The Nation - News from Aug. 11, 1988

An Upstate New York power company cut electricity on a rotating basis to a total of 250,000 customers in a “rolling blackout” designed to protect its overtaxed system from total collapse. Nick Lyman, a spokesman for the Niagara Mohawk Power Corp., said the blackout affected a 12-county area surrounding Albany that reached from Ticonderoga in the north about 100 miles south to Hudson, and from Gloversville in the west about 40 miles east to the Vermont border. Lyman said the “rolling blackout” was initiated after the utility shed 400 megawatts of electricity because of an equipment failure at its New Scotland substation, where a transformer started leaking oil used to cool it down.