In our modern world, it’s easy to take certain things for granted. And one of the easiest things to take for granted is the invisible force that powers virtually everything in your home: electricity.
Since electricity has become such an integral part of everyday life, it’s easy not to think much about it — until it becomes unavailable. A sudden loss of electricity, otherwise known as a power outage, can negatively affect everything from working to cooking to being able to see at night.
The worldwide electricity power grid is robust in most populated areas, designed to withstand the physical elements and human errors that can potentially shut down the system. While this works most of the time, sometimes the system fails and power goes out.
Get ready to learn everything you need to know about power outages, from how and where they most often occur to what you can do to help mitigate their effects.
What Are Power Outages?
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Power outages are what occur when electricity — particularly the electrical power network, or electrical grid — is unavailable. There are many different causes for power outages, but the thing they all have in common is that they affect whole areas or regions, not just a single home.
Why? Because the outage stems from the electricity supplier not within the home. If a home is without power but the rest of the neighborhood is receiving electricity, there’s likely a circuit breaker issue or some other household problem.
What Causes Power Outages?
There are many causes for why power outages occur. However, the three most common causes are natural causes, human error, and overload.
Basically, any interruption between power generation and the supply of electricity to homes can cause a power outage. It can stem from inclement weather conditions, human error, equipment failure, and even animal interference. Scheduled maintenance can also cause a power outage, though this is usually communicated to households in advance by the utility company.
How Long Do Power Outages Last?
Most power outages don’t last very long, with many ending seconds or minutes after beginning. However, sometimes outages can last a very long time, even several weeks.
Since some power outages are caused by lightning or violent wind storms, power lines can become damaged and lead to long delays when restoring power. Extended outages impact entire communities and can even affect the economy when power is unavailable to large areas of the population. For example, the Northeast blackout of 2003 left 50 million people without power from New York to Canada’s capital Ottawa.
What Are the Different Types of Power Outages?
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In general, there are four main types of power outages: blackouts, brownouts, permanent faults, and rolling blackouts. Each of these has different causes and is dealt with in different ways, which are covered below.
Blackout
A blackout is a complete loss of power to an area. This is the most severe type of power outage, typically affecting large numbers of people over sometimes incredibly large areas. Blackouts usually result from major damage to electrical generation facilities (such as structural damage from violent wind storms or lightning strikes) and are particularly difficult to fix quickly — this is why these types of outages can last for several weeks in the worst-case scenarios.
Brownout
Brownouts typically occur if there is a drop in electrical voltage or a drop in the overall electrical power supply. The term for these types of outages derives from the dimming that happens to lights when the voltage sags. While brownouts do not cause a complete loss of power, they can cause poor equipment performance and some devices — such as hair dryers or electric ovens — may not operate with the lowered voltage during one of these outages.
Permanent Fault
A permanent fault is a sudden loss of power typically caused by a power line fault. These are simple and easy to deal with: once the fault is removed or repaired, power is automatically restored. This type of outage typically doesn’t affect large areas as it tends to trip up lines that are further down the supply line to homes. While larger blackouts and brownouts are caused by problems in the generation, this is caused by problems in the supply mechanism, which are usually easy to find and simple to fix.
Rolling Blackouts
Rolling blackouts are much different from the other three as they are planned power outages. These are usually implemented in areas with unstable grids or with infrastructure that cannot handle the population it serves. Rolling blackouts can also be caused if there’s not enough fuel to run power at full capacity, whether for the short term or long term.
How Many Power Outages Happen Per Year in the US?
In 2020, 1.33 billion hours of power outages affected the United States, which was 73% higher than in 2019. While this number fluctuates year over year, the number of people affected by these outages is noticeably increasing. Even though the blackout hours were higher, total outages were less than 1% of recorded customer-hours during 2020.
When Are Power Outages Most Likely?
Power outages are most likely to occur during storms, especially violent weather events that involve high winds, scorching temperatures, or freezing rain. Certain outages, such as rolling blackouts and brownouts, happen when there’s not enough power to run the grid. This can happen when renewables are used without a backup generation source for when there is only intermittent power available. That said, it more likely happens to areas that lack the infrastructure to serve a highly-populated area.
Can Power Outages Affect Cell Phones?
