Massive blackout hits California, Arizona and Mexico

As reported on the BBC earlier.

www.bbc.co.uk...

Could this be the work of the recent solar flare?

It seems to me to be a simple combination of mechanical and human error, although none is clear in either direction yet. I don't think it has anything to do with solar flares. However, as a former resident of California myself, I'm used to rolling blackouts anyway, so this is nothing more than a typical day for most Cali residents.

Sucks that is spread through the grid over the border, but it doesn't look like it's out of hand.

King

Yes it could be sun's fault

GEOMAGNETIC STORM WATCH: A series of coronal mass ejections (CMEs) propelled toward Earth by the recent eruptions of sunspot 1283 will deliver glancing blows to Earth's magnetic field on Sept. 9th - 11th. High-latitude sky watchers should be alert for auroras in the nights ahead.

spaceweather.com...

the offical story

In a press release Thursday night, the Arizona Public Service said one of its employees was carrying out a procedure at a substation northeast of Yuma that caused the problem. The utility said the resulting power failure should have been isolated to the Yuma area. An investigation into why it was not is under way, the utility said.

also

That problem caused the two reactors at the San Onofre nuclear power plant on the coast north of San Diego to go offline at 3:38 p.m. Charles Coleman, a spokesman from Southern California Edison, said the reactors are programmed to do that when there is a disturbance in the power grid, and there was no danger to the public or to workers there.

I think this is covered on the front page.

Massive Power Outage Hits Southwest US - Post Updates Here

I have a friend that works in a power plant and jokes that he was the one who accidentally lost power to the northeast a few years ago by spilling coffee on the computer...call it EMP, call it flares...I call it spilled java

I have a friend that works in a power plant and jokes that he was the one who accidentally lost power to the northeast a few years ago by spilling coffee on the computer...call it EMP, call it flares...I call it spilled java