While the odds of the U.S. getting hit by another blackout on the scale of the one last year on Aug. 14 appear to be “a little less likely” as the country approaches the one-year anniversary of that historic event, David Brown, a vice-president at NUS Consulting, believes that there hasn’t been adequate follow through on a final report examining the outage completed by a joint U.S.-Canada task force earlier this year.

“I would probably lean toward we are a little less likely” of the U.S. experiencing another massive power outage like the one seen last summer “only in the sense that we realize there’s a problem, whereas maybe for last year’s blackout, there was quite a bit of ignorance going around,” Brown said in an interview with NGI. “But I would say that we’re more aware of the problem. Now, whether or not we’ve gone out and addressed these problems or issues in a substantial way — no, we haven’t.”

The joint U.S.-Canadian task force issued its final report on the Aug. 14, 2003 blackout in April and offered up 46 recommendations. The task force said that the most important recommendation was for the U.S. Congress to act on legislation to make compliance with reliability standards mandatory and enforceable.

“I thought the report was good,” Brown said. “It focused on the problem and it addressed all of the issues that needed to be out there, it’s just that there hasn’t been a lot of follow up to that report — mostly on the side of the United States at the federal level — in addressing our transmission grid problems or shortfalls.”

He said that the report’s recommendation related to making compliance with reliability standards mandatory “was probably one of the biggest recommendations that should have been taken up, but it just really hasn’t been.” Even if Congress were to sign off on such a legislative proposal, “you’ve got to pony up the money in order to do that. Congress can pass laws, but you have to enact those laws and, of course, there’s got to be a financial commitment that’s placed behind upgrading those standards.”

As for transmission constraints facing the U.S., Brown noted that distributed generation “is one area that’s being looked into as a more immediate way of addressing those shortfalls and bottlenecks, but I would see that as more of a temporary solution. Long term, what we need to do is we need to interconnect this transmission grid that we have in this country.”

He said that the country’s electric grid “wasn’t designed to do what we’re expecting it do now and that’s in light of deregulation.”

One of the key concerns flowing from last year’s blackout was the breakdown in communications among control room operators that occurred on Aug. 14 of last year. A month after the blackout, Virginia-based KEMA Consulting said that a closer look at the lack of information flow between neighboring control centers that day should be at the top of the priority list for government agencies investigating the series of power outages.

Brown was asked to comment on whether he thinks that appropriate steps have been taken to address communications-related issues since last summer. “I think there [have] been things that have been done to improve communications within the states that were affected in the blackout,” he said. “I think there is better communication, but it’s also hard to tell — since we haven’t had a blackout since of such proportion — whether or not you can attribute it to better communication or whether or not we’ve just been lucky.”

Brown is not alone in his assessment that more work needs to be done to get the nation’s transmission grid up to snuff. Transmission consultants at management consulting and engineering firm R.W. Beck last Thursday said that proactive measures to avoid a blackout like last summer’s are still on the drawing boards.

R.W. Beck’s Jennifer Tripp and Frank Gaffney believe that utilities need to invest more capital resources in transmission grid upgrades and that there is still a need for stronger planning, coordination and communication across broader regions.

“We’ve seen changes in policies and procedures, but very little new transmission investment within the industry to combat a domino effect such as the one seen last year,” said Gaffney, a veteran transmission marketing consulting (TMC) practitioner in R.W. Beck’s Orlando office.

Tripp, a TMC consultant in R.W. Beck’s Phoenix office, explained that the transmission grid has not been significantly upgraded to keep up with the growth and expanded load. “It works like a pond that has a stone thrown into it — when one area shuts down there is a ripple effect that can take hold,” she said. “Of course, there are safeguards in place, but more needs to be done to improve the system.”

NUS Consulting Group is a professional cost recovery company specializing in solutions to reduce energy (electricity, gas, oil, petroleum, water/sewer and steam) and telecommunications expenses.

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