Blackout Shuts Down Some Electrical Businesses; Others Provide Backup Service

Construction projects came to a screeching halt in Manhattan as well as other areas of the country when the United States experienced the worst blackout in U.S. history.

Subways were shut down for 32 hours, buildings ran on emergency backup power, and New Yorkers were cautioned not to come into work. Electricians, however, worked behind the scenes to provide temporary and long-term power to their clients, even if their companies didn’t have power themselves.

E-J Electric Installation Co., a Long Island City, N.Y., electrical contractor, lost power at its main headquarters building for 13 hours. With its telephone system on backup, the company managed to communicate with its clients and send out 60 electricians to respond to their needs.

“Some of our clients requested that our electricians stay at their facilities around the clock,” said Tony Mann, president of E-J Electric.

At Kennedy Electrical Supply Corp., Jamaica, N.Y., the company closed its doors for a little over a day. Business phone systems were down, cells phones were not working and traffic lights were out, keeping the company from sending trucks out.

In the Cleveland area, the power outage caused Professional Electrical Products Inc., Eastland, Ohio, to experience about half a day without power. Jeff Borkey, the company’s vice president of branch operations, said one of the biggest problems from the outage was a water shutdown, which caused water restrictions and the need to boil water. Borkey said there have been a lot of generator sales since the outage, but that the utilities will be the ones to correct the problem in the future.

Ironically, Jack Borkey, CEO, was in Detroit at a golf outing with about 500 electricians. They were in a hotel at the time of the outage. The electricians were able to offer assistance by setting up backup electricity and bringing in a generator.

The blackout, which began on the afternoon of Aug. 14, continued throughout the day on Friday. After the power went out in New York, emergency backup generators provided a limited amount of electricity, and emergency egress lighting illuminated hallways and stairways in some buildings. At a newly built hospital, however, the cooling system was not designed to run on backup power. With the temperature rising inside the building, the hospital called on E-J to set up temporary generators. The contractor also worked with its other clients to make sure the emergency and exit lighting were fully operational.

The blackout brought the power issue to the forefront, Mann says. A 500MW power plant that E-J is working on is moving closer to completion, and New York is now evaluating its transmission and distribution requirements.

“Before the blackout, everyone was looking at the power requirements,” he said. “Now they are focused both on the peak loads and the reliability of the power. That’s something new that was really not considered as much before.” —Amy Florence Fischbach, EC&M, Dale Funk