During the deadly Blizzard of 2022, as blinding snow and hurricane-force gusts pummeled Western New York over three days, more than 108,000 households and businesses serviced by National Grid lost power.
The majority of those power outages were caused by downed lines, damaged poles and fallen trees – all common problems in a major winter storm.
National Grid revealed this week that its four substations that shut down during the historic blizzard that paralyzed Western New York in December, causing thousands to lose power, were designed to hold up against the worst of summer weather, but not unprecedented and extreme cold weather conditions.
In Buffalo, about 20,000 National Grid customers had no electricity, and a little over half of those power outages were caused by a problem National Grid had never experienced:
The strong, unyielding winds pushed snow into three substations in the city, encasing the transformer bays inside with heavy snow. That caused them to shut off – essentially like tripping a circuit breaker in your home. A fourth substation was tripped off because it shared cables with one of the other substations that had been snowed in.
“I’ve been with National Grid for over 30 years,” National Grid Regional Director Ken Kujawa said….
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