November 19, 2003

FirstEnergy Blamed for Blackout in Report

from Yahoo/AP bq. The nation's worst blackout should have been contained by operators at Ohio's FirstEnergy Corp., a three-month U.S. and Canadian investigation concluded on Wednesday. The investigators also faulted Midwest regional monitors. bq. In their report, they said the company's operators were inadequately trained and computer problems in its Akron, Ohio, control room kept them from recognizing immediately that problems on three lines were causing the Midwest grid to become unstable. More in the article: bq. It was the worst blackout in the nation's history, costing at least $6 billion in economic and other losses. bq. The task force said there was no indication of tampering and that computer viruses weren't involved. Investigators early on dismissed the notion of a terrorism link. bq. But the report found that FirstEnergy, the nation's fourth largest utility holding company with 4.3 million customers, had violated four industry grid reliability standards. It also said that MISO, the regional grid monitor, had violated several rules in connection with the blackout. Posted by DaveH at November 19, 2003 11:13 PM