Can't remember a North American blackout effecting such a large area. Gotta wonder how such a large area could be effected from a lightning strike!

Power plant in Niagara never went down.

Doesn't necessarily have to. If they lost their connection to the grid, it would've had the same cascade effect as if they'd shut down.

It's LIGHTNING, not LIGHTENING.

All it takes is a big surge, as tbox said.
What happens is if you get a momentary disconnect, the grid compensates in the oposite direction, then when the station jumps back on, you get a crash of 600,000 volts. usualy it blows a link, or transformer, like a lighning strike does. Thats probably what took out the transformer in NY, (a surge, not lightning)a surge from somewhere. I was listening to the radio when it happened, smoke was comming from the station in NY, which they were saying was normal when it shuts down.

Because of high power use, the system was loaded. It should of compensated, but if there wasn't enough power in the next grid, it crashes as well. what is suposed to happen, is the system should see a crash series, and pull itself off ( Disconnect from the grid) but still keep running, thereby isolating the crash. For some reason that didn't happen, and it just kept going right through the grind and up through Canada via toronto, which was importing from the usa at the time, as missisauga, bruce, and pickering nuclear plants weren't running at the time. (still aren't, they are being run up now)
no one seems to know where it started from, All nine American Nuclear plants were running with no problems they say.

There is no damage at the Niagra plant on either side of the border either.

The only thing is two transformers in NY that blew. hard to imagine that was all it took.

No word yet as to how much juice q- bec and newbrunswick were pumping, but there are no problems there, which suggests they were pushing in power at the eastern end of the grid.

I guess we will find out in time after they cold start and get things up to speed again. Thats more important than pointing fingers right now

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