John Spears
Toronto Star
April 7, 2004

North America needs strict standards for electrical reliability, backed up by stiff penalties for breaking them, says a U.S.-Canadian task force into a huge power blackout last August.

While those standards are largely in place in Ontario, the task force blames the utility industry as a whole for not setting tight, enforceable standards.

The task force released its final report yesterday, and pointed a finger once again at Ohio utility FirstEnergy Corp. for triggering the blackout that turned off the power to 50 million people on Aug. 14.

Ontario limped through a power emergency for the ensuing week, as the blackout forced many of the province’s nuclear generators to shut down.

"The report makes clear that this blackout could have been prevented and that immediate actions must be taken in both the United States and Canada to ensure our electric system is more reliable," says a covering letter from U.S. Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham and Canadian Minister of Natural Resources John Efford.

"First and foremost, compliance with reliability rules must be made mandatory with substantial penalties for non-compliance."

Voluntary reliability standards are currently set by the North American Electric Reliability Council, or NERC, which is controlled by the utility industry. The result has been ineffective reliability rules, the task force says, but the industry as a whole must take the blame.

"If NERC’s standards have been unclear, non-specific, lacking in scope or insufficiently strict, that reflects at least as much on the industry community that drafts and votes on the standards as does NERC," the report concludes.

The task force says an "independent, international electric reliability organization" should be set up, funded by a hike in the transmission rate charged to all customers.

That wouldn’t affect Ontario power rates, according to officials during a conference call yesterday.

"Canadian electricity companies already have high reliability practices. We don’t anticipate there is going to be much in the way of additional costs," said André Plourde of Natural Resources Canada.

In Ontario, the Independent Electricity Market Operator (IMO) sets operating standards and can fine utilities or generators that break rules.

Jimmy Glotfelty of the U.S. Department of Energy said the United States "for many years has neglected transmission investments," and there will be a cost to catch up.

Neither U.S. nor Canadian officials would estimate yesterday what that cost will be, but noted the work and output lost during the August blackout cost the North American economy as much as $13 billion.

The task force found that FirstEnergy exemplified the many things that could go wrong at a utility with weak operating procedures and no strong regulating oversight.

It had neglected to trim trees under its power lines, so when lines heated because of heavy power flows and sagged into the branches, the lines shorted out. At the same time, monitoring equipment had failed so system operators weren’t aware of developing problems until they had snowballed.

Even then, it could have prevented the failure from spreading outside Ohio had FirstEnergy’s control room taken the proper steps. But FirstEnergy had provided little or no emergency procedure training for its staff, so employees didn’t know how to take the strain off the system by selectively cutting off power to some customers.

The result was a major breakdown at FirstEnergy, which then spread with little or no warning to its neighbours, including Ontario.

The causes "did not leap into being that day," the report states. "They reflect long-standing institutional failures and weaknesses."

It lists 46 recommendations, including mandatory reliability standards.

The report points a finger at Canada’s nuclear regulator, the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission. The commission was left in the dark, unable to communicate with nuclear plants when the blackout hit, because its headquarters in Ottawa had no backup power system.

That should be fixed, the task force said. Commission spokesperson Michel Cléroux said it has installed temporary backup power and "we will very soon have a permanent backup system."

Tom Adams, executive director of Energy Probe, said the report makes some useful recommendations that would require utilities and regulators to publish data about how reliably the power grid is performing.

"The data that’s available and published is very, very thin," Adams said in an interview.

He welcomed the recommendation to study whether there’s any link between competitive electricity markets and the blackout, and to make sure in designing markets that competition doesn’t affect reliability.

Federal and provincial governments have set up a group to co-ordinate work on the task force recommendations. The federal government represented Canada on the task force, but electricity systems are largely regulated by the provinces.