North American Electric Reliability Council Warned of Potential Blackout

WASHINGTON, DC -- - The organization responsible for preventing massive blackouts in the United States has been warning for months that the nation's system of voluntary compliance with electricity standards is inadequate and could result in just the kind of widescale power outage that occurred yesterday.

Indeed, in a document written just days ago, the North American Electric Reliability Council said there has been "a marked increase in the number and seriousness of violations" of guidelines governing the nation's power companies and that "the very stability of the electric system upon which our economy and our society depends" has "no effective recourse today to correct such behavior." The document goes on to warn that "the longer it takes to establish this new system, the greater becomes the risk and magnitude of grid failures."

The organization has been pushing legislation in Congress to have the federal government require more cooperation between power companies. Currently, companies are asked to share power in ways that ensure that when a failure occurs in one place it can be covered by another. While stronger legislation has passed the House and Senate, the bills have not yet been reconciled and made into law by the full Congress. And, while the legislation calls on power companies to find new ways to improve reliability, it is not clear whether it would require industry-wide mandatory standards.

Last night, a spokesman for the Reliability Council said she had no way of knowing whether yesterday's power failure in the Northeast was caused by the problems cited in the council's report. But speaking generally, the spokeswoman, Ellen Vancko, said, "Problems could occur because the grid is interconnected and everybody's actions affect the operations of others. If everybody doesn't follow the same rules, the potential for broad disruptions are there."

But given the organization's dire warnings and the blackout that occurred yesterday, it seems certain that much more attention will now be paid to the allegation that many violations have occurred in the past.

At the heart of the problem is that while the interconnected power system relies on cooperation among the electric companies, the federal government does not require such cooperation in all cases. The North American Electric Reliability Council is a nonprofit voluntary organization, formed after the infamous 1965 blackout in New York City, that is responsible for assuring similar power outages do not occur. But the council has been concerned in recent years that its reliance on voluntary cooperation is no longer producing the kind of compliance necessary to avoid blackouts.

In theory, the electric companies are supposed to follow voluntary measures in which they work together to ensure that the power supply is shared and uninterrupted. But in testimony before Congress earlier this year, the Reliability Council's president, Michael R. Gent, said that the government's rules "are not now enforceable."

Part of the debate over the bill centers on the question of whether the deregulation of the electric industry has led to price gouging and blackouts. After blackouts in California several years ago, some critics said that the government should impose stronger regulation. Bill Brier, a spokesman for the industry's Edison Electric Institute, said his organization still favors deregulation but does support legislation that impose mandatory rules on power companies to fulfill their obligations on the energy grid.

Representative Edward Markey, a Malden Democrat who sits on the committee that held hearings on the legislation, said in a statement last night that the blackouts would cause a reexamination of the nation's oversight of power companies.