AEP's lines were involved in last summer's outage that left 50 million people in the dark in eight states and parts of Canada.

In the hours before the nation's worst blackout Aug. 14, several transmission lines in Ohio were carrying massive amounts of power well above emergency summer standards before automatically shutting down.

That's because a unit in a generator at First Energy Corp.'s Eastlake Power Plant went down. As a result, First Energy lost two transmission lines, said Navin Bhatt, manager of AEP's transmission system analysis in Columbus, Ohio.

The electricity that would have moved on those lines ended up on other lines, causing congestion, and the problems cascaded, Bhatt said.

AEP owns or co-owns the power lines with First Energy, which was at the center of a U.S.-Canada blackout investigation.

"We had power lines trip on our system that day and certainly those events would explain a local outage affecting our customers, but they, alone, do not explain the widespread outage that occurred that day," said Ellen Raines, spokeswoman for First Energy.

First Energy replaced its computer system to improve its reliability, but the purchase of the computer system was not a direct reaction to the blackout.

Utility workers also walked 11,000 miles of transmission lines and removed trees that could potentially cause a problem and drew up a three-year plan so that rights of way remain clear. This was a reaction to the blackout. The company, among other things, also enhanced its operator training program.

AEP said it avoided potential widespread outages in its area -- only 14,000 of its customers lost power.

"It is likely that the automated controls tripped some transmission lines moments before they would have burned down because of extremely high power flows out of our system," said Henry Fayne, AEP's executive vice president at the time.

As the dog days of summer near, the electric grid feels the heat, said the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. But a new data network could help the aging transmission system. The project will provide real-time, system-wide data to utilities and transmission operators within the Eastern power grid.

The electrical grid, an intricate web of high-voltage transmission lines, transports electricity across regions. The United States has three grids: one in the East; one in the West; and one in Texas.

"The project is about gathering and sharing information to provide complete coverage of the power grid in the Eastern U.S.," said Matt Donnelly, who is heading the project at the Department of Energy's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. Although the transmission system is interconnected so electricity can move among utilities, little information has been shared among them, said Donnelly.

AEP's Bhatt said the company will have a better understanding of what is going on on its system and ward off any potential problems. "The technology tells us -- on a microsecond basis -- whether there is a potential problem on AEP's system. It's a finer resolution; a snapshot of the whole network," Bhatt said.

Without the new system, AEP would get information every five minutes.

To get the new data, new measurement technologies using satellite- based time clocks are being installed at key locations on the grid to measure power flows in real time. The precise time clocks, along with sophisticated signal processing, allow the meters to provide more information than can be derived from traditional instruments.

Initially, control centers near St. Louis; Columbus, Ohio; Chattanooga, Tenn.; New Orleans; and Schenectady, N.Y., will be linked.

Participating utilities have invested about $1 million toward this effort and DOE has provided about $750,000. AEP invested about $250,000.

First Energy has been participating in meetings, but has not yet invested in the first phase of this project. The utility said it will invest in the second phase on the project.

As more and more utilities invest in this project, utilities will be able to see a disruption or failure occurring on any part of the interconnection, Bhatt said.

On the day of the blackout, First Energy and the Midwest Independent System Operator were not aware of what was going on their systems, Bhatt said.

With this project in place, the collected data will be more accurate and more frequent.

The Department of Energy felt a need to respond to last year's blackout, Donnelly said. It has been developing this technology for 10 years, but has only applied it in the past two years on the Western grid to control power surges when they occur.

The industry has realized this technology could be used to collect more accurate information and get a comprehensive wide area view of the power system, Donnelly said.