Blackout post-mortem full of fingerpointing _ at least for now.
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September 5, 2003, 2:38 AM EDT
AP Photos WCAP103-106 H. JOSEF HEBERTP> Associated Press WriterP>
WASHINGTON (AP) _ Some lawmakers warned against finger-pointing. But with investigators saying little about what may have triggered the nation's worst blackout, finger-pointing has been the best sport in town.
Two days of congressional hearings into the Aug. 14 blackout that caused all or parts of eight states from Michigan to New York to go dark produced little to clear up the mystery.
Where did the problem begin? And more importantly, why did it cascade so rapidly and so widely in a matter of seconds?
Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham promised to find out, but said any speculation would be premature.
"The investigation is ongoing and no causal conclusions can yet be drawn," added Michehl Gent, the head of the industry-sponsored North American Electric Reliability Council who was first to pinpoint the likely start of the power outage cascade to northern Ohio in the service area of three utilities belonging to FirstEnergy Corp.
During the first hours of the blackout, which affected an area populated by 50 million people, U.S. officials were quick to blame the Canadians. And Canadian officials insisted the power outage began when lightning struck a power facility near Niagara Falls in upstate New York. A fire in a New York City substation also was blamed. All three were soon proved to be false.
But the finger-pointing didn't stop there.
On Thursday, FirstEnergy chief executive Peter Burg told members of the House Energy and Commerce Committee that he could not understand why anyone would think a series of local power line failures in his system south of Cleveland could have caused such a massive blackout.
"Our system appeared fairly stable until the very end," he said. "Such a widespread loss of power could only result from a combination of events, not from a few isolated events."
He produced a lengthy timeline that purported to show that FirstEnergy did not have serious fluctuations in power flow until just two minutes before the blackout _ and then only after American Electric Power (AEP), the rival mega-utility to the south, shut down two key high-voltage lines.
He catalogued a dozen transmission failures, noting that all but four of them were either entirely or partly operated by AEP, which has 39,000 miles of transmission lines in 11 states.
As for AEP, it said the lines that tripped shortly before the blackout were taken out of service automatically in response to the wild power grid fluctuations observed in the FirstEnergy system.
"Our equipment in northern Ohio operated automatically to isolate the problem ... and avoided cascading outages across the AEP system," AEP Chairman E. Linn Draper said. He said he didn't understand why other systems, including those in Michigan, didn't do the same thing to protect themselves.
Joseph Welch, president of the International Transmission Co., which runs the power grid in southeast Michigan, said he might have, but he was blindsided. He accused FirstEnergy and the regional transmission monitor, the Midwest ISO, of keeping him uninformed an hour or more before the blackout hit.
"There was absolutely no warning," Welch complained. "Had Michigan been warned of the problems, a number of actions which would have forestalled the blackout were available."
The same complaint came from Anthony Earley Jr., chairman of DTE Energy, parent of Detroit Edison. He said the utility's system operators were never advised of the problems FirstEnergy was having in the hour before the blackout.
But Welch's finger-pointing goes further then communications.
He argues that AEP, by shutting down power lines to isolate FirstEnergy's system without warning Michigan, caused Ohio to draw huge amounts of power from Michigan's lines
"The Michigan system collapsed under the strain," argued Welch.
AEP's Draper dismisses Welch's argument. Why didn't the Michigan grid managers also disconnect, he suggested when asked to respond to Welch's complaint after Thursday's congressional hearing.
FirstEnergy has acknowledged computer problems in its control center, but argues that the information was available elsewhere, including at the Midwest ISO, which is supposed to monitor the grid.
Welch says he wants to know why the Midwest ISO didn't forward warnings to Michigan utilities if it knew of FirstEnergy's problems.
James Torgerson, president of the Midwest ISO, disputed claims that his organization had detailed information available about FirstEnergy's grid problems on the afternoon before the blackout _ or that it was supposed to serve as a backup.
"We saw a couple of lines that had tripped," said Torgerson, but did not have any details about voltage fluctuations in the system until just shortly before the full force of the blackout hit.
"What lessons were learned as a result of the blackout?" Welch asked.
"It was apparent," he answers, "that parties were choosing to operate the grid within their sphere of influence for their own purposes without regard to rules, procedures or the impact of their actions on other users of the grid."
Copyright © 2003, The Associated Press
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