Midwestern Power Grid Coordinator Takes Steps to Prevent Major Blackout
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel - April 9, 2003
New computers, alarm systems and increased staffing are tangible steps taken by the coordinator of the Midwestern power grid to prevent a blackout on the scale of Aug. 14, 2003, a report this week found.
In its own report Wednesday, the North American Electric Reliability Council
says the Midwest group has a much better ability to view the transmission system
it's responsible for than it did last summer.
The grid operator, which is responsible for reliability of the grid
stretching from eastern Wisconsin and Illinois to western Pennsylvania, was
found to have been unaware of problems in Ohio, where the blackout started,
until just moments before the outage.
It had a poor ability to see the entire transmission grid in its region or to
see problems developing in Ohio, and it failed to notify other regions of
problems in the Midwest, a joint U.S.-Canada task force said.
The blackout stretched from Michigan to the Northeast and left 50 million
people without power. The outage heightened attention to problems on the
transmission system across the country and in Wisconsin, home of one of the most
congested high-voltage lines in the nation.
The Midwest system operator is the same group that has come under fire from
Wisconsin utilities, energy customer groups and regulators because of its plans
to start a real-time energy pricing market that Wisconsin interests say could
penalize the state because of its weak transmission system.
Changes within the Midwest coordinator's Carmel, Ind., control room since
Aug. 14 include installation of a new computer system with screens able to
visualize all major power lines on the Midwest grid. They also include advanced
alarm filtering and an improved energy management system that the audit report
said "greatly increased monitoring" of the Midwest group's footprint
and other reliability areas.
But the report also recommends that the Midwest group beef up the training of
its personnel and monitor its utility members to ensure that local utilities are
prepared to take abrupt action to intentionally shut off power in local areas to
prevent a problem from cascading to a blackout of the scope of Aug. 14.
"We have implemented a variety of tools to greatly enhance our
visibility of the system and improve reliability," said James Torgerson,
the Midwest group's president and chief executive. "This report confirms
that we are making significant strides forward."
But a better way of viewing what's happening on the grid doesn't solve
another critical problem facing the electric utility industry after last
summer's blackout, said Jose Delgado, president and chief executive of
Pewaukee-based American Transmission Co.
The utility industry needs mandatory reliability standards to be passed by
Congress, with penalties for utilities that violate standards by allowing more
electricity to pass along their lines than their transmission lines can handle,
Delgado said.
The U.S.-Canada task force, echoing findings of a task force created after a
blackout in the far West in the late 1990s, recommended that reliability
standards be made mandatory. The standards are included in an energy bill now
stalled in Congress.
Cathy Boies, manager of the Customers First! coalition of Wisconsin energy
customers and municipal utilities, said it is clear that the Midwest group has
made progress since Aug. 14 on its commitment to reliability.
"More power to them, but let's continue down that path rather than
focusing on these markets and stay with reliability coordination, which was the
original purpose of (the Midwest independent system operator)."
The Midwest group had delayed plans to start its energy trading market this
spring because of a renewed commitment to reliability, but it filed plans with
federal regulators last week to start its energy market on Dec. 1.
-----
To see more of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, or to subscribe to the
newspaper, go to http://www.jsonline.com.
(c) 2004, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Distributed by Knight
Ridder/Tribune Business News.