Why it takes so long
: Steven Den Beste — for those of you who are new to blogging, he’s a blogger renowned for his lengthy and complete posts and that’s an understatement — explains in a fascinating and not-too-long post why it takes so long to get the power back:
If the power could go out in a wide area in 3 seconds, why will it take days to bring it all back up?
One reason is that they need to check everything to make sure it wasn’t damaged when it went down. If a transmission line tripped its breakers because it was approaching overload, then the breakers are supposed to throw before anything is damaged