Cell phones are unaffected by power outages as they are battery-operated. However, during a power outage, you won’t be unable to recharge your cell phone, and any calls you want to make may not get through. Whether cell phones function at full capacity during a power outage depends on whether the cell towers are also affected by the electrical shutdown.
In some cases, such as rolling blackouts that affect different parts of a large city at different times, cell phones will continue to work because the cell towers are in a different region of the city and remain operational.
Can Squirrels or Other Animals on Power Lines Cause Outages?
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Storms, especially ones involving wind, are the leading cause of power outages, but there’s a very unlikely cause that is responsible for many more power outages than you probably realize. Every year, more than one thousand power outages are reported, on average, due to electrical failures caused by animals. In fact, squirrels are responsible for up to 30% of power outages in some areas!
Reporting and Tracking Outages
Reporting and tracking power outages is essential to understanding them and how they progress over time. It also provides quick power restoration in instances that involve permanent faults. Below are some ways to report and check power outages in your area.
How Do You Report Power Outages?
Reporting power outages is simple and straightforward. All you need to do is locate your local Transmission and Distribution Service Provider (TDSP) and call them from a phone that’s working during the outage. You can also call your TDSP if you require support restoring power to your home.
How Do You Check Power Outages in Your Area?
To check outage status and get an estimated time of restoration for your electricity, you need to search for your address on the United States outage map and click on the circular outage icon. Clicking this icon will bring you to the “Outage Information” screen with information about any power outages in your area. Here you can check the estimated restoration time (ERT), as well as when the outage was reported. You can also see the cause and status of the restoration effort.
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Power Outage Locations and Causes
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Power outages occur all across the United States — though they tend to happen in some areas more than others. There are many factors for this: population density, susceptibility to storms, grid strength, and more. Below are details on where and why power outages happen most often in the U.S.
What Areas Are Most Prone Power Outages?
The areas that are most prone to power outages are regions with high population density, the capacity for severe heat waves or winter storms, and a grid that supports a large geographical area. These regions need to serve a lot of people and must have numerous generating plants, which increases the chances of accidents or human error that shut off the flow of electricity. Moreover, if they don’t have enough capacity to reliably serve such a population, it can lead to brownouts or rolling blackouts.
Which States Have the Most Power Outages?
Using the Blackout Tracker report, data is collected yearly from all 50 U.S. states to determine power outages of all types and sizes. California consistently leads the country in power outages by a considerable margin, with Texas in second place, followed by New York in third. While outages can vary year to year, the same five states have held the top spots for power outages over the past half a decade, with no signs of change ahead.
What Is the Leading Cause of Power Outages in the United States?
The leading cause of power outages in the United States is undoubtedly inclement weather. This includes heatwaves, flooding, freezing rain, severe wind, and other weather-related forces that negatively affect both power generation and transmission. Human error, infrastructure failure, and animal interference round out the most significant causes of outages in the U.S. on a consistent basis.
What Is the Leading Cause of Power Outages in California?
As with the rest of the country, the leading cause of power outages in California is inclement weather. However, roughly a quarter of power losses in California reported no definite reason for their occurrence. This is unique among all the regions that experience significant amounts of power outages, as most across the rest of the country have clear reasons for failing.
How Many Power Outages Occur in California?
California experienced 25,281 power outages in 2019 (the last “normal” pre-pandemic year), which was a 23% increase from 20,598 the previous year. This is by far the most out of any state in the country, with more than double the amount of Texas, the next highest state.
Where Are the Most Power Outages In California?
Most power outages in California occur in major cities and highly populated zones, including the Bay Area and the corridor between Los Angeles and San Diego. Outages are also typical in the valley and desert, two areas that experience frequent heat waves that can cause numerous blackouts during the summer months.
What Is the Leading Cause of Power Outages In New York?
As with California, and the rest of the United States, weather is the main culprit for New York’s power outages. In particular, Nor’easter winds are responsible for most outages, which can become very problematic in the winter. Fortunately, the average duration for outages in New York is only about an hour, according to Con Edison (Con Ed).
How Many Power Outages Occur in New York?
New York typically experiences more than 1,700 power outages each year, according to the official U.S. Power Outage Map in the most recent count. These outages occur throughout the year, but most happen in winter when strong storms roll in. Occasionally, intense summer heat waves can cause power outages to New York’s grid, though this is less common.
Where Are the Most Power Outages in New York?
