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Released: 12 September, 2003

Joint Canada-U.S. Task Force Releases Power Outage Sequence of Events

OTTAWA and WASHINGTON — The Joint Canada–U.S. Power Outage Task Force investigating the August 14 blackout released a timeline of events today that will be instrumental in determining the causes of the widespread outage.

“ We have done a preliminary examination of the data,” said Herb Dhaliwal, Canada’s Minister of Natural Resources, Co-Chair of the Canada–U.S. Task Force. “This sequence of events is only a first step in the process of uncovering what happened on August 14. To complete its work, the Task Force will continue to work with all the parties involved to further analyze the data, and come to an understanding of why this happened.”

“ Dozens of expert investigators from both countries have been working diligently,” U.S. Secretary of Energy Spencer Abraham said. “They have interviewed utility and control-centre personnel, examined vast amounts of computer data and sifted through thousands of documents to put this timeline together. But we must now arrange and analyze even larger amounts of additional information to lead us to the specific causes.

“ While we are making good progress, this investigation is far from complete. The Task Force and its Working Groups and investigation teams have much work ahead of them,” Abraham said.

The timeline released today outlines significant physical and electrical events that occurred in a narrow window of time, before and during the cascade that led to the blackout of August 14, 2003. This timeline reviews events beginning at approximately 12:00 p.m. on that day, to provide a “picture” of the sequence of events and how the grid situation evolved over the afternoon. It focuses chiefly on events that occurred on major transmission facilities (230 kilovolts and greater) and at large power plants.

Input to the sequence of events came from the North American Electric Reliability Council (NERC), Independent System Operators, utility companies and regulatory agencies from both countries.

This outline does not attempt to present or explain the linkages between the sequences of events that are described. Determining those linkages will require additional intensive analysis over the weeks to come. In the coming weeks, our experts will continue to analyze data from the following:

• the thousands of transmission line events that occurred on the 138-kV system and on lower voltage lines over the several hours before and during the grid’s collapse;
• the hundreds of events related to power plant interactions with the grid during this period;
• the conditions and operations on the grid before 12:00 p.m. Many things happened well before 12:00 p.m. — including reactive power and voltage problems and flow patterns across several states — that may be relevant in a causal sense to the blackout; and
• any actions taken, or not taken, by system operators prior to or during the outage.

The Canada–U.S. Power Outage Task Force investigation is looking at all of the above factors and more in order to refine these data and dig deeper into what happened and why.

This timeline is not intended to indicate and should not be assumed to explain why the blackout happened, only to provide an early picture of what happened. It is not intended to indicate, and should not be assumed to assign, fault or culpability for the blackout. Determining the specific causes of these failures requires a thorough and professional investigation, which the bi-national investigative team has undertaken. The above concerns and explanations will be addressed in future reports prepared by the investigative team and issued by the Joint Canada–U.S. Task Force.

The Joint Canada–U.S. Task Force was appointed by Prime Minister Jean Chrétien and President George W. Bush to identify the causes of the recent power outage that affected North America, and to seek solutions to help prevent future outages.

For more information, media may contact:

The sequence of events is available on the Web sites of Natural Resources Canada (nrcan.gc.ca); U.S. Department of Energy (www.doe.gov); the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (www.ferc.gov) and the North American Electric Reliability Council (www.nerc.com).

Related news releases and backgrounders are available at nrcan.gc.ca/media and www.doe.gov.

August 14, 2003 