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•1 �r„. <br />:1 .t <br /> . . _. <br />... <br /> � <br /> Poweri €,,, <br /> � -10 <br /> �;:►� <br /> By James R. Dukart - 7- 1%!j <br /> ll <br /> A perplexing and still.unresolved question; is whether .1411,11:•,r <br /> blackout could have been contained in Ohio,particularly'. ! :is. <br /> the right alarms would have been sounded on != ' :„ <br /> system. �i-®�•' '� <br /> k� <br /> fly '• <br /> T he size and scope of the 2003 blackout has and will contin <br /> ue to garner major media attention. Federal and state regu- . :11 <br /> lators have snapped to attention and will continue to probe t C 0 <br /> what went wrong, why, when and how. Congressional hearings /`d3/� <br /> will keep attention focused on the issue even as investigators plea , %i r`b'z <br /> for patience as they sort through an estimated 10,000 pages of B✓” `; ' ;:' <br /> -7,g 'i 1 1 s4 <br /> data relating to the events of the day. While the immediate aim oft <br /> the investigation is to find out what went wrong on August 14, ` <br /> moreover, a more important long-term result may be the shedding <br /> of light on problems the electric utility industry has faced for r- . <br /> decades. <br /> ...What a Long,Strange Trip It's Been <br /> A final determination of what actually happened on the after- <br /> N <br /> noon of August 14 will take some time, but early reports place the w; <br /> origin of the outage in northern Ohio, just south of Cleveland, ">" <br /> where a 680-megawatt coal generation plant owned and operated <br /> by FirstEnergy shut down that afternoon for still-unexplained rea- , • <br /> sons. Shortly thereafter,three transmission lines in and around the <br /> area started "tripping" out. Lines "trip" or shut down briefly for '' _ == " <br /> any of a number of reasons, usually related to ebbing voltage • "41 �r i : , <br /> caused by a power overload, a tree falling on a line or even a bird <br /> hitting the line with sufficient force. = t- <br /> What investigators really want to know, though, is how these <br /> transmission line outages in Ohio cascaded into a power blackout - <br /> that stretched from Toronto to New York City and left tens of mil- F <br /> lions of electric customers in the dark. What appears to have hap- <br /> pened is that within minutes—sometimes within seconds—succes- <br /> sive portions of the interconnected transmission grid of Ohio, . k <br /> • <br /> ' Michigan, Ontario and New York began shutting down, a <br />