- - - - - -Transcripts show confusion before blackout struck
The Associated Press 9/4/03 2:54 AM
WASHINGTON (AP) -- One high voltage line failed, and another, and then a third. A coal-burning power plant was already out and a nuclear reactor was struggling to get enough electricity.
"We have no clue," an engineer at the FirstEnergy Corp. control center in Ohio responded when a regional grid monitor asked what was happening.
During the 35 minutes before the nation's worst blackout raced across eight states from Michigan to New York, there was a sense of confusion, uncertainty and anxiety among technicians trying to maintain control of the Ohio power system owned by FirstEnergy, according to transcripts released late Wednesday.
The company and its operation of the grid system south of Cleveland have been at the center of the investigation into the blackout, although FirstEnergy officials have said there were problems on other systems across the Midwest that afternoon, not just in its service area.
Members of the House Energy and Commerce Committee were expected to closely question FirstEnergy officials about its power line problems during the hour before the blackout and how its technicians responded when it resumed a second day of hearings into the blackout Thursday. The transcripts, copies of which were released by the committee, were expected to be a focus.
On Wednesday, Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham, who is heading the government's investigation into the outage, told the House panel that it was too early to conclude what precisely caused the blackout. "We won't jump to conclusions," he said.
Separately, the head of an industry-sponsored power grid reliability watchdog said that last year the industry had 444 transmission operating violations nationwide, including some that had a potential of causing a cascading system failure.
Michehl Gent, president of the North American Electric Reliability Council, said it was "premature" to say whether the type of violations reported in 2002 might have played a role in the blackout. Compliance with NERC's rules is voluntary and carry no penalties.
In all, the House panel released 650 pages of transcripts of telephone communications provided by the Midwest Independent Transmission System Operator, including exchanges between MISO grid monitors and FirstEnergy, during the afternoon of Aug. 14.
At about 3:32 p.m. Eastern time that day, a high-voltage line called Hanna-Juniper tripped after power was diverted to it following the failure of another line, causing an overload and the line to sag, hitting a tree.
But four minutes later in the FirstEnergy control room, technicians had no idea what just happened, according to the transcripts.
"Something strange is happening," an MISO technician, Don Hunter, told the Ohio utility, not sure what was amiss. "I've got to find my calculator," he said, trying to get a handle on the power fluctuations.
Told of the failure, a FirstEnergy technician, identified as Schwartz, said, "Daggone it. When did that happen?"
"We've got something going on," he added, promising to investigate. But for the next 20 minutes there was confusion over what lines were out and what the implication might be for the power grid.
Two hours earlier a FirstEnergy coal-burning power plant had gone down and then the nuclear reactor near Perry, Ohio, began having problems.
"They're having a hard time maintaining voltage," a FirstEnergy technician identified as Jerry Snickey told the MISO official at the other end of the phone line, referring to the nuclear unit.
The transmission failures also were still a mystery.
"We have no idea what happened," Snickey said. "We have no clue. Our computer is giving us fits too. We don't even know the status of some of the stuff (power fluctuations) around us."
Hunter, who was at the MISO grid monitoring center in Indiana, expressed frustration at the failure to diagnose the problems erupting in FirstEnergy's system.
"I called you guys like 10 minutes ago, and I thought you were figuring out what was going on there," he complained, according to the transcripts.
"Well, we're trying to," Snickey replied. "Our computer is not happy. It's not cooperating either."
"I can't get a big picture of what's going on," Hunter fretted.
A few minutes later, according to previously released information, another FirstEnergy line failed, and two minutes after that, at 4:08 p.m., utilities in Canada and the Eastern United states observed a wild power swing in a grid called the Lake Erie Loop.
At about 4:11 p.m. the blackout struck across the region.
FirstEnergy is going *down* as the cause for this ...