Power grid needs more controls by feds, governors say

WASHINGTON -- Federal energy officials and governors from states darkened by last month's blackout said Wednesday that self-monitoring of the nation's power grid by the electricity industry fails to protect the public, and they urged Congress to increase government oversight.

"A system that relies on courtesy calls is clearly outdated," Ohio Gov. Bob Taft told a congressional hearing examining the Aug. 14 blackout that cascaded within seconds from Ohio through Michigan and Canada and down New York state.

An estimated 50 million people were affected and the costs in lost wages, productivity and other disruptions has been put into the billions of dollars.

Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm told a House Energy and Commerce Committee hearing that the economic repercussions as a result of closed factories, businesses and other facilities in her state alone "will reach the $1 billion mark" and "we feel fortunate there was no loss of life."

Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham joined the governors in urging Congress to set federal reliability standards for the power transmission system and give the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission clout to enforce the standards.

Reliability unchecked

FERC chairman Pat Wood said he welcomed such a move and told lawmakers that while his agency has jurisdiction over wholesale electricity markets and transmission costs, it has no power to address reliability. "Currently there is no direct federal authority or responsibility for the reliability of the transmission grid," he said.

After a 1965 blackout in the Northeast, Congress left it to a private group, the North American Electricity Reliability Commission, to establish grid standards. But NERC has no power to force companies to comply or levy any penalties to violators.

"As long as compliance to these standards remains voluntary, we will fall short of providing the greatest possible assurance of reliability," Michehl Gent, NERC president, told the hearing. He said his organization for years had sought mandatory, federally imposed standards.

None of the witnesses ventured to provide a precise cause for the Aug. 14 blackout, although investigators continued to focus on power line problems in the FirstEnergy Corp. system in northern Ohio.

Abraham, co-chair of a U.S.-Canadian task force spearheading the investigation, said he expected a finding on cause in a matter "of weeks, not months" and promised to "follow the facts wherever they lead us."

In a second phase of the investigation, Abraham said, the group will make recommendations on "what should be done to prevent the same thing from happening again."

In the meantime, Abraham said lawmakers should move ahead with measures to improve grid reliability, including mandatory federal reliability rules as part of a broader energy bill. Different versions of the legislation already have passed the House and Senate.

But some Democrats at Wednesday's hearing accused the Bush administration and congressional Republicans of trying to use the blackout to push through a broad energy bill that would include drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska and other controversial issues that have stymied progress on energy legislation for years.

"I don't want the blackout to be used to push an energy bill that many of us have great difficulty with," said Rep. Eliot Engel, D-N.Y., whose state bore the brunt of the Aug. 14 power outage. He said he feared the blackout would be used "to rubber-stamp misguided energy policies" under the guise of repairing the power system.

Rep. John Dingell, D-Mich., said he was introducing a bill this week to address the grid reliability issue with new federal rules and standards apart from the broader energy debate.

Rep. Billy Tauzin, R-La., the committee chairman, said he was optimistic a final energy package -- including the electricity measures that are needed -- can be worked out and rejected the idea of pursuing separate power grid legislation.