the electrical grid, prompting billions of dollars of infrastructure investments.
It was about 4 p.m. and I was on the 12th floor of our headquarters in Newark when we lost power. Our backup generators kicked on and I made my way down 12 flights of stairs into our emergency operations center to figure out what was happening. The board that monitors our system and alerts us about outages was lit up like never before.
We had about 750,000 customers without power. Fortunately, the diversification and design protections in our system helped contain the problem. So the outage stopped midway through our service territory.
It took several hours to figure out what caused the blackout and eliminate our worst fear of a terrorist attack. The weather was fine; it wasn’t stormy. Unlike other outages, there were no trees down in our service area, no storm damage to contend with.
It turned out that a series of faults caused by tree branches touching power lines in Ohio triggered a shutdown stretching from New York, Massachusetts, and New Jersey to west Michigan, and from Ohio north to Toronto and Ottawa, Ontario. Approximately 50 million customers were impacted.
The impact on our customers, luckily, was not as bad as those in other states. Of our 750,000 customers without power, nearly three-quarters were back on line within five hours and virtually all by noon the next day. Customers in other states endured multiple days without power, and we know our customers are grateful we were able to restore power quickly and safely.
In New Jersey, we didn’t need to go out and remove trees, replace poles or repair equipment. But we did need to quickly mobilize all of our available personnel to manually re-energize the over 100 stations that were affected.
While technology provided critical tools, our most vital asset in this recovery was our highly skilled, dedicated and motivated workforce. Our teams safely reenergized the system, circuit by circuit.
The blackout prompted major changes to federal policy and oversight. For us, it was a critical milestone, helping to prioritize infrastructure investments that have resulted in a more reliable and resilient grid and strengthening New Jersey’s critical energy infrastructure. Since the 2003 blackout, we have invested billions of dollars strengthening and modernizing our transmission and distribution systems, with the aim of leaving no one in the dark. This year is no exception. Our 2023 planned capital expenditures of more than $3.5 billion is the largest investment plan in the utility’s history.
Isn’t it ironic that a memory about the lights going out is called a flashbulb memory?
Many of you have your own flashbulb memories about the 2003 blackout.
What’s your story? What were you doing when the lights went out? Tell us in the comments below.
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