With hurricane season running from the beginning of June to the end of November, it’s especially prudent for electrical professionals to review disaster preparedness plans. To help put historical hurricane data into perspective, Eaton recently released its 2018 Annual Blackout Tracker Report.
Spotlighting the nation’s most damaging power incidents of 2018, the report finds that there were more than 32,000 powerful outages wreaking havoc on businesses last year. Two historic hurricanes topped the list of “The Top 10 Most Significant Outages,” with Hurricane Michael leaving nearly 2.5 million without power and more than 35,000 utility workers tapped from 27 states and Canada to restore power. Just a month before, Hurricane Florence left 1.4 million without power.
The report covers a wealth of topics, including: power quality in the news, the impacts of 2018 blackouts by industry; a state-by-state snapshot of blackouts; the top 10 most significant outages of 2018; the top 10 most unusual outages of 2018; and tips on how you can protect your business. As in the past, this document is based on reported power outages in the U.S., with data sources that include news services, newspapers, websites (including those of newspapers and TV stations) and personal accounts.
