New Yorkers can expect more power outages this summer, says Con Ed

Following Saturday’s blackout that left up to 72,000 New Yorkers in Manhattan’s west side without power, Con Edison says that city dwellers should be prepared for more power outages this summer.

As the New York Post first reported, Mike Clendenin, director of media relations at Con Edison, said on Pix11 this morning that there could be more service outages as a heat wave hits the city later this week. Sidney Alvarez, a Con Ed spokesperson, told Curbed that outages are common during the summer, as high temperatures and humidity lead people to use more electricity to cool off.

Those kinds of outages would not be related to this weekend’s blackout, although the energy company still doesn’t know the exact cause of that event, which left much of Midtown and the Upper West Side in the dark. “Our equipment failed at one of our sub-stations, but we don’t know why,” Alvarez told Curbed.

“There’s a lot of patience and poise that New Yorkers displayed during the outage itself—the same kind of patience and diligence is gonna be needed as engineers and experts dive into the date and actually analyze how equipment tripped off, or what went wrong, that led to the large outage,” Clendenin said during his appearance on Pix11.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo called for the Department of Public Service to investigate the cause of the July 13 blackout. “While this situation was luckily contained, the fact that it happened at all is unacceptable,” Cuomo said in a statement.

Saturday’s blackout began at around 6:47 p.m and ended shortly before midnight, and affected an area that stretched from Fifth Avenue to the Hudson River, and from 30th to 72nd streets.