Reuters: Regulatory News: U.S. blackout report cites lack of grid awareness

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U.S. blackout report cites lack of grid awareness May 1st 2012, 19:54 HOUSTON | Tue May 1, 2012 3:54pm EDT HOUSTON May 1 (Reuters) - A lack of awareness of real-time conditions on the western power grid last Sept. 8 -- rather than a single power-line problem -- was to blame for a blackout that left 2.7 million electric customers in southern California, Arizona and the Mexico border in the dark, watchdogs for the U.S. power grid said on Tuesday. A joint report from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) and the North American Electric Reliability Corp (NERC) recommended that transmission operators improve modeling of the western grid and coordination for emergencies between utilities. The seven-hour blackout forced flights to be canceled at San Diego International Airport, snarled traffic across the region and cut water supplies in some areas. "This report highlights the growing need for more coordination of grid operations in the West," FERC Chairman Jon Wellinghoff said in a release. The event started in the early afternoon of Sept. 8 with the loss of Arizona Public Service's 500-kilovolt Hassayampa-North Gila transmission line, but loss of the line did not cause the blackout that mostly affected customers of Sempra Energy, according to the joint report. The sequence of events that followed included the loss of 4,300 megawatts of generation, including the two-reactor San Onofre nuclear power station operated by Edison International's Southern California Edison utility. The plant not only supplies power to the San Diego area, but supports the importation of outside power into the region. Transmission operators had little idea of how problems on a neighbor's grid would impact their own, said Dave Nevius, NERC vice president. "Without a good model of your system and your neighbor's system, it's hard to handle something like this when it starts," Nevius said. The report said operators need to understand better how even transmission lines under 100 kilovolts can affect the operation of much bigger power lines that move large amounts of electricity hundreds of miles. Better knowledge of the western system might have allowed operators to take action to prevent the blackout from cascading throughout southern California, according to the report. "This event underscores how complex and interdependent our North American electric systems are and the critical importance of information sharing, communications, system studies and coordinated operations among all interconnected systems," said Gerry Cauley, NERC chief executive. The eight-month inquiry dissected how the outage unfolded, made recommendations to prevent a recurrence but did not focus on possible violations of NERC reliability standards. Violation of NERC standards can result in enforcement actions that include financial penalties and modification of utility requirements. Link this Share this Digg this Email Reprints

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