Blackout blamed on NERC

Blackout blamed on NERC, tree-trimming

Platts T&D - 03/25/2004

The final report on the August 14, 2003 blackout by the U.S.-Canada task force investigating the incident is scheduled to be released at the end of March. A preview of the report points to utility tree-trimming practices and lack of autonomy at the North American Electric Reliability Council as the main reasons the lights went out throughout the Northeastern U.S. and Southeastern Canada that afternoon.

U.S. and Canadian utility standards for tree trimming near transmission lines are inadequate and the monitoring of these activities by regulators is lacking, an independent consultant hired by the task force concluded. CN Utility Consulting, which was hired to review the tree-trimming practices of three Ohio utilities-FirstEnergy, Cinergy and American Electric Power-found that each company's program complied with industry standards at the time of the blackout.

The task force concluded in an interim report in November that four major power lines experienced faults after they made contact with trees on Aug. 14, which when combined with other events led to the cascading outage that left 50 million people without power.

"We are convinced that the conditions scrutinized in the investigation are not isolated or limited to the utilities involved in the Aug. 14 blackout. The conditions that led up to this event can be found in most states and provinces throughout North America," the consultant said in the report, which was filed at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and released last week at the National Assn. of Regulatory Utility Commissioners winter meeting.

Industry standards need to be improved and current regulatory oversight of vegetation management along transmission and distribution lines is inadequate, according to the report.

"There are many hurdles every utility company must face when trying to maintain lines clear of vegetation," including landowners halting work and dealing with different rules among city, county and state governments, the consultant said.

Among the steps the report suggested for both utilities and regulators are: ensure sufficient funding for vegetation management practices; improve public education regarding appropriate plantings near power lines; develop incentives for compliance with best practices and penalties for noncompliance; and have oversight organizations "publicly and politically support" utility tree-trimming activities and explain the necessity of the work.

Such steps "will cost more money, though we believe that over time a more consistent and systematic approach will result in lower costs. This investment will also result in significantly improved electric service reliability for utility customers, and a reduction in emergency repair costs through the reduction of outages," the report said.

New Jersey is developing its own standards, a difficult task because landowners do not like to see trees trimmed but they also do not like the outages that come with trees encroaching on rights-of-way, said Board of Public Utilities Commissioner Carol Murphy. Regulators need to weigh the public interest of one person's appreciation of trees against the consequences of a large outage affecting other customers, said Ron Jackups, vice president of electric system operations for Cinergy.

Jackups said he did not mind enhanced standards for utilities as long as there was evidence that tree-related outages have increased over time. Any revised standards should be "performance-driven rather than process-driven," he said, because what is appropriate for utilities in Ohio might not be appropriate for utilities in New Mexico or other states with different landscapes.

Officials with the Edison Electric Institute, AEP and FirstEnergy offered similar assessments of the report's suggestions. The report seems to say a "cookie-cutter approach can be applied nationwide" on vegetation management, when it is difficult to address these issues in such a way, a spokesman for EEI said. "We're in favor of improving public education" on tree trimming because the practices play a crucial role in maintaining reliability, he went on to say.

FirstEnergy has embarked on an aggressive monitoring and clearing program for its entire transmission system of 345-kV lines and higher in several states, and "these are emotional issues for everyone" because in some cases customers will see dramatic differences in their landscapes, a spokesman for FirstEnergy said.

"Industry standards may need to be fine-tuned" but "we're not waiting for that step," the FirstEnergy spokesman said of the campaign that began in the fall. The utility is striving to notify all involved about what is taking place and to make sure customers know that the clearing being done is to ensure the reliability of the system, but there are cases where customers are upset with FirstEnergy, he said.

When the U.S.-Canada task force releases its report, it may recommend a new funding mechanism for NERC that would make the organization more independent of the companies it was set up to oversee, said Jimmy Glotfelty, director of the office of electricity transmission and distribution at the U.S. DOE. The final report also will include recommendations for holding companies accountable for their actions, because reports on previous blackouts have lacked that element, Glotfelty said at a recent NARUC meeting in Washington.

NERC is dependent on voluntary membership in the group's regional councils for its funding, and that structure needs to be changed, he said. It would not be hard to include a charge on all transmission tariffs to fund NERC's $12-million annual budget, Glotfelty said, and he said it would be preferable to the current system, where regional councils collect fees from members under different plans.

The funding change is included in the reliability section of the much-embattled and stalled energy bill, which says a reliability organization must be independent "of the users and owners and operators of the bulk-power system" and "allocate equitably reasonable dues, fees and other charges among end-users for all activities under this section."

Glotfelty also said operator training needs to be addressed, and while NERC last month approved several steps to improve grid reliability, including enhanced training verification, the task force may conclude that there needs to be further action because "saying you're NERC-certified today does not carry the weight or the credentials that it needs to in the future."

NERC has acknowledged that it did not track recommendations from previous blackout reports and improving in that area is one of the steps included in measures the NERC board approved last month, said David Cook, NERC vice president and general counsel. After the task force issues its final report, NERC will release its own report, providing a more technical analysis of what happened Aug. 14 and why, Cook said.

Following the blackout, FirstEnergy, the Midwest Independent Transmission System Operator and PJM Interconnection have taken steps to improve reliability at the direction of NERC, state regulators and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, Cook said. It would be folly for companies in other parts of the country to say what happened in FirstEnergy's territory "can't happen here," he said.

The steps being taken by FirstEnergy and MISO are such "no-brainers" as enhanced system monitoring and improved coordination, but other regions can and will be expected to learn some lessons from the companies involved in the blackout, Glotfelty said. Reliability readiness audits of the 20 largest control area operators are scheduled to be completed by June 20, and the final reports of those audits will be made public, Cook said.

State regulators approved a resolution calling on the U.S.-Canada task force to keep state regulators better informed as the blackout investigation continues. The NARUC board passed a resolution encouraging the task force to share information related to the blackout with regional reliability councils, states and Canadian provinces so that the affected parties can take appropriate mitigation measures to prevent more blackouts.

According to the resolution, the states that lost power during the outage are dependent on the task force "for the information on exactly how the events cascaded across state lines," and this information--which is currently subject to confidentiality agreements--should be made available to them.

But those involved in the task force said difficulties would undoubtedly arise because of the complex confidentiality agreements signed by the participants. Alison Silverstein, a task force leader and an adviser to FERC Chairman Pat Wood, told the NARUC meeting she was unsure how much of the data could be shared, asserting that it is not the government's property to give away.

The resolution also urged the task force to coordinate with NERC to ensure that necessary engineering studies are performed to determine whether new technologies could have mitigated the impact of the Aug. 14 outage and if such grid improvements "could be of value in protecting against future blackouts."