Power outages tend to affect large areas of New York since the grid is interconnected and serves most of the state. However, given the population density of New York City, especially Manhattan, this centralized urban area tends to experience the brunt of the outages when they occur.
Are Power Outages Increasing?
With improving technology, power outages are becoming less frequent and not as lengthy as a percentage of total consumer usage. However, by sheer numbers they are occurring more frequently than ever before — and sometimes they can still last for several days or even weeks, especially if natural disasters strike.
While there typically is only so much a homeowner or private citizen can do, there are ways to be prepared for a power outage, from stocking the house with necessary equipment and supplies to investing in a generator for emergency use.
If you experience a power outage, alert your electricity provider as soon as you can. Many providers are now equipped with digital systems to automatically detect power outages, but some still rely on customer notifications to find and deal with blackouts and other types of breakdowns in the electrical supply.
For more FAQs about electricity generation and reliability, continue exploring the Tara Energy website.
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Still use incandescent bulbs? The time has come to flip the switch to another option, namely LED bulbs. Not only are incandescent bulbs high-energy and costly for your monthly energy bills, but they're now going to be very to find in a store. After years of rising standards, new regulations from President Joe Biden's Department of Energy have effectively banned the sale of most incandescent lightbulbs in the US. The rules state that lightbulbs must emit a minimum of 45 lumens per watt — about three times what an incandescent bulb emits. Anything else will no longer be produced, which is essentially a death sentence for all incandescent lights.
If you haven't switched to LED bulbs yet, now is the time and the reasons why are vast and compelling. For starters, LED bulbs last much, much longer than incandescent bulbs, and they put out the same amount of light using significantly less energy. That's great for the environment, and it can save you money on your electricity bill in the long term, especially if you're upgrading a whole home's worth of bulbs.
In fact, the Department of Energy projects that this new policy will save US consumers almost $3 billion on their utility bills, all while cutting global-warming carbon emissions by 222 million metric tons over the next 30 years. And if the cost and environmental benefits aren't enough to sell you, LED bulbs also have many interesting and worthwhile features, including bulbs that change colors, and bulbs that sync with your smart home, home security system or voice assistant of choice.
Buying the right LED is different from buying incandescent bulbs, though. So before you go shopping, there are five things you need to know. For more, read everything to know about the incandescent lightbulb ban and how to save money on lighting.
Forget what you know about incandescents; your watts are no good here.
When shopping for bulbs, you're probably accustomed to looking for watts as an indication of how bright the bulb will be. That's because with incandescents, the wattage is a reliable indicator of how much light the bulb will emit: The greater the bulb's wattage, the greater that tungsten filament inside will glow. The brightness of LEDs, however, is determined a little differently.
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Contrary to common belief, wattage isn't an indication of brightness, but a measurement of how much energy the bulb draws. For incandescents, there is an accepted correlation between the watts drawn and the brightness produced, but for LEDs, watts aren't a great predictor of how bright the bulb will be. That's because LEDs are designed to be as efficient as possible without compromising the quality of the light -- and some LEDs are better at the job than others.
For example, an LED bulb with comparable brightness to a 60-watt incandescent will typically only draw 8 to 12 watts. Imagine you see two LEDs sitting on the shelf at the store, each of them branded as a 60-watt replacement. One draws 8 watts, the other draws 12 watts. It is absolutely possible that the 8-watt bulb will be brighter than the 12-watt bulb, which is why you should essentially ignore the wattage when you're looking for brightness from your LED bulbs.
Fortunately, there's a better way to talk about brightness, and that's the lumen. The lumen (lm) is the real measurement of brightness provided by a lightbulb, and it's the number you should look for when shopping for LEDs. For reference, here's a chart that shows the watt-lumen conversion for incandescents and LEDs.
Watt-lumen conversion for incandescents and LEDs.
As you can see in the chart above, an incandescent can draw up to five times as many watts for the same number of lumens. Get a sense of the brightness (in lumens) you need before heading to the store, and throw away your affinity for watts.
Incandescent bulbs typically put out a warm, yellowish hue, but LEDs come in a range of colors.
As shown off by Philips Hue, LED bulbs are capable of displaying an impressive color range, from purple to red, to a full spectrum of whites and yellows. For the home, however, you're likely looking for something similar to the light that incandescents produce.
