Blackout serves as jolt for power companies' plans
By ROBERT TRIGAUX
Published August 15, 2003
To anyone familiar with the creaking electricity grid that binds North America together and keeps the lights on, Thursday's record blackout was no real surprise.
It was more a question of when. Not if. And it's a nasty predicament Florida's power industry should study well. And avoid.
The overtaxed and undermanned New York power system, with its upstate ties to a Canadian system easily strained by summer heat, has been ground zero for blackouts for as long as I can recall.
It's hardly a coincidence that the massive power failure of Nov. 9, 1965 - which became known as "the Great Blackout" - covered 80,000 square miles in seven states and two Canadian provinces, affecting 30-million people. Living in powerless Connecticut at age 10, I spent that chilly night in the dark in front of the living room fireplace.
On a sultry July 13, 1977, and on an even hotter July 6, 1999, millions of people in New York went without power for a day. Even in early 2001, when California suffered rolling blackouts, industry experts warned the real, long-term power problem remained across the country in the grid connecting upstate New York and Canada.
There's a pattern here. Only a month ago, Canadian power managers debated whether Ontario could handle a heat wave. Ontario does not produce enough power on its own to meet demand that surges when temperatures soar in the summer. When demand exceeds supply, Ontario starts gulping electricity (for a fee) from neighboring provinces, New York and other nearby states over narrow and outmoded transmission lines.
Thursday's blackouts affected an area with roughly 50-million people.
Yes, the New York region's neglected infrastructure, dense population and a nasty habit of turning on millions of air conditioners at once in summer heatwaves is a perennial weak point in the national power grid.
That does not mean Florida is immune to a large-scale power failure. Per person, Floridians use more electricity each year than residents of any other state. Florida's rapid growth, its peninsular shape, and its few and often overburdened power lines that share power with neighboring Georgia make Florida a good - and bad - example of electricity management.
Good, because Florida's shape encourages it to build enough power plants within its borders that insulates the state from Southeast power problems. Bad, because Florida's transmission ties to other states are few, at best, and could not deliver a major infusion of electricity in the event of a state power emergency.
So far, Florida power companies have stayed ahead of the rising demand for electricity. That race has grown tricky lately because the state has dabbled with wholesale power deregulation. Florida half-heartedly invited out-of-state power companies to enter the state and propose new power plants.
In the post-Enron backlash against deregulation, many of those companies were financially hurt. Some did not pursue construction of the power plants they first proposed. In response, Florida's major utilities - Progress Energy, Florida Power & Light and Tampa Electric - are busy expanding their own power capacity.
After Thursday, they may want to check and re-check their forecasts of demand and supply.
One year after President Bush unveiled its Corporate Fraud Task Force to combat corruption, the administration says it has helped nab more than 250 white-collar crime convictions, deterred fraud in boardrooms and restored investor confidence. And a law called Sarbanes-Oxley, SOX for short, has toughened up corporate governance rules for all companies, whether they deserved it or not.
The feds sure seem proud of their crackdown. If only it had included the two biggest fish at Enron: former chairman Ken "Kenny Boy" Lay and former CEO Jeff Skilling. Neither have been charged, even though Enron's collapse has become a national icon for greed and a lack of accountability.
So far, 19 former Enron executives have been indicted, including Andrew Fastow, Enron's former chief financial officer. His aide, Michael Kopper, pleaded guilty last August.
Lay and Skilling maintain they knew nothing about the fraud at Enron.
Draw your own conclusions. These two "I know nothing" gents should at least face more questioning in a public arena.
Of course, the last time I suggested there was more to this tale, Skilling's high-priced lawyer, Bruce Hiler (a former associate director of the SEC's division of enforcement) called to chastise me for suggesting his client was less than squeaky-clean. This Enron saga is far from over.
