Power grid primed to fail

Nips, tucks won't fix it anymore, experts say

August 17, 2003|By Melita Marie Garza and Jeremy Manier, Tribune staff reporters.

Amid furious finger-pointing over who's to blame for the nation's largest blackout ever, there is one cause on which all parties seem to agree: The U.S. power grid is outmoded, with too few transmission lines to handle Americans' ever-growing appetite for electricity.

Although the problem seems clear, solutions are not.

Experts say electric utilities have little incentive to build new transmission lines because the economic return on such investments is often uncertain--unlike power plants, which tend to provide a reliable stream of income.

After decades of neglect, improving the grid will require a prolonged commitment by government, industry and ordinary consumers.

Analysts say the needs include more government investment in the grid, more conservation by consumers and new technology to anticipate and prevent overloads like the one that played a part in Thursday's blackout.

The most glaring fault of the grid is the lack of sufficient heavy-duty transmission lines to handle surges in electric load. Officials believe that played a major role in the blackout, when power lines in a part of the grid called the "Lake Erie Loop"--which includes Detroit, Toronto and Cleveland--encountered an unexpected wave of current and shut down.

"The principal lesson of this will be that we have to get more active in building transmission lines," said George Gross, a professor of electrical engineering at the University of Illinois.

Utility officials confirmed Saturday that the Lake Erie Loop remained the focus of the probe into causes for the sudden power shutdown.

A major obstacle to construction of additional transmission lines is the widespread refusal of local communities to accept them in their back yard.

The federal and state agencies that regulate new power construction also have competing interests that have kept the grid less robust. While the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission encourages new lines that add spare transmission capacity, state regulators often stall projects whose primary purpose is to send power out of state--even if those extra lines would strengthen the larger system.

"The state regulators ask why they should pollute their landscape with another transmission project when it's not going to benefit their jurisdiction," Gross said.

Deregulation played role

The 1990s trend toward deregulation, which split up utilities and made transmission a different business from power generation, also has played a role.

"Generators started building plants at convenient locations on the system, some without having considerations for how transmission in that area can accommodate them," said Michehl Gent, president and CEO of the North American Electric Reliability Council, which monitors the soundness of the nation's electric grids.

Companies that build power plants typically secure long-term contracts up front to provide electricity to utilities and large commercial customers, decreasing the risk of the investment.

But there are few such incentives for individual companies to build new power lines or other infrastructure improvements.

That makes building transmission a risky bet in a power industry that lost many investors in the wake of scandals linked to former energy giant Enron.

"There is a fundamental lack of interest by the investment community in all things energy right now," said Jim Letzelter, managing director of Platts Research & Consulting. "That has to do with both Enron, as well as the whole California experience. There is a lot of risk associated with it and there's a lot of distrust in many players in the industry."

The Lake Erie Loop that was at the center of last week's blackout offers a case study in how difficult it can be to build new power lines.

For decades engineers have struggled with how to handle the electricity that moves along major power lines laid out in a loop around Lake Erie. Current moving on the Lake Erie Loop often switches direction unexpectedly, putting extra load on cities farther down the line.

500-megawatt surge

Last Thursday, utilities across the region could only watch on their control boards as the loop's east-moving electricity suddenly reversed direction and began moving westward in a disastrous 500-megawatt surge.

Although the precise cause is still unknown, officials believe the surge probably was an automatic response to a sudden drop in power somewhere on the western part of the loop.

"This was a big swing back and forth," said Gent of the NERC.

"My job is to see that this doesn't happen, and you can say that I failed in my job. That's why I am upset."

One proposed remedy for the loop's persistent problems was the Lake Erie Link, a 975-megawatt electric line that would run beneath Lake Erie.