Electricity Blackout

Albert Einstein, one of the most brilliant people to have ever lived and the father of modern physics and technology, once defined insanity as "the belief that you can get different results by doing the same thing over and over." Thus Albert would have undoubtedly viewed the Bush Administration's relentless, single-minded pursuit of its nineteenth century, extraction-centered, regulation-free, energy policy as a classic textbook example which proved his point.

In the wake of the recent Northeastern/Midwestern power blackout, during which he and other top governmental officials spent an inordinate amount of time hidden from public view, Bush rightfully received criticism for his failure to publicly address the serious crisis in a timely fashion. It was evident that Mr. Bush devoted considerably more time on the evening of the blackout to the speech that he gave at his fund-raising dinner rather than to his short tape-recorded q-&-a session with reporters prior to that dinner.

Because the president has realized that it is not a recipe for political success to appear to the voting public to be more interested in gathering rich people's money than in making sure that hospitals, elderly people, and those sweltering in the city have adequate power and water, he has, predictably, embarked on his usual course of attempting to spin developments to further his political agenda.

In the immediate aftermath of the blackout Bush first attempted an exercise in revisionist history by asserting that the power grid needed to be modernized and that he "had said so all along." He apparently had forgotten that it was he who actively lobbied the Republican-controlled Congress over two years earlier to vote down an amendment offered by Rep. Samuel Farr (D-CA) which would have done exactly that.

In response to the president's lobbying, the House of Representatives (led by fellow Texan Tom DeLay) defeated the provision in three separate votes. Thus necessary and long overdue upgrades to the transmission system which would have alleviated power bottlenecks (that threaten cities with the recurrent prospect of blackouts like the one just experienced) did not take place. Thanks to the inaction of Mr. Bush and Mr. DeLay the grid remains, as President Clinton's Energy Secretary Bill Richardson termed it, in a "third world" condition.

N America power cut was avoidable

The power blackout that hit large swathes of the US and Canada in August was "preventable", the US energy secretary has said.

Spencer Abraham said the blackout was largely the fault of Ohio-based plant operator FirstEnergy.

His statement was timed with the release of a three-month US-Canadian investigation into the shutdown, which affected 50 million people.

A draft bill proposed by US Government aims to prevent a similar blackouts.

"One major conclusion of the interim report is that this blackout was largely preventable," Mr Abraham said in a statement.

"However, the report also tells us that once the problem grew to a certain magnitude, nothing could have been done to prevent it from cascading out of control."

The blackout was triggered when FirstEnergy's Eastlake plant unexpectedly shut down on 14 August, the report said.

It highlights a series of problems, including the failure of FirstEnergy's alarm system which should have alerted employees to the transmission fault.

The shutdown cut off a major supply route, that feeds into a massive electrical grid. It led to blackouts in New York, Detroit, Cleveland, Toronto and Ottawa.

'Insurmountable'

The Ohio shutdown "instantly created major and unsustainable burdens on lines in adjacant areas," the 134-page report said.

Another contributing factor was the company's failure to trim trees that short-circuited three power lines in Ohio, investigators said.

"These failures helped create a problem of such magnitude as to be insurmountable," Mr Abraham said.

The report said FirstEnergy violated four specific voluntary standards set by the North American Electric Reliability Council (Nerc).

Another utility company, Midwest grid operator, was found to have violated two of the industry standards.

Communication was also a problem, the report said. Midwest lacked up-to-date information on what was happening with FirstEnergy's power lines, slowing attempts to stop the power failure from spreading.

The draft legislation put forward by Republicans in the US, would set tougher new reliability standards aimed at preventing a similar power shutdown.

The proposals are part of a wide-ranging energy bill expected to be voted on next week by the full House and Senate.

Report highlights blackout failures
Investigators say the August blackout was largely preventable and argue for mandatory standards.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A huge blackout last year that left about 50 million people in the dark in the United States and Canada highlights the need for utilities to have mandatory standards, investigators said in a final report Monday.

The Aug. 14-15 outage began in Ohio and cascaded through eight U.S. states and parts of Canada on an unprecedented scale.

Nearly eight months later, a U.S.-Canadian probe said the blackout -- which closed airports and subways, shut manufacturing plants and left thousands of commuters stranded -- had been largely preventable.

In a 238-page report, the investigators concluded that "compliance with reliability rules must be made mandatory with substantial penalties for non-compliance."

Currently in the U.S., the North American Electric Reliability Council -- set up in response to the 1965 blackout that struck the Northeast -- sets voluntary standards for the industry, but no federal organization has the authority to enforce them or penalize those that break them.

Among the investigators' other 46 specific recommendations was a tariff-based funding mechanism for industry standard-setting boards, which would make them less financially dependent on utilities they oversee.

The final report assigned no additional blame for the blackout, after an interim report last November pinned much of it on Akron, Ohio-based FirstEnergy Corp. (FE: down $0.07 to $39.04, Research, Estimates).

The company failed to keep trees around its power lines trimmed, and did not have adequate alarms or computer equipment to flag a growing grid overload, investigators said.

The utility "did not recognize or understand the deteriorating condition of its system," the report stated. FirstEnergy officials have blamed faulty computer software for the lack of control room data.

Investigators also reiterated their finding that the Midwest's power grid coordinator did not act quickly enough to direct area utilities to redirect power flows to avert the overload that caused the blackout.

FirstEnergy and Midwest-area grid operators should fix such problems by June 30, 2004, the report said.

About 62,000 megawatts of generation went offline in the outage, shuttering factories and halting economic activity that cost U.S. companies between $4 billion and $10 billion, the report said.


In Canada, gross domestic product slumped by 0.7 percent in August and 18.9 million work hours were lost, causing Ontario's manufacturing shipments to fall by C$2.3 billion ($1.76 billion).

The Bush administration has been pushing for mandatory power grid reliability standards, which are part of a broad-ranging energy bill now stalled in the U. S. Senate.

The administration and Republican sponsors want Congress to pass a comprehensive energy bill that includes the standards as well as billions of dollars in tax incentives to encourage more production of crude oil, natural gas and renewable energy.

Senate Democrats argue that the U.S. cannot afford to let important reliability rules get bogged down in a fight over overhauling energy policy. They have pushed for stand-alone legislation to upgrade the power grid.

In the absence of such legislation, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission should "review its statutory authorities under existing law" to enact standards, the report found.
Copyright 2004 Reuters

Walter- You scared the hell out of me.