Massive blackout points to power struggle

Pedestrian Raj Dhriaj takes matters into his own hands as he takes on the role of traffic cop at a downtown Toronto intersection on Thursday. Traffic, subways, elevators and most downtown buildings shut down following a widespread power outage in Ontario and parts of the US. PHOTO: AP

The vulnerability of the North American electric system was highlighted on Thursday as millions in North America lost their power on one of the hottest afternoons of the summer.

Industry officials have long warned that the North American power transmission system, which saw its greatest expansion in the years following World War Two, is groaning under the weight of the heavy loads it carries today.

"We're a superpower with a third-world grid. We need a new grid," New Mexico Governor and former Energy Secretary Bill Richardson told the CNN television network. "The problem is that nobody is building enough transmission capacity."

According to the Electric Power Research Institute in Palo Alto, California, US power demand has surged 30 percent in the last decade, while transmission capacity grew a mere 15 percent.

And during muggy weather like the kind blanketing the Northeast on Thursday, air conditioning accounts for a hefty 30 percent of all power flowing over the lines, severely taxing an already overworked transmission network.

It was the biggest blackout in North American history, according to US power grid operators. It eclipsed the 1965 blackout in the US and Canada that affected about 30 million people.

It spread in a matter of seconds, tripping circuit breakers from the Great Lakes to New England to protect costly electrical equipment from a sudden voltage jolt.

The blackout was reminiscent of the infamous 1965 outage, triggered by a lightning strike on a high-voltage line running from Canada to New York, stranding about 30 million people without electricity along the populous New York-New England corridor.

The 1965 outage shocked the nation and gave birth to the North American Electric Reliability Council, a New Jersey-based industry group that works to ensure reliable service on the 800,000 km network of high-voltage lines that serve 270 million US and 31 million Canadian customers.

Despite the council's efforts, and hard work by utilities to maintain the system, it teeters on days when too many megawatts are crowded onto too few lines. It is constantly at the mercy of severe weather.

"Each time we have to learn more about the transmission system and we have the opportunities to take steps to prevent a reoccurrence," said Terry Winter, president and CEO of the California Independent System Operator, which manages the state's grid.

Winter said the nation's electric grid urgently needs to be upgraded. But efforts to do so typically face fierce opposition in communities seeking to keep transmission towers and cables out of their neighborhoods.

Efforts to build up the grid have also been stalled by a lack of incentive to invest in the tightly regulated power transmission business.

Asian and Australian electricity companies are unlikely to face the kind of widespread blackout that hit the northeastern power grid in the US and Canada on Thursday, according to power company representatives.

"Asian power interconnections are relatively limited, and the ones that are there can be readily detached," an Asian electricity analyst told reporters.

"If something went haywire in Guangdong, the Hong Kong utilities could close the connection to prevent it."