FirstEnergy Had Previous Outages Blamed on Outdated Equipment

[papau]

http://ap.tbo.com/ap/breaking/MGAHYJJVMJD.html
FirstEnergy Had Previous Outages Blamed on Outdated Equipment, Overgrown Trees By Jim Krane Associated Press Writer

<snip>In June, FirstEnergy was the subject of a Cleveland suburb's complaints for power outages blamed on outdated equipment and trees too close to power lines - some of the same problems cited in last week's massive outages.Now, some experts say the trigger for last Thursday's blackout may stem from FirstEnergy's borrowing a large amount of power from other Midwest utilities. The system may have collapsed when a FirstEnergy generating plant and several power transmission lines failed, snuffing lights from Detroit to Toronto to New York City, the experts said…. The practice of one utility siphoning away electricity from another to meet demands "could crash the system," Kraynak said. "It's possible if it's done with a big enough amount." <snip>

Not everyone was pleased with the Bush administration's decision to halt NERC's independent blackout investigation. Rep. John Dingell of Michigan, the ranking Democrat on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, complained that the Energy Department-led probe might be compromised by the Bush administration's support for electricity deregulation. Dingell said the investigation should consider whether deregulation in the industry created conditions for a blackout. "The public deserves nothing less than complete, parallel and independent investigations by both DOE and NERC," Dingell wrote to Abraham. There was no immediate reply from Abraham, who also declined to discuss causes when briefing Ohio officials Wednesday. <snip>

According to a complaint lodged in June with the Ohio Public Utilities Commission, a FirstEnergy subsidiary in the Cleveland suburb of Solon is being blamed for power outages in May and June that lasted for as long as seven hours. Solon filed the complaint against Cleveland Electric Illuminating Co. after FirstEnergy failed to halt the outages, which left hundreds of homes and businesses without power, said David Kovass, an attorney for Solon. Inspections pointed to the need to trim trees around transmission lines, Kovass said. "We heard reports of tree branches falling on the lines," Kovass said. "There were glitches in the system. They had surges and dimming. On Memorial Day weekend they had power outages that would last four to five hours at a time." FirstEnergy's tree-trimming in the area - every four years or so - always stirs ire of residents, company spokesman Schneider said. Inspections in the area also have pointed to the need to replace some of the utility's electrical equipment in Solon. "Nobody wants us to trim their trees but everyone wants reliable electric service. You have to balance those issues," Schneider said. In New Jersey, FirstEnergy is being sued by Dover Township, N.J., where 40,000 electric Jersey Central Power & Light customers lost power on the July 4th weekend. One blackout scenario investigators are pursuing is whether FirstEnergy may have been pulling power from stations south of Cleveland to meet its own needs. When that supply abruptly closed, the shock could have upset the equilibrium on FirstEnergy's grid, leading to voltage swings and failures of four of its power transmission lines - the opening events of the massive blackout. <snip>

Around 4 p.m., analysts said FirstEnergy's "borrowing" of power may have been halted. It's unclear whether the power would have been cut purposefully by a utility that couldn't meet its own needs, by an automatic switch, or by the failure of FirstEnergy's transmission lines. Either way, the shut-off appears to have destabilized the Akron utility. A huge power vacuum pulled in electricity from other utilities, overloading lines and tripping four of FirstEnergy's transmission lines, said Joseph Welch of International Transmission Co., owner of eastern Michigan's power grid. He said FirstEnergy had been getting imports from American Electric Power Co.'s power stations to the south. Investigators looking into the blackout also are checking into FirstEnergy's alarm system, which the company said was broken when transmission lines were tripping. <snip>

Davis-Besse, one of three FirstEnergy nuclear generators, sits on the shore of Lake Erie east of Toledo. The plant has been shuttered since February 2002 after workers found a hole in a cap covering the plant's reactor vessel.

[papau]

1. FirstEnergy CEO is big time Bush backer/fundraiser

Perhaps that is why the independent FERC investigation was killed by Bush?

Nah - that would be corruption - and our US Media would be reporting this new Bush corruption because they are not controlled by GOP RW Board members and editors - although do they seem to have acted that way for the last 3 years.

[zbdent]

2. Not long ago, they were caught trying to blame an outage on a mid-July

blizzard.

They spun it that it was an error on the data entry person's part.

[treepig]

3. there seems to be a fair number of similarly confused people

out there. oddly enough, mostly on the right-wing/fundamentalist side of things . . .