Status of the Joint US-Canada Task Force
Investigating the August 14, 2003, Northeast Electric Power Outage

Testimony of
Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham
to the
House Energy and Commerce Committee
on
September 3, 2003

Good morning, and thank you for inviting me to report on the status of the joint U.S.-Canada Task Force investigating the August 14^th power blackout.

As you know, President Bush and Canadian Prime Minister Chretien formed this Task Force just a few hours after the lights went out across large parts of the United States and Canada.

I am co-chairing this Task Force along with my Canadian counterpart, the Minister of Natural Resources, Herb Dahliwal.

Our job is to find out why such a widespread power outage occurred and to recommend measures to help keep something like this from happening again.

To ensure a complete and cooperative investigation, the Task Force is working closely with the governors of the states involved, as well as with the affected Canadian province of Ontario.

We also are working with all the major entities involved with the operation our electrical transmission infrastructure, including the Independent System Operators that manage the flow of power over our transmission systems, and all the utility companies whose customers were affected by the blackout.

Today, less than three weeks after the blackout, we are making good progress in putting together the complex sequence of events surrounding this incident.  While we are encouraged by that progress, there?s much work yet to do before we can determine exactly what caused the blackout and why it spread. 

As we?ve all heard, there are a number of theories already circulating as to what might have happened and who might be responsible.  All of that ? no matter what the source ? is only speculation at this point.

Determining the exact causes of this blackout is far too complex a task for anyone to know all the answers at this stage.

We are gathering information on about 10,000 individual events that happened across thousands of square miles in the space of about nine seconds. 

All that information has to be collected, compiled, sequenced, and analyzed before any credible conclusions can be drawn.

To put the complexity of this inquiry into perspective, it?s important to understand the nature of the electric transmission grid. 

Our nation?s grid system consists of thousands of power plants, tens of thousands of sub-stations, switching facilities and other specialized equipment, hundreds of control centers and about 260,000 miles of power lines stretching all across the country. 

The U.S. portion of the area affected by the blackout included 34,000 miles of transmission lines and about 290 power generation units, a substantial segment of the national total. 

This intricate network delivers electric power to virtually every home and business in America. Electricity ? because it cannot be stored ? must be produced almost the instant it is used.

And it must be moved efficiently from where it?s produced to where it?s being consumed ? traveling over this highly technical grid system at the speed of light.

Keeping this complicated web of interconnected wires and power plants and control facilities operating is a miracle of modern engineering that happens 24 hours a day all year round.

It is without a doubt the most complex and elaborate piece of infrastructure that we have.  And it?s also the most important.  Because without electric power, there is no U.S. economy. 

When the lights go out, modern life as we know it grinds to a sudden halt.  Transportation is interrupted, communications fail, water systems shut down, factory work is disrupted, food spoils, businesses lose money, and people are inconvenienced and even endangered. 

This is why it?s so important that our Task Force conduct a thorough and complete investigation of what happened on August 14^th. 

It?s why we have so many experts from so many sectors of government and industry involved in our search for answers. 

The U.S. members of the Task Force are Tom Ridge, Secretary of Homeland Security, Pat Wood, Chairman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, and Nils  Diaz, Chairman of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. 

The Canadian members are Deputy Prime Minister John Manley, Kenneth Vollman, Chairman of the National Energy Board, and Linda J. Keen, President and CEO of the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission.

The Task Force is organized into three Working Groups that are focusing on critical areas of the investigation. 

Our Electric System Working Group, led by experts at the Energy Department and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, along with Natural Resources Canada, is focusing on the transmission infrastructure and its workings and management. 

The Nuclear Power Working Group, managed with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission, is looking at how nuclear plants in the affected area performed during the outage.

And our Security Working Group, managed with the Department of Homeland Security and the Canadian government?s Privy Council Office, is looking at all the security aspects of the incident, including cyber security.

Technical support for the Electric System Working Group is being provided by the Energy Department?s Consortium for Electric Reliability Technology Solutions ? a group of experts from our national laboratories, and a number of universities, with broad experience in transmission and power delivery issues.

This team, which has investigated a number of major power outages including the 1999 blackouts in the West, includes some of the world?s foremost experts in transmission reliability issues, grid configuration, transmission engineering, wholesale power markets, outage recovery and power system dynamics. 

In addition, we have recruited transmission experts from the Bonneville Power Administration to help in the investigation.  These experts led the team that examined the 1996 blackouts in the West.

Each Working Group also consists of technical, management and engineering experts appointed by the governors of each U.S.state affected by the blackout and the Province of Ontario, in addition to the governmental agencies involved in the investigation.

Once we?re able to determine what happened, why, and how, we will enter Phase 2 of the Task Force?s assignment, which is formulating recommendations to address the specific problems we uncover.   

Any recommendations the joint U.S.-Canada Task Force makes will likely focus on technical standards for operation and maintenance of the grid, and on the management of the grid, in order to more quickly correct the problems we identify.

We believe we have put together a superlative investigative team.  We are pleased at the level of cooperation we are receiving from state and provincial governments, regulatory agencies, utility companies and industry groups as we work together in this bi-national effort. 

We are determined to complete this inquiry in a timely manner.  We hope to have conclusions and recommendations in a matter of weeks ? not months.  But we will not compromise quality for speed. 

We want answers quickly, but we want to make sure they?re the right answers.

The American and the Canadian people want and deserve answers about what happened to our power system on August 14^th. 

We on the Task Force are aware of the importance and urgency of our assignment, and we know the vital role that our findings will play in maintaining the energy security of both our countries.

That is why we are dedicating so many resources to this investigation, and it is why we will not engage in any sort of preliminary theories or speculation about what might have happened. 

We will focus only on the facts, we will follow the facts wherever they lead us, and we will not draw any conclusions until all the facts are in.   

Thank you for inviting me to appear before you today on this important matter, and I would be pleased to answer any questions.