Most consumers hit by the massive blackout that swept across the United States and Canada last year said they would be willing to pay higher utility bills to safeguard their electricity supplies, a study released on Thursday showed.

The survey, conducted by consultancy Accenture Ltd. , showed 55 percent of consumers in both countries would accept rate hikes of up to 15 percent to prevent future blackouts like the one that cut power to some 50 million people on Aug. 14.

About 44 percent of the respondents said they would not be willing to pay for an increase, according to the survey of 416 households in the blackout-affected areas.

The power outage is believed to have started with a power line failure in the Midwest that caused an imbalance on the electricity grid that swept eastward, knocking out power across wide areas of the Northeast and Ontario.

Critics have blamed poor coordination between neighboring power grids for failing to limit the blackout, as well as lack of maintenance and electronic control of the system by the Ohio company, FirstEnergy Corp. , on whose grid the outage began.

Nearly 10 percent of those surveyed said they incurred between $300 and $500 in expenses related to the blackout, Accenture said, while 24 percent said their costs were between $100 and $300 and 38 percent reported costs of less than $100.

The blackout also hurt consumers' confidence in power reliability, with 50 percent saying they expected another blackout in the next six months or were unsure if their power would be interrupted.

Most consumers also said their local utility and the government had not done enough to inform them of the causes of the blackout, and 85 percent said utilities should provide more information about the electrical system and supply.

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