Energy Saver News; WattBusters - Blackout

The joint US-Canadian task force responsible for tracking down the cause of the August 14th blackout stated in their final report that there was a disregard of the rules intended to ensure the flow of reliable electricity. This disregard, coupled with inadequate monitoring of events by a regional grid system operator contributed to the outages that affected 8 states and portions of Canada. Other factors were communications problems, faulty equipment and inadequate training.

The report cast much of the blame on Ohio-based FirstEnergy Corp., saying that it failed to recognize and respond to problems on three of their lines in time to stop the cascading outages. FirstEnergy has contended that the grid problems were more widespread.

Energy Secretary, Spencer Abraham stated, "The report makes clear that this blackout could have been prevented and that immediate actions must be taken in both the United States and Canada to ensure that our electric system is more reliable". Abraham and Canadian Natural Resource Minister John Efford who led the task force also stated, "First and foremost, compliance with reliability rules must be made mandatory with substantial penalties for noncompliance".

As it stands now, the power industry regulates itself and Capitol Hill has been ineffective at imposing governmental regulations because of wider disagreements over energy legislation. There are many existing voluntary requirements aimed at preventing blackouts. The private North American Reliability Council handles the administration of rules and requirements but they lack the ability to levy penalties. Investigators have found that although many reliability rules were ignored, the council could not do much about it.

The conclusion of the council's final report is that another major outage can happen unless reliability regulations, with clear penalties for violators, are put in place.

At WattBusters we look for additional ways to minimize the possibility of power outages. We want to reduce electricity consumption while we keep our standard of living. If we replace the most used incandescent bulb in our home with a compact fluorescent bulb, we've already reduced that energy usage by approximately 75%. If every home in the United States did that, our energy woes would begin to fade away. Changing just one bulb per home would save more electricity than the Hoover Dam generates in a year!

Why wait for regulations? We already have a measure of control over how much electricity has to be generated and transmitted now. Pass the word along and enjoy your savings.