Why Was the Blackout So Widespread? 
            Some Technical and Policy Questions to be Answered 
                               by Ronda Hauben


The most recent North American energy blackout spread widely, affecting 
an estimated 50 million people in two countries. This is a larger geographic 
and population area than any previous energy blackout in the history of 
North America. 

Investigations are being initiated at the state, provincial, national and 
North American levels to determine the sequence of events that created the 
blackout. These will try to identify what events may have started the 
blackout.(1) The more important question raised for these inquiries, 
however, is why and how the blackout spread so massively. Supposedly, the 
transmission grid was designed to prevent the massive spread of a problem 
to others on the grid. 

"If we designed this system for this not to happen, how did it happen?"
asks Michehl R. Gent, the CEO of the North American Energy Reliability
Council (NERC). 

NERC was created after the 1965 energy blackout. It's mission was to prevent 
such a blackout from ever happening again.(2) Yet in 1977, and then again 
in 2003, such blackouts occurred. The NERC is a private, non-profit industry 
self regulatory organization. Can a private organization be entrusted with the 
regulation of an industry? Can voluntary compliance to standards and rules 
be relied on to provide electric power to a nation's population?

One report of last Thursday's events describes how Roger Harszy, an 
operations director for Midwest Independent System Operator, in Carmel, 
Indiana, was watching a computer screen on Thursday, August 14. It had 
just revealed to him that 1,000 megawatts of wayward electrical power were 
surging around the top of the Lake Erie loop from the Toronto area into 
Detroit, MI.(3) 

He observed that the "oscillating power phenomenon" occurred along four 
transmission lines, which he monitored from the control room at Midwest ISO, 
which oversees the movement of electricity in a 15-state region of the Midwest. 

Describing the event, Gent explains that "300 to 500 megawatts...were moving 
west to east from Michigan to New York through Ontario, when the problem 
struck - either the failure of some power plants or of some transmission 
lines." He noted that suddenly there was a change in the flow of electric 
power and it reversed direction, "pulling 500 megawatts from east to west, 
out of New York -- a swing, in the space of a few seconds of as much as 
1,000 megawatts, the output of a large power plant."(4)

Gent says he is at a loss to explain why this more widespread effect on the 
transmission system occurred.

In response to a question to the NERC about whether this sudden change of 
direction of electric power was a common occurrence on a smaller scale, 
David W. Hilt, the NERC Director of Compliance wrote:

     "Power moves on the grid on a moment-by-moment basis.  This is based
     on transmission lines and generators in service.  Changes on a given 
     line or a given interface on a smaller scale are somewhat common."
                                David W. Hilt, Email, August 16, 2003

But such a change in the direction of such a massive amount of electric power 
is not common. Then why did it happen on August 14, 2003?(5)

The transmission grid system breakdown is a mystery that has to be understood
in order to prevent such future breakdowns. Yet there are obstacles to 
identifying and understanding the nature of the problem.

One such obstacle, according to Gent, is the change in the politics of 
energy creation and transmission in the U.S. Under the current forms of 
'deregulation' various owners of the different power entities are not likely 
to want to share information which might give up their own competitive 
advantage.

Elaborating on this problem, Jennifer Granholm, Governor of Michigan, 
describes the changes in the regulatory structure of the energy 
system.  When Michigan began to deregulate its electricity market, the 
Michigan electric utility, Detroit Edison, became DTE and sold its 
transmission lines. She notes that the transmission system hadn't been 
upgraded in 20 years. She explains, "The people who own the transmission 
system are out of state and are not necessarily...accountable. The issue 
of who owns the transmission, who owns the generation, who owns the 
distribution, all of those are areas we're going to have to look at."(6) 

While some of the media reports are looking for the technical cause of 
the breakdown, there are others emphasizing the political nature of energy 
regulation in the U.S. Gent comments that, "The grid is now being used in 
ways for which it was not designed."
          
