No quick and easy fix to power grid, industry insiders say
The Record, Hackensack, N.J. --Aug. 12
Aug. 12--One year after a power failure in Ohio left much of the Northeast and parts of Canada in the dark, partisan politics are blocking reforms needed to bring the power system up to 21st century standards, industry insiders say.
Even so, as 50 million people discovered last Aug. 14 when the lights went
out, utilities are interconnected through 200,000 miles of transmission lines,
and one breakdown can produce widespread outages.
As Saturday's anniversary nears, the power grid remains antiquated. A
so-called nationwide "smart grid" that would use computers to reduce
human error is considered unlikely in the short term because of the high cost.
And reforms needed to improve reliability are bogged down in Congress, victims
of election-year politics, the insiders say.
In its 134-page report, a joint U.S.-Canadian task force that investigated
the blackout called on Congress to authorize federal energy regulators to
enforce mandatory standards. This would require utilities to boost employee
training, have sufficient reserve capacity, and improve maintenance.
But doing so would take a push from Washington, and that's not happening this
year, said Ralph E. Fehr, a consulting electrical engineer to power companies
and an adjunct instructor in power systems at universities in Florida and
Pennsylvania.
"They're not even acting on the 9/11 stuff; why would they act on the
energy stuff?" Fehr said.
A stand-alone bill to strengthen regional operating systems has been pending
since the end of the Clinton administration, said Jeanne Fox, president of the
New Jersey Board of Public Utilities and a member of the joint task force.
But the legislation was folded into the Bush administration's wide-ranging --
and controversial -- energy bill, and remains stalled in Congress over issues
such as drilling for oil in the Alaskan wildlife refuge, mandates for
corn-derived gasohol, and carbon dioxide standards.
"Everyone agrees that mandatory reliability standards have to be
developed," Fox said, but legislation to do so "is held hostage to the
rest of the bill."
The blackout, the biggest power outage in U.S. history, came without warning
on a hot, humid afternoon. In just seven minutes, the blackout cascaded from
Ohio to Michigan, Ontario, upstate New York, New England, and the New York
metropolitan region, knocking out 260 power plants in an area of 9,300 square
miles serving more than 50 million people.
The task force cited multiple causes, including falling branches from trees
that should have been trimmed because they are near power lines.
But the No. 1 factor cited was human error. Utility workers could have
prevented the blackout from spreading had they recognized the problem promptly,
the task force said. But the workers lacked training, computers were not
working, and the Midwest utilities did a poor job sharing data with regional
independent operating systems.
"Things go wrong. But it is the responsibility of the people who operate
the system to keep the small problems from getting bigger," Energy
Secretary Spencer Abraham said when the report was released in November.
Abraham, who led the task force with Canadian Natural Resources Minister Herb
Dhaliwal, said FirstEnergy Corp. of Ohio violated several voluntary reliability
standards the industry has imposed on itself.
"This blackout was largely preventable," Abraham said.
The big question is, can it happen again?
"You can never say never, but the likelihood decreases every year as we
get smarter and make investments in the system," said Ralph LaRossa, vice
president for electric delivery at Public Service Electric and Gas Co., New
Jersey's largest utility.
PSE&G has spent more than $500 million on infrastructure upgrades over
the past 12 months, and has started full-time helicopter patrols to spot
potential problems from trees interfering with power lines, LaRossa said.
"Shame on us if we don't react from this," said Jim Tarpey, vice
president of operations for Orange and Rockland Utilities, which is completing a
two-year, $22.5 million upgrade of facilities in Bergen County. "The best
thing we can do as an industry is really learn from everything that went wrong
on that day."
With more utilities interconnected, quality-control practices at each company
can have a direct impact on others, Tarpey said.
"When we were all integrated utilities, we sort of took care of
ourselves," he said. "Now there is a group of generators, a group of
utilities, and they look to the regional master to take care of things. We want
to make sure they're looking in the same light we did.
"You look at the tree that hit the line [in Ohio] and ask how well do we
maintain that vegetation. The practice out there is going to affect our system
back East."
That's why mandatory reliability standards are needed, Fox said. They would
replace voluntary standards developed by the industry-funded North American
Electric Reliability Council (NERC), based in Plainsboro.
The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission "is trying to do what it can,
but it apparently doesn't have strong statutory authority to mandate," Fox
said. "And NERC is voluntary, and has not been as strong as it should
be."
NERC is among those calling on Congress to make compliance with reliability
standards "mandatory and enforceable," said Michehl Gent, its
president and chief executive.
"Until that occurs, we will work with the government and the industry to
do everything we can to ensure that all entities whose operations affect the
operation of the bulk electric grid comply with NERC standards, but that is not
a substitute for legislation," Gent said.
The concept of NERC is a good one, and it was working well until recently,
Fehr said. But budget crunches have prompted utilities, figuring they won't be
caught, to "push the limits," leading to "substantially
more" lapses in meeting the standards, Fehr said.
That's why federal leadership is needed, Fox said.
"The major problem is we have an electric system from the Eisenhower
era, when Ed Sullivan was the king of TV," she said. "Think of the
power demands, how much more electricity you use then when you were a kid.
Whoever wins the election, hopefully action will be taken."
Since the blackout, many critics have called for investing in a "smart
grid," a system using cutting-edge technology to monitor patterns and make
adaptations as needed. But that comes with a huge price tag -- possibly in the
billions -- something financially pressed utilities cannot afford, Fehr said.
Even so, utilities are "clearly" better prepared to prevent a
recurrence, Fox said. Even in the PSE&G and Orange and Rockland areas, where
reliability has generally been excellent, the companies have changed policies,
improved some systems and procedures, and invested heavily in upgrading their
systems, Fox said.
"They are way far ahead of where they were a year ago," she said.
"I think New Jersey is in very good shape." One reason is that
utilities were able to see how theoretical emergency game plans worked in a
real-time situation, LaRossa said.
Nearly half of PSE&G's 2 million customers were affected by the blackout,
with Bergen, Passaic, Hudson, Union, and Essex counties hit hardest. And all
Orange and Rockland customers lost power, including 70,000 in New Jersey.
Only about 5,000 of Jersey Central Power & Light's 1 million customers
were affected, even though a large part of the blame was placed on JCP&L's
parent, FirstEnergy.
Still, JCP&L -- which had committed to upgrade its system in response to
a July 2003 power outage at the shore -- invested an additional $250 million
after the August blackout, Fox said.
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