A congressional committee
looking into how and why last month's blackout happened will hear from Michigan
Gov. Jennifer Granholm and Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick.
The U.S. House Energy and Commerce Committee, chaired by Rep. Billy Tauzin
(R-La.) planned to take testimony today and tomorrow on the blackout, which
swept across eight states and parts of Canada on Aug. 14. About 50 million
customers, 2.3 million in Michigan, lost power.
In her prepared testimony, Granholm said International Transmission Co.,
based in Ann Arbor, has traced the timeline on actions that contributed to the
blackout back to one hour and five minutes before it occurred. But she said ITC
and DTE Energy said they were unaware of any problem or any unusual activity on
the grid until just a few minutes before the blackout.
"If they had been informed during the previous hour that the system was
having problems, they may have been able to craft a contingency plan for the
energy demand and delivery, and avoid the cascading failure," Granholm said.
She also said that restructuring of the utility market, while it has had many
positive results, has made it harder to determine who is responsible for what
because power companies sold off their transmission systems to separate
operators.
"The bottom line is that this contributes to a system where no one, myself
included, knows who is ultimately responsible for ensuring reliability. That is
an unacceptable situation," she said.
Granholm and Ohio Gov. Bob Taft will call for Congress to enact new federal
electricity grid reliability standards, replacing the voluntary standards that
most now agree are inadequate.
In a letter to House investigators, the chief executive of a major Michigan
utility says he is convinced that a power plant shutdown and transmission line
failures in Ohio "were the triggering event for the blackout" and that an
"apparent failure in communication" was a major reason the problem spread.
"For some reason, the required level of communications and coordination
failed on Aug. 14," Anthony Earley Jr., chairman and chief executive officer of
DTE Energy, wrote the House Energy and Commerce Committee. He said this
"apparent breakdown in communications between the Ohio utilities and other
utility systems" must be dealt with.
Earley, whose Detroit Edison serves 5 million people in southeastern
Michigan, complained that "Michigan utilities did not have timely or adequate
warnings about deteriorating systems condition in Ohio" during the hour before
the blackout.
He said Detroit Edison did not begin to detect anything unusual until 4:06
p.m., five minutes before the blackout hit full force in all or parts of eight
states. Investigators said the first of five transmission line failures in Ohio
began occurring an hour earlier.
Granholm, Kilpatrick and Michigan Public Service Commission Chairman Peter
Lark were scheduled to testify today. Joseph Welch, chief executive of ITC, is
to testify tomorrow.
Lark and Granholm said they've been asked to answer questions on the factors
and events leading up to the blackout, which systems operated as designed and
which systems failed, the lessons learned from the blackout, and ways to prevent
future outages.
Kilpatrick planned to talk about the financial impact of the blackout.
"We see this as a good opportunity to engage and educate the federal
government on the financial assistance cities need to fully prepare for
emergencies, particularly during these challenging economic times," Kilpatrick
said in a statement.
Tauzin has promised President Bush that a comprehensive energy bill will be
ready by the end of September for final congressional action.
"We have a number of very strong provisions in our bill dealing with
electricity, but we need to find out if additional steps are needed," Tauzin
spokesman Ken Johnson said.