Blackout probe may take weeks

By Peter J. Howe, Globe Staff, 8/28/2003

Identifying the cause of the huge Aug. 14-15 power failures could take weeks as investigators work through "a staggering amount of extremely technical data over a huge area," US Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham said yesterday.

Investigators from the US and Canadian governments and from the North American Electric Reliability Council are studying power-grid operations as far back as eight hours before a cascading series of outages struck at 4:10 p.m. on Aug. 14, knocking out service for an estimated 50 million people in New York, Cleveland, Detroit, Toronto, and other parts of eight states and Ontario. Initial reports pinpointed failures on high-voltage transmission lines near Cleveland, operated by the Akron utility FirstEnergy Corp., as a key event in a chain of failures. But in a news conference at the reliability council's headquarters in Princeton, N.J., Abraham said: "Such a complex undertaking is going to take some time. Weeks, not days, certainly, but hopefully not months. We are determined to finish this investigation in a timely manner. But we will not compromise quality for speed. As I've indicated, we will follow the facts wherever they lead us. We won't jump to conclusions. Our investigation will be thorough and objective."

Investigators are working to develop an accurate chronology of events on Aug. 14, including the thousands of failures along 34,000 miles of power lines that erupted in barely nine seconds. Data are being correlated to a super-accurate government atomic clock in Colorado that measures time to billionths of a second, to help investigators figure out which events were causes and which were effects. Some clocks and time-stamp devices connected to power-grid equipment may have been damaged during the blackouts, however, complicating efforts to assemble a reliable timeline.

Abraham said the US-Canadian task force will publish no timeline until it is "comfortable" that it has a complete picture of what happened.

"We're not sure when the significant events occurred," said the reliability council's chief executive, Michehl R. Gent, adding that more than 15 experts are working almost full time to compile an "events timeline." Knowing what happened when is crucial in determining whether the failure was driven by failing power lines, human error, power plant shutdowns, or other factors.

The timeline will also influence the policy changes or new grid investments the task force recommends to stave off a recurrence.

In a related development yesterday, the head of the organization that runs New York State's power grid called for mandatory federal standards for grid reliability.

Utilities that operate pieces of the 500,000-mile North American power grid work largely under voluntary industry-developed standards that do not subject them to fines or sanctions if they trigger blackouts. Officials said much of the state and New York City lost service after the Empire State grid was deluged with problems, including wild swings in electrical frequency and a flood of power from Ontario, triggered by failing plants in Ohio.

William Museler, chief executive of the New York Independent System Operator, told state lawmakers in Albany: "We believe those standards should mandate specifically improved communications among the various regions of the country, since we are now painfully aware of the extent to which events in one region can affect neighboring regions."

DTE Energy Co., owner of Detroit's utilities, said it plans to ask Michigan regulators for approval to charge customers for expenses from the blackout. Costs for restoring service and repairing plants are as much as $26 million, DTE said. It won't ask customers to make up $10 million in lost sales.

Peter J. Howe can be reached at howe@globe.com. Material from Globe wire services was used in this report.