City Council holds hearing on Con Ed transformer explosion

CBS NY

 The New York City Council held a hearing Monday on what caused December’s “Astoria Borealis.”

A malfunction at a Con Edison substation in Queens sent out a blue light that could be seen for miles, CBS2’s Jenna DeAngelis reported.
When the city skyline lit up that night, it was a moment that was hard to believe and impossible to forget.
And if you just so happened to be on social media at the time, you likely saw the supernova shades spark some interesting theories.

Fortunately, there were no major injuries, but there were temporary power outages, among other community concerns.
“Families’ homes shook. There was air quality concerns. There was safety concerns,” council member Costa Constantinides said. “We’re gonna get some hard answers from Con Ed as to what happened.”


The council’s Environmental Protection Committee, which Constantinides chairs, heard more from the utility at a meeting on Monday.
“We replaced the faulty equipment, installed a redundant system, and are working directly with the manufacturer to minimize the chance of this happening again,” said Milovan Blair, Con Ed’s senior VP for central operations.

 I have two theories on how this occurred. There is the possibility that the plant at the time couldn't take the amount of energy consumption being used by the growing populace in the area, particularly by the tower hyperdevelopment in Long Island City.

Or the Highlander returned to Queens....