This is a list of famous wide-scale power outages
- The Northeast Blackout of 1965 on November 9, 1965.
- The New York City Blackout of July 13-14, 1977, resulted in looting and rioting.
- The Great Storm of October 1987 brought down power lines throughout southern England causing extensive blackouts.
- On March 13, 1989, a solar storm caused the HydroQuebec power failure which left 6 million people without power for 9 or more hours.
- The 1998 power failures in Auckland, New Zealand.
- During the California electricity crisis there were regular power failures due to energy shortages and market manipulation resulting from failed deregulation.
- On August 14, 2003, there was a wide-area power failure in the northeast of the USA as well as in parts of Canada, affecting 50 million people: see 2003 U.S.-Canada blackout.
- There was a 2003 London blackout on August 28 which won worldwide headlines such as "Power cut cripples London" but in fact only affected 0.5 million people.
- On September 23, 2003, a power failure affected 4 or 5 million people in Denmark and southern Sweden.
- On September 27-28, 2003, a power failure affected all of Italy except Sardinia, cutting service to 57 million people.