Editing Rolling blackout (section)

{{Short description|Intentionally engineered electrical power shutdown}}
{{for|the album by The Go! Team|Rolling Blackouts}}
[[File:A room during load shedding at night in West Bengal, India.jpg|thumb|A room during load shedding at night in West Bengal, India.]]
{{Use dmy dates|date=August 2021}}

A '''rolling blackout''', also referred to as '''rota''' or '''rotational load shedding''', '''rota disconnection''', '''feeder rotation''', or a '''rotating outage''', is an intentionally engineered [[Electric power system|electrical power]] shutdown in which [[electricity delivery]] is stopped for non-overlapping periods of time over different parts of the distribution region. Rolling blackouts are a last-resort measure used by an [[electric utility]] company to avoid a total [[Power outage|blackout]] of the power system.

Rolling blackouts are a measure of [[demand response]] if the demand for electricity exceeds the power supply capability of the network. Rolling blackouts may be localised to a specific part of the electricity network, or they may be more widespread and affect entire countries and continents. Rolling blackouts generally result from two causes: insufficient [[electricity generation|generation]] capacity or inadequate [[electricity transmission|transmission]] infrastructure to deliver power to where it is needed.

Rolling blackouts are also used as a response strategy to cope with reduced output beyond reserve capacity from [[power station]]s taken offline unexpectedly.