We've been here 5 years. Up until this year outages have been rare, and were restored quickly. What's odd is that the last few have happened seemingly randomly -- no storms, high winds, or extreme temps. Makes my tin foil hat tingle a little...lol.
Discussion
Not too familiar with NJ... All nat gas and nuclear there if I recall correctly. Power outages would be odd with that mix.
Probably a local issue rather than a grid-level problem would be my first guess.
Right, I think we're on nuclear, there are cooling towers not too far from us. The most common culprit where we are -- pretty rural -- is downed trees. Especially with the ash bore problem.