Wednesday, October 28, 2015

Drone Crash Takes Out Power Grid In West Hollywood For Three Hours

For all of the promise and appeal of drone aircraft, the growing popularity of the unmanned aerial vehicles continues to cause unexpected problems--most recently, taking out the power to almost 700 customers of Southern California Edison in West Hollywood on Tuesday afternoon. The power outage came at around 1:15pm, and came as a result of an errant drone, which severed an overhead power line on Sunset Boulevard. Authorities have yet to locate the pilot and owner of that drone. The power was apparently restored in around 3 hours. The US recently announced a plan to require registration of drone aircraft, much like it requires registration of cars, boats, and other vehicles, to hopefully encourage more responsible usage of the popular technology. The power issues linked to the crashed drone is apparently the first time a drone has been blamed on a blackout.