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FERC-NERC Staff Report on September 2011 Blackout Calls for Improved Planning
May 3, 2012
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Staff of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) and North American Electric Reliability Corporation
(NERC) earlier this week said the September 2011 blackout that left 2.7 million customers in Southern California, Arizona
and Baja California without power stemmed from operating in an unsecured state due to inadequate planning
and a lack of observability and awareness of system operating conditions on the day of the event.
A joint FERC-NERC staff report on the Sept. 8 blackout, issued after a nearly eight-month inquiry,
recommends that transmission operators and balancing authorities improve how they plan for operations to
account for the status of facilities outside their individual systems, the effect of external operations on their own
systems and how operation of transmission facilities under 100 kiloVolts (kV) can affect the reliability of the bulk
power system.
"This report highlights the growing need for more coordination of grid operations in the West," FERC Chairman
Jon Wellinghoff said. "Implementing the recommendations in this report will assist in enhancing the planning and
system awareness measures that are necessary to operate an efficiently integrated bulk power system, and
reduce costs to consumers from these types of outages that could continue if operational efficiencies are not
improved."
"This event underscores how complex and interdependent our North American electric systems are and the
critical importance of information sharing, communications, system studies and coordinated operations among all
interconnected systems," said Gerry Cauley, president and CEO of NERC. "Transmission operators, balancing
authorities and reliability coordinators must work together to effectively manage this complex system. I would
like to recognize the effective collaboration between FERC and NERC staff during the course of this inquiry."
"Today's report provides a series of lessons learned from the September 2011 event that is available to industry
for use as a tool to improve their operations and planning of the grid," FERC Commissioner John Norris said. "My
hope is that the findings and recommendations in this report will be utilized to the broadest extent possible in
order to enhance the reliability and efficiency of the Bulk Power System."
The inquiry was initiated to determine how the blackout occurred and to make recommendations to avoid similar
situations in the future. FERC and NERC staff used on-site interviews, sophisticated computer modeling, event
simulations and system analysis to make the determination that entities responsible for planning, operating and
monitoring the bulk power system were not prepared to ensure reliable operation or prevent cascading outages
in the event of a single contingency: the loss of Arizona Public Service's (APS) Hassayampa-North Gila 500 kV
transmission line.
That line loss itself did not cause the blackout, but it did initiate a sequence of events that led to the blackout,
exposing grid operators' lack of adequate real-time situational awareness of conditions throughout the Western
Interconnection. More effective review and use of information would have helped operators avoid the cascading
blackout. For example, had operators reviewed and heeded their Real Time Contingency Analysis results prior to
the loss of the APS line, they could have taken corrective actions, such as dispatching additional generation or
shedding load, to prevent a cascading outage.
The report recommends that bulk power system operators improve their situational awareness through improved
communication, data sharing and the use of real-time tools. It also recommends that:
- System planners and operators recognize, study and incorporate the effects of sub-100 kV systems on
bulk power system reliability into their planning and operations
- The Western Electricity Coordinating Council (WECC) recognize and study Interconnection reliability
operating limits
- Transmission Owners and Operators review overload protection relay settings to give them more time to
mitigate overloads
- Transmission Operators and WECC study the effects of special protection systems, remedial action
schemes and safety nets, such as the one that disconnected San Diego from the high voltage lines south
of the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station, to understand how they affect reliability and to ensure
that they do not have unintended or undesirable effects
- System operators plan and account for phase angle differences in order to be able to re-energize
transmission lines following outages.
Source: FERC, NERC
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