The two most popular colors available for LEDs are soft white (also called warm white) and bright white (also called daylight). Not confusing at all, right?
Soft white and warm white will produce a yellow, candle-like glow, close to incandescents, while bulbs labeled as bright white or daylight will produce a whiter light, closer to daylight and similar to what you see in offices and retail stores.
If you want to get technical, the color of light on the white light spectrum is called color temperature, and it's measured on the Kelvin scale. The lower the number, the warmer (yellower) the light. Your typical soft white incandescent is somewhere between 2,700K and 3,500K, so if that's the color you're going for, look for that range while shopping for LED bulbs. Want something daylight toned? Look for bulbs rated at 5,000K or higher.
Not sure which to buy? Read our warm lightbulbs versus cool lightbulbs comparison to help you decide.
LED bulbs are like hybrid cars: More expensive upfront, but cheaper to operate.
It used to be that you could grab an incandescent bulb at the hardware store for a buck or so. Then, LEDs came along -- most of them costing a lot more. Thankfully, several years of development and competition have brought prices down to the point where you'll find plenty of LED options in the lightbulb aisle available for $5 or less.
But the dollars and cents don't stop there. You need to factor in the cost of using the bulb -- and the great thing about LEDs is that using them doesn't cost very much at all. For instance, a traditional 60-watt incandescent lightbulb will add about $7 to your energy bill each year if you use it, on average, for three hours a day. A 60-watt replacement LED that puts out the same amount of light will draw as little as 8 watts, and only add about a buck to your energy bill over that same year-long span.
In other words, even if the LED costs $5 and the incandescent is a freebie that you found rolling around in a drawer somewhere, the LED is still the less expensive option after less than a year of use. In the meantime, you'll enjoy less heat production, longer bulb life and even the option of controlling them with your smartphone. It won't burn out after a year, either.
Because of their circuitry, LEDs aren't always compatible with traditional dimming switches. In some cases, the switch must be replaced. Other times, you'll pay a little more for a compatible LED.
Most of the existing dimmers in homes today were likely designed to work with incandescents. Dimmers like those work by cutting off the amount of electricity sent to the bulb in rapid-fire succession, faster than the eye can detect. LEDs draw a lot less energy, so they don't always work well with dimmers like that. (Here's a handy guide that goes a little deeper into the reasons why.)
The first thing to do if you're buying LEDs that you want to use with a dimmer switch is to make sure that you buy bulbs that are, in fact, dimmable. Most manufacturers offer nondimmable LED bulbs with no onboard dimming hardware whatsoever, and while those are fine if you want to save a buck or two on a bulb intended for a nondimmable fixture, they're the last thing you want if you like the lights dimmed down low.
My second recommendation? Start with a single bulb from a major manufacturer and hang onto the receipt. Try it out with the dimmers in your home, and if it works, feel free to buy as many as you need. If not, most major retailers will be happy to let you return the bulb and exchange it for something else. At some point, you might also consider upgrading your dimmers to newer models designed to work with LEDs. Big names like Lutron and Leviton are your best bet there.
One last point: If dimming is truly important in your home, then you should really consider smart bulbs. Most use their own, built-in mechanisms to handle dimming, so you don't need a dimmer switch at all. Dimming mechanisms like those are great because they won't flicker or buzz, and you'll usually be able to sync things up with a voice assistant like Siri or Alexa, which opens the door to commands like, "set the lights to 20%."
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Knowing where it's OK to place an LED will ensure that the bulb won't fizzle ahead of its time.
You probably know that LED bulbs run a lot cooler than their incandescent cousins, but that doesn't mean they don't produce heat. LED bulbs do get hot, but the heat is pulled away by a heat sink in the base of the bulb. From there, the heat dissipates into the air and the LED bulb stays cool, helping to keep its promise of a long life.
And therein lies the problem: The bulb needs a way to dissipate the heat. If an LED bulb is placed in an enclosed housing, the heat won't have anywhere to go, sending it right back to the bulb and sentencing it to a slow and painful death.
Remember, LED bulbs are electronic devices. Just like with your phone or your laptop, it isn't good to let them overheat.
That's why it's fine to stick with incandescent, fluorescent and halogen bulbs for enclosed fixtures. LEDs will work, too, but in some cases, the heat buildup inside the fixture will reduce the bulb's lifespan.
Read on: Best LED Lightbulb for Every Room in Your House