It looks like almost everyone has a slant on how to avoid blackouts. Of course, there is money to be made in any crisis. Last year, a mixed bag of vendors, consultants and organizations thought T&D World magazine would be the perfect venue to pitch their products and services. I kept a file of all the offers I received after the Aug. 14, 2003, blackout. Now that the U.S.-Canada Power System Outage Task Force has released its final report, I thought it would be a good time to review these files.

Here is just a taste of the material that swamped my in-basket:

• An announcement that the blackout was captured in real time by monitors located in homes and businesses.

• A criticism aimed at utilities for not funding upgrades (received from a disgruntled consulting engineer needing work).

• An offer to interview an energy consultant offering a negawatt solution.

• A market research firm offering a report on distributed generation technologies and suppliers.

• A power-quality vendor offering tips for protecting data centers.

• A software company offering an “incident management” tutorial.

• A flywheel storage company press release stating, “We can say good-bye to blackouts forever.”

The blackout report, which was released on March 31, was seven and a half months in the making. You can download the document at https://reports.energy.gov/.

The report, excluding appendices, is 140 pages. To be honest, this document contains more information than I'm able to easily digest. To save you a little effort, I lifted a few of the details of early events.

At 12:15 Eastern Daylight Time (EDT) on Aug. 14, 2003, inaccurate input data rendered the Midwest Independent System Operator (MISO) state estimator ineffective. At 13:31 EDT, FirstEnergy's (FE) Eastlake 5 generation unit tripped and shut down automatically. Shortly after 14:14 EDT, the alarm and logging system in FE's control room failed and was not restored until after the blackout. After 15:05 EDT, some of FE's 345-kV transmission lines began tripping out because the lines were contacting overgrown trees within the lines' right-of-way areas. After 15:46 EDT, the loss of some of FE's key 345-kV lines in northern Ohio caused its underlying network of 138-kV lines to begin to fail, leading in turn to the loss of FE's Sammis-Star 345-kV line at 16:06 EDT. This event triggered the uncontrollable 345-kV cascade portion of the blackout sequence.

The report does an admirable job of reviewing the causes, looking at possible solutions and making specific recommendations. I've highlighted a few of the recommendations that will impact those of us charged with building, operating and maintaining the grid.

• Make reliability standards mandatory and enforceable, with penalties for noncompliance.

• Clarify prudent expenditures and investments.

• Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) should not approve the operation of new RTOs or ISOs until they have met minimum functional requirements.

• Shield operators who initiate load shedding pursuant to approved guidelines from liability or retaliation.

• Establish enforceable standards for maintenance of electrical clearances in right-of-way areas.

• Strengthen the North American Electric Reliability Council (NERC) Compliance Enforcement Program.

• Improve near-term and long-term training and certification requirements for operators, reliability coordinators, and operator support staff.

• Establish clear definitions for normal, alert and emergency operational system conditions.

• Evaluate and adopt better real-time tools for operators and reliability coordinators.

• Strengthen reactive power and voltage control practices in all NERC regions.

• Develop enforceable standards for transmission line ratings.

• Require use of time-synchronized data recorders.

This blackout was so damaging to our lives and economy that governmental bodies and elected officials are actually taking action. Expect to see money flowing into infrastructure as utilities work to stabilize and rebuild the power grid. We have the technologies in place or in development to assure a stable, robust and reliable grid. It looks like we have finally found the political will to see the process through.