Global Insight analyst Kemm Farney said that like most large system failures, the Northeast blackout in August resulted from a large number of more or less random system faults distributed over a large geographic area. However, quicker correctional measures by FirstEnergy to the shutdown of its Eastlake Unit 5 in Cleveland could have helped prevent the blackout from being so widespread, he said.

In a Global Insight report draft titled Keeping The Lights On: Required Investment in Power Transmission, Farney said analysis showed that prior to the blackout, the system was operating under moderate power loads and fairly normal weather.

However, Farney said that at the time of the event, First Energy was a large importer of power, drawing supplies from DTE, AEP and others. The analyst noted that a review by International Transmission Co. (ITC) argued that before a series of failures in Ohio, Michigan had “rock steady voltage,” a fact that seems to be disputed by FirstEnergy.

At 1:34 p.m. on Aug. 14, Farney said FirstEnergy had a unit trip at its Eastlake Unit 5 in Cleveland, one of the largest coal burning units in northern Ohio. “FirstEnergy was already short of power, importing more than normal because of an extended outage at its Davis-Besse nuclear unit,” he said. “There is a history of low voltage problems in the Cleveland area, with Eastlake Station playing a key role in their mitigation. At this time, FirstEnergy system operators should have been well aware of a serious problem and they would have begun discussions on corrective measures like shedding load.”

Farney said FirstEnergy should have also begun to rely on its spinning reserves or should have called on an “Automatic Reserve System” procedure through the East Central Area Reliability Council. “It is not yet clear what actually happened, but there is some evidence…that throughout the emergency FirstEnergy was merely ‘leaning on the grid,’ drawing unscheduled power from neighboring utilities,” he said.

By 3:06 p.m., the first in a series of tripped transmission lines occurred. Farney hypothesized that a line sagging too close to a tree limb because of overloaded conditions may have caused the first line trip. At the time of these trips, FirstEnergy was importing large amounts of power from the south.

“Also, by this time, voltage would have begun to decay significantly in the Cleveland/Akron area, and frequency oscillations would have begun to increase in amplitude between Cleveland/Akron and the balance of the eastern interconnect,” he said in the report. “If FirstEnergy’s operators had begun to aggressively drop load — disconnecting customers — in the Cleveland/Akron area, it is possible that the blackout could have been contained locally. In all likelihood, however, the operators held conversations on this subject instead of just dropping load.”

Farney added that those conversations probably involved FirstEnergy’s most senior management and resulted in an attempt to continue to serve Cleveland/Akron loads by draining power from neighboring areas. This action overloaded key transmission lines even more, causing further trips. “Finally, the frequency decay and frequency oscillations degenerated into an irreversible fast voltage collapse resulting in system failure and blackout,” Farney concluded.

The analyst said the geographic area of the blackout seems to have been determined by the boundaries protected by system operators who allowed automatic breakers to open or who quickly instructed breakers to be opened manually to protect their systems. As examples, Farney said AEP and PJM appear to have largely avoided the blackout by allowing automatic circuit breakers to trip.

The blackout was but the “tip of the iceberg of troubles” that the high voltage transmission grid in North America faces, he said. “The blackout highlights problems that are endemic across the continent, not just in a single region or utility jurisdiction. The fundamental problem is easy to see, easy to explain, and hard to fix.”

Farney said years of regulatory uncertainty have produced the current transmission system, which has not received needed investment and maintenance and has not kept up with the needs of a rapidly commoditizing wholesale power market.

Farney compared the situation to that of power generation prior to 1997, which saw almost no new generation projects initiated in the prior decade because of regulatory uncertainty. He noted that once the rules for market governance were clearly in place, prices became transparent and the traded market [became] liquid, a “literal avalanche of generation construction projects” occurred over the next six years.

In addition to the transmission infrastructure shortage, the analyst pointed out that the existing equipment that is in place is old and needs maintenance. “The transmission equipment that is in place is largely 20, 30, or more years old,” he said. “In many respects, we’re working with the best technology the 1950s had to offer.”

Global Insights’ multi-client study should be complete by Sept. 30. For more information on the study, visit www.globalinsight.com.

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