Massive power blackout disables dozens of cities By Calvin Woodward The Associated Press The largest power blackout in U.S. history rolled across a vast swath of the northern United States and southern Canada on Thursday, driving millions of people outdoors into stifling rush hour streets -- then darkness. New Yorkers escaped silenced subways. Nuclear power plants in four states shut down. "We all are wondering what caused this," said New York Gov. George Pataki. President Bush ruled out terrorism. The blackouts set off finger pointing on both sides of the border. At one point, Canadian authorities said it appeared lightning had struck a power plant on the U.S. side in the Niagara Falls region, setting off outages that spread over 9,300 square miles, but U.S. officials quickly disputed that. The blackouts started shortly after 4 p.m. EDT, engulfing most of New York state and parts of New England, and spreading west to Ohio and Michigan. In Toronto, Canada's largest city, workers fled their buildings when the power went off. There also were widespread outages in Ottawa, the capital. Power began to come back as evening wore on, but officials said full restoration would take much longer. By Thursday night, New York authorities had electricity back on in parts of the Bronx, Westchester County and Long Island. About half of the one million homes and businesses that lost power in New Jersey had it back. Outages ranged over an area with roughly 50 million people. New Yorkers scrambled down endless stairways in skyscrapers where elevators stopped working, and some subway commuters were stuck for several hours underground. In the city that took the brunt of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, people filed into the streets with little fuss and looked for ways to get home. "I'm trying to keep calm," said Aaron David, 27, who works at the United Nations, "but I was here for 9-11. This doesn't happen every day." Traffic lights were out throughout downtown Cleveland and other major cities, creating havoc at the beginning of rush hour. Cleveland officials said that without the power needed to pump water to 1.5 million people, water reserves were running low. New York state lost 80 percent of its power, said Matthew Melewski, speaking for the New York Independent System Operator, which manages the state power grid. Both New York and New Jersey declared states of emergency. As darkness fell, city dwellers turned to candles and flashlights as scattered parts of the electrical grid came back on. People gobbled ice cream from street vendors before it melted, and gathered around battery-operated radios for updates. Su Rya, 69, in batik shirt and shorts, guarded a store on 125th Street in Harlem. But when asked about talk that looting might break out, he said, "That's barbershop talk. It's a different generation now." Marveled another man, "You can actually see the stars in New York City." There were outages in several Vermont towns and in northern New Jersey, where Gov. James E. McGreevey mobilized 700 National Guardsman and ordered 300 extra state troopers on duty. In Connecticut, Metro-North Railroad service was knocked out. Lights flickered at state government buildings in Hartford. In San Diego, Bush said "slowly but surely we're coping with this massive, national problem," and added that he would order a review of "why the cascade was so significant." Bush said he suspected that the nation's electrical grid would need to be modernized. The FBI and Homeland Security Department both said the outages appeared to be a natural occurrence and not the result of terrorism. Blackout blamed on 3 Ohio power lines By H. Josef Hebert, The Associated Press -- Sunday, August 17, 2003 WASHINGTON -- A failure to contain problems with three transmission lines in northern Ohio just south of Cleveland was the likely trigger of the nation's biggest power blackout, a leading investigator said Saturday. Experts are working to understand why the local line disruptions, some of which occurred an hour before the blackout reached its peak, were not isolated, allowing a cascade of power system shutdowns stretching from Michigan to New York City and into Canada. "We are fairly certain at this time that the disturbance started in Ohio," Michehl Gent, head of the North American Electric Reliability Council, said in a statement. "We are now trying to determine why the situation was not brought under control after three transmission lines went out of service." Gent said the transmission system was designed to isolate such problems and suggested that human error might have been involved in not containing the situation. "The system has been designed and rules have been created to prevent this escalation and cascading. It should have stopped," said Gent in a telephone conference call.	Vermont escapes the worst By Andy Netzel, Free Press Staff Writer Lights flickered and digital clocks needed reset after a 2-second power outage in Vermont Thursday -- an outage that helped the state avoid the massive blackouts that continued into the night in much of the Northeast. "Good planning had something to do with it, but good luck was the key factor," said Steve Costello, spokesman for Central Vermont Public Service. The blip was the power-grid system cutting off power feeds from New York, and switching to power produced in Vermont and Quebec, Costello said. If the system hadn't worked as designed, power in Vermont may have been out into the night as it was in New York state, he said. Power outages were re ported throughout the northern part of Vermont Thursday, but energy was restored within an hour. Areas near Berkshire, Bakersfield, Highgate, Sheldon, St. Albans City and Swanton had power loss. The power grid in New England remained shaky Thursday night, but outages in Western Massachusetts and Connecticut were expected to be fixed overnight, Independent System Operator of New England, Inc. spokeswoman Erin O'Brien said. ISO New England is a not-for-profit corporation that makes sure power flows regularly, and production rates are adequate, in the New England power grid. "Once we get the New England service in balance, we'll help and provide assistance to our neighbors," she said. The New England power grid was in the normal range of power operation when the cascading outage occurred, O'Brien said. Most of Vermont seemed unaffected by the massive power grid failure. A New York City bound flight that was supposed to depart around 4:55 p.m. from Burlington International Airport was delayed four hours, but did take off, airport officials said. The information desk at the airport was swamped with phone calls asking about the electricity status in Vermont, a man working the phones at the desk said. Power suppliers worked into the night to make sure the power grid remained stable, checking line by line, Costello said. Workers of Hydro-Quebec and Vermont Yankee returned to work to keep power levels balanced. Costello said with Vermont the only state in the affected area without extended power loss, employees were trying to figure out how to keep the power going. "It's an odd situation for us to be the only state in the region that has its lights on completely," he said. "It's very unique, and a lucky spot to be in." Backups kept Vermont powered By Leslie Wright, Free Press Staff Writer -- Saturday, August 16, 2003 The largest power outage in U.S. history wasn't much more than a minor inconvenience for most Vermonters. Still, the outage that crippled New York, Toronto, Cleveland, Detroit and dozens of other cities kept the state's utilities on alert. With no power coming from New York and the New England power grid continuing to operate on its own after the failures in surrounding states, Vermont's power companies were tapping all of their own sources of power Friday. At Colchester's Green Mountain Power Corp., diesel generators and hydroelectric plants were running, company spokeswoman Dorothy Schnure said. Burlington Electric Department turned on a gas-powered turbine housed at the city's waterfront to supply extra power overnight Thursday, said Tom Buckley, manager of customer and energy services. Central Vermont Public Service Corp. was thankful to have hydro power. Thanks to heavy rains in the past few weeks, Vermont has plenty of hydro power, said Steve Costello, spokesman for the utility. "All the rain we have had over the last two weeks has been a godsend the last 24 hours. We have really been able to run our hydro facilities," Costello said. Power interruptions startled workers at computers throughout Vermont on Thursday, when screens suddenly went dark. Aside from a brief interruption most systems were not fazed, said Mark Jennings, manager of network engineering at SymQuest in South Burlington. SymQuest does computer networking for 175 businesses in Vermont, upstate New York and New Hampshire. "It's been a nonevent for us. Most of our clients are on solid battery back-up systems," Jennings said. At IBM in Essex Junction, the power outage created problems for the company's manufacturing facility. Company spokesman Jeff Couture said Big Blue's Vermont facility had been drawing about 60 megawatts from the system and was dropped to 26 megawatts. The outage affected mainly manufacturing equipment at the computer chip plant. Machines had to be recalibrated and restarted, a process that was completed by about 8 p.m. The company's e-mail system was out Friday because the server is in New York. Employees were able to use instant messaging to communicate via computer, Couture said. At CVPS in Rutland the largest demand seemed to be from out-of-staters, Costello said. "We got more calls from New Yorkers and New Jerseyites who have second homes in Vermont. They wanted to find out if they had power in their homes. When they found out they had it they said, 'Great, we're coming up,'" Costello said. Contact Leslie Wright at 660-1841 or lwright@bfp.burlingtonfreepress.com 'Alarms up and down the border' By David Gram, The Associated Press -- Saturday, August 16, 2003 MONTPELIER -- It was a quiet Thursday afternoon in the control room at the Vermont Electric Power Co. in Rutland. The bulk power grid serving Vermont's power companies was operating smoothly. Temperatures were in the high 80s and air conditioners were humming around the state, but the system wasn't stressed, said Gary Parker, VELCO's vice president for engineering. Vermont's record high power demand was 1,023 megawatts. The 930 megawatts moving through the system Thursday were well within its capacity. That's when all hell broke loose. Computers began beeping, lights flashing, printers spitting out alarm messages. Soon the two or three system operators who had been keeping an eye on things had lots of company, as planners and engineers from around VELCO's building on U.S. 7 rushed to join them. Now, about 10 people were crammed into a roughly 20-by-20 room with computer terminals and other equipment, trying to figure out what was going on. It often takes a few minutes to determine the problem when alarms go off at the headquarters of the company that transmits power to Vermont's retail power companies. "Sometimes it requires interaction with ISO New England," the regional power dispatch organization with which VELCO is in constant contact, Parker said. "It often takes several minutes to really get a sense of what's going on." It was clear from the start that this was not the usual power outage. "Typically our events start with a single line outage or single event," he said. "In this case we had alarms all the way up and down the border with New York." Tension rose as the computer monitors continued to post warnings. "You're watching the system. Voltage is starting to sag," Parker said. At the same time, Vermont's power grid was automatically trying to right itself. When surges or shorts are detected on a line, the system is designed to open circuit breakers to try to isolate the problem, Parker said. The system started "shedding load," in industry parlance, as it tried to stabilize itself by reducing the demands being placed on it. Five megawatts were shed as St. Albans automatically was knocked off the system, causing an outage of about an hour there. Swanton and Highgate were kicked off the system, saving another two megawatts. Two major power lines serving northwestern Vermont -- one bringing Quebec power in at Highgate and the other running from Plattsburgh, N.Y., under Lake Champlain to Milton -- shut down, as did a smaller one running from Hoosick Falls, N.Y., to Bennington. Hydro-Quebec power was restored seven minutes later, Parker said. That was a big boon to the Vermont system's reliability, since the provincial utility provides about 37 percent of Vermont's power. At the Vermont Yankee nuclear plant in Vernon, technicians in the control room received alarms and quickly determined the problem was not at the plant, but on the power grid. Kevin Bronson, general manager at Vermont Yankee, said the plant continued through the night at 100 percent power.
Experts explain why Vt. kept power By Nancy Remsen, Free Press Staff Writer Thursday, October 30, 2003 MONTPELIER -- Vermont power companies had no warning and no time to react on that muggy afternoon in August when thousands of volts of electricity surged into the region from the Midwest and then swept back out within seconds during the largest power failure in United States history. "We were totally at the mercy of our equipment," Greg White of Central Vermont Public Service Corp. told members of two legislative committees Wednesday. Lawmakers had convened a special hearing to find out why the lights stayed on in Vermont during the massive Aug. 14 outage that stretched from Ohio to Ontario to New York City. White and a parade of other Vermont and New England utility experts said good equipment, contingency plans for backup power, responsive communication networks and staff training paid off. "That was a shining moment," Vermont Public Service Commissioner David O'Brien declared. Although spared the brunt of the blackout, Vermont electric companies and their customers did not escape unscathed. Voltage in Vermont plunged from 940 megawatts to 800 as some of the state's generating equipment shut down in reaction to the power fluctuations. IBM officials told lawmakers their voltage dipped as much as 53 percent during a series of power disruptions that caused sensitive equipment throughout the Essex plant to shut down. Robert Lang, a facilities manager, said the Aug. 14 incident cost IBM millions of dollars in lost production time and damaged silicon wafers, which are used to make computer chips. The precise loss was proprietary information, he said. Representatives of many of the state's electric utilities and power generators detailed for lawmakers how their systems had reacted. Kevin Bronson, general manager of Vermont Yankee, said alarms sounded, but the nuclear plant remained a stable source of 525 megawatts of power throughout the ordeal. In Burlington, the lights never flickered, said Barbara Grimes of the Burlington Electric Department. The McNeil Station, a wood-fired generator, shut down for 15 minutes, then returned to producing 55 megawatts of power. The wet summer meant many of the state's hydro-electric plants were producing power when the outage occurred. Although most had to be restarted after the power surge, utility representatives said the plants helped stabilize the regional power grid after New England unplugged. Stephen Whitley, chief operating office for ISO New England, the organization that manages the power grid in the six New England states, credited tough standards of operation for the region's successful response to the outage. He noted New England had reserve power ready to go at a moment's notice and plans for how to quickly reduce power use to balance the system. "The mode of operation we have in New England, I think that is the reason we stood up so well," Whitley said. "You could call it luck, but that is the way the system is designed." The investigation into the cause of the massive outage has yet to conclude, but Whitley said evidence already shows that trouble had been brewing in Ohio for hours before the catastrophic failure. "This outage, this blackout, was totally preventable," Whitley said. Contact Nancy Remsen at 229-9141 or nremsen@bfp.burlingtonfree- press.com
Human error, equipment blamed for August power failure By Edward Iwata of Gannett News Service --- Thursday November 20, 2003 Federal investigators blamed the worst blackout in U.S. history on poor control-room procedures by Ohio utility FirstEnergy and the failure of a power grid organization in the Midwest to keep it from spreading, according to a draft report released Wednesday. "This blackout was largely preventable," Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham said. "A number of relatively small problems combined to become a very big one." The 124-page report into the Aug. 14 blackout details the findings of a three-month investigation by a joint task force of U.S. and Canadian energy officials. It found four violations of industry reliability standards by FirstEnergy, the nation's fourth-largest investor-owned utility company, and another violation by the Midwestern Independent System Operator. FirstEnergy had no immediate comment on the report. The blackout left 50 million people without power for up to two days in eight Midwestern and Northeastern states and Ontario. It darkened 100 power plants, forced 12 major airports to close and cost at least $6 billion in economic losses. Investigators found that a series of human errors and equipment failure in the Midwest -- at least three to four hours before the blackout -- led to the outage cascading across one-fifth of the nation's power grid. Among the report's findings: -- FirstEnergy lacked procedures to make sure control-room operators were aware of computer and software tools that monitor its region's power grid, the network of power lines and plants that transmit electricity. FirstEnergy also had no procedures to test its monitoring tools. -- FirstEnergy had failed to cut overgrown trees close to power lines. As the blackout spread, the lines sagged into branches and shut down. -- MISO, the energy industry group that oversees the region's power grid, failed to detect power plant and transmission line failures in FirstEnergy's area because of software failure and other problems. -- MISO and PJM Interconnection, another industry group that runs part of the Midwestern grid, lacked guidelines for emergencies. A final report, with recommendations, will be issued following public feedback on the findings.