The grid was designed as part of an electric power utility. This utility
had its origins in the 1930s, when the U.S. Congress broke up large 
interstate holding companies, passing the Public Utility Holding Company 
Act (PUHCA). This law gave federal government sanction to monopoly 
operation of electric power companies over limited areas. In return for 
their regulated monopoly position, these companies agreed to provide 
reliable electric service to their customers at regulated rates.(7)

The corporate deregulation ferment in the U.S., in the 1980s and 1990s, 
however, required that utilities give access to the transmission lines to 
their competitors.  Not only are the transmission lines being used by others 
than those who formerly built and maintained them as part of a state 
government regulated power entity, but also the transmission lines have 
become part of a system for selling and buying power. The lines are not 
now for transporting electricity so that it will be low priced and reliable. 
The transmission lines are instead seen as a market mechanism "to send power 
in different directions to different customers at different times at 
different prices in response to different demands." (8)

Will the blackout be used as a political excuse to provide for federal 
subsidies for private corporations to increase their ownership and control 
of the U.S. energy system, like the corrupt model of Enron? Or will there
be a public debate of how to make the U.S. energy system into a reliable 
public service?

The current U.S. corporate model of private control of all public services 
has been called into question by the blackout. People around the world, and 
their governments, can see the consequences of adopting the U.S. 'deregulation' 
model for the management of public services. As Michigan's Governor
Granholm explained, "the utility industry needs to become more heaviliy 
regulated to ensure accountability. As a result of deregulation, Michigan
has become dependant on utilities across many states to feed its power needs -
'which makes it more difficult to hold people accountable'." She recognizes 
the problem of "reliability standards for utilities which are voluntary", and 
she observes, "And that just doesn't cut it."(9)



Notes:

(1)The owner of the transmission lines that serve the Ohio area is 
FirstEnergy Corporation. The recent spotlight has beeen focused on problems 
this company had on August 14, and how they may have helped to set off the 
series of events.  But why some energy organizations were able to isolate
themselves from the problems, and others, couldn't, will also be a source
of questions. For example, New York State didn't isolate itself from the 
problems, while Vermont was able to.

(2)http://www.nerc.com

(3) New York Times, Matthew L. Wald, Richard Perez-Pena, and Neela Banerjee,
    "Experts Asking Why Problems Spread So Far", August 16, 2003.
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=68&ncid=68&e=5&u=/nyt/20030816/ts_nyt/expertsaskingwhyproblemsspreadsofar

The New York Times article describes the importance of maintaining the 
60 cycles per second rate. "If power plants in an area are producing 
less electricity than consumers are demanding, the system falls below
60 cycles per second (the frequency at which electrons in the wires
reverse directions) and damage can be done to the equipment. When that
happens, the plants are quick to shut down." This happens unless the
plants are able to pump slightly more electrical power than needed. In 
this case they can stabilize the rate.

(4)Times Wire, "Rogue Power Burst Crippled System", St. Petersburg Times, 
August 16, 2003 
http://www.sptimes.com...nation/Rogue_power_burst_cri.shtml

(5)Describing his experience on August 14, the manager of the New York
Port Authority's Niagara hydroelectric plant, Ronald W. Ciamaga, observed 
that the delicate balance between consumption and generation was not 
being maintained. He was watching a meter to monitor that the electric 
power generation was at its normal frequency for North America, which is 
60-cycles/second. "I was up there in the control room," he explains, 
"seeing frequency variations I've never seen." The rate dropped to 57 
cycles/second, when fluctuations are usually measured in the hundreds or 
tenths of cycles/second. Ciamaga had worked at the plant for 30 years 
and this was the first time he had seen such a drop in frequency.
(See Matthew L. Wald, Richard Perez-Pena, Neela Banerjee, "Electricity 
returning to East, but big power gaps still remain. WHAT WENT WRONG:
Huge power reversal overloaded system", The New York Times,  August 15, 2003.
http://www.theledger.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20030816/NEWS/308160343/0/FRONTPAGE )


(6)Lorraine Mirabella, "Power loop probed as blackout's cause remains a 
mystery, Experts zero in on ring surrounding Lake Erie; answer could take 
weeks", Baltimore Sun, August 16, 2003
http://www.sunspot.net/business/bal-te.bz.why16aug16,0,2463869.story?coll=bal-business-headlines 

(7) See "Electricity Deregulation: What's the Issue", 
http://www.opensecrets.org/news/electricity.htm). 

(8)Daniel Yergin and Lawrence Makovich, "The System Did Not Fail. Yet the 
System Failed." New York Times, August 17, 2003)

(9) David Zeman, Nancy A. Youssef, and Kathleen Gray, "Analysts Say Blackout
Began With a Zap, and Then Got Weird", Detroit Free Press, August 17, 2003.
http://www.centredaily.com/mld/centredaily/news/6556536.htm