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Feb 26, 2008 11:39 pm US/Eastern
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Power Returns, Now The Investigation Begins
Traffic Snarled, Schools Affected By Power Loss
Problem At A West Dade Substation Triggered The Outage
NRC Confirm's Turkey Point Involvement
MIAMI (CBS4) ―
Power has been restored to most of the homes and business across the state of Florida that were left without electricity Tuesday after an FPL equipment failure in Miami touched off a chain reaction in the power grid which shut down power stations, sent traffic into chaos, and briefly raised worries about possible terrorism. FPL and government agencies have started an investigation in to exactly what happened.
The problem started shortly after 1 p.m. Tuesday as South Florida experienced heavy rain, but it was not immediately known if the weather was a contributing factor.
"Significant equipment failure occurred at a substation in West Miami-Dade County at 1:09 p.m.," said FPL Spokesperson Aletha Player, who spoke with reporters at the Miami-Dade Emergency Operations Center.
People near the substation, located near FPL's Miami offices, said they heard an explosion before the power died. A fire was reported at the substation afterward.
Apparently equipment meant to regulate the voltage at the substation failed, and the system that is put in place to isolate the problem failed to disconnect the substation from the rest of the system. FPL engineers are studying every element in its system for answers.
FPL sources told
CBS4's Michael Williams that problem caused FPL officials to shut down two nuclear generators at Turkey Point, on Biscayne Bay east of Homestead, placing them out of service.
Some sources said the generators were intentionally shut down, while others say they automatically 'tripped' when the power system developed a problem. Both actions would have been strictly as a precaution and safety measure; there is no indication Turkey Point's generators had any problem.
Once those units shut down, experts say that apparently left FPL without enough power to meet demand on a day when South Florida was flirting with record high temperatures, and that demand may have combined with the generator shutdown to black out customers across a large part of the state.
The problem disabled two major distribution lines, which stretch from South Florida to Daytona Beach.
Player said that not all customers lost power at once, but that at the height of the outage, about 700 thousand people were without power in FPL's service area, stretching from South Miami-Dade to Palm Beach County. About 3 million people in Florida were without power at some time during the afternoon.
Utility customers in parts of more than 30 counties experienced problems because they are interconnected with FPL's grid.
Despite reports that Turkey Point's nuclear generating system had been shut down, Player said she had no information about Turkey Point's involvement.
"Information on that is not available at this time," she said. "That information will be available following our investigation."
However, Nuclear Regulatory Commission spokesman Kenneth Clark confirmed the shutdown late Tuesday afternoon.
The blackout caused schools in Miami-Dade County to keep students in their classroom, halted service on Metrorail and Metromover, and sent traffic into confusion when hundreds of traffic signals were darkened by the outage.
As power slowly returned to parts of the region, students were allowed to leave schools, traffic lights returned to service, and train service resumed.
Jaime Hernandez, a spokesman for the Miami-Dade department of Emergency Management, said the county partially activated its emergency operations center. Hernandez said no injuries were reported due to the outage.
The Florida Highway Patrol office in Doral, west of Miami, learned of the problem the way most people did, when the lights went out.
Santangelo warned that many traffic lights were darkened by the outage, and urged drivers to treat them as 4-way stops to prevent accidents.
Troopers reported widespread signal failures until power was restored. In Doral, the city used for the first time an emergency plan that called for traffic signals to be powered by generators. City officials called the plan a success.
Commander Charles Hurley of the Miami-Dade Schools Police said children were held in their classrooms until the power situation is stabilized. Initially, schools officials said they would not run bus service Tuesday afternoon, but at 3 p.m. they reversed their earlier statement, said buses would run as scheduled, and children were now free to leave their schools. Some left schools later than normally scheduled.
Only a few Broward County schools were without power, but a similar lockdown was not in effect there.
As power is restored, the next step is for Florida Power and Light to determine what caused the problem.
FPL Spokesman Mayco Villafana said there was no indication that terrorism was involved with the outage.
"It happens to be a power outage of a major kind," Villafana said, "It could be something in our system, it could be Florida wide in the system, something that happened. We're still investigating."
FPL said the problem at the substation should not have brought down the power grid, and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission wants to know if there were any violations of federal reliability rules governing the nationwide power grid.
There was no immediate word when the Turkey Point reactors would be brought back in line. Turkey Point's nuclear reactors went online in 1972, and are joined at the South Miami-Dade facility by three gas-fired generator units.
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