The House Energy and Commerce Committee has scheduled two days of hearings on Sept. 3 and 4 to explore the reasons for the massive cascading blackout that hit eight states and two Canadian provinces last week.

Invited to testify are Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham, FERC Chairman Pat Wood, New York Gov. George Pataki, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Michehl R. Gent, president of the North American Electric Reliability Council, as well as other public officials from states affected by the transmission outages Aug. 14 and 15.

In a telephone conversation with President Bush late Monday, “I assured him that we will have a comprehensive energy bill ready for final congressional action by the end of September,” said Committee Chairman W.J. “Billy” Tauzin (R-LA), who will co-chair the conference committee whose task is to reconcile the House and Senate measures. “We both agreed that this legislation must contain several critically important provisions designed to prevent future electricity blackouts. The three key elements are: mandatory reliability standards, investment incentives and reform of transmission siting rules.”

The “paralyzing blackouts” of last week “should send a sobering signal to Congress that we simply cannot wait any long to act” on a comprehensive energy bill, Tauzin said in a statement.

Tauzin said he also sent 15 letters to local, state and federal officials and utility councils and companies requesting information on the causes and contributing events that led to the blackout, as well as ways in which to prevent this type of event from happening in the future. Companies receiving letters were FirstEnergy Corp. of Akron, OH; Consolidated Edison Co. of New York Inc. in New York City; National Grid USA of Westborough, MA; and International Transmission Company of Ann Arbor, MI.

While investigations into the blackout have just begun, FirstEnergy’s grid in northern Ohio has been unofficially cited as having line difficulties, but there has been no explanation as to why the problem cascaded to the blackouts in the Midwest, Northeast and in eastern Canada.

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