April 14, 2004—August 14, 2003, saw the worst blackout in North American history. Recently, Spencer Abraham, U.S. Secretary of Energy, and the Honorable R. John Efford, Minister of Natural Resources Canada, released the Final Report of the U.S.-Canada Power System Outage Task Force.
This report identifies the causes of the power outage and why the outage was not contained. It also presents comprehensive technical and policy recommendations to prevent or minimize the likelihood of future blackouts, and reduce the scope of those that do occur.
Recommendations include the following:
- Implementation of mandatory and enforceable electricity reliability standards in both the United States and Canada, with penalties for noncompliance, backed by appropriate government oversight;
- Strengthening the institutional framework of the North American Electric Reliability Council (NERC) and its initiatives on compliance;
- Developing a funding mechanism approved by regulators for NERC and the regional reliability councils, in order to ensure their independence from the parties they oversee;
- Addressing deficiencies identified in FirstEnergy and some reliability organizations in the United States, by June 30, 2004;
- Strengthening the technical recommendations made by NERC on February 10, 2004;
- Improving near-term and long-term training and certification requirements for operators, reliability coordinators and operator support staff; and
- Increasing the physical and cyber security of the network.
After the publication of the Interim Report in November 2003, the investigation team probed further into the state of reactive power supplies in northern Ohio prior to August 14, 2003. The team found that the ability to supply reactive power within the area had been inadequate for several years, and that the regional reliability council had not previously identified this vulnerability. As a result, there are now four groups of causes of the blackout:
- Inadequate system understanding;
- Inadequate situational awareness;
- Inadequate tree trimming; and
- Inadequate reliability coordinator diagnostic support.
The report also identifies seven violations of the voluntary reliability standards administered by NERC. The task force reviewed previous major North American power outages and found that the causes of the August 14, 2003, blackout were strikingly similar to those of earlier outages. The report is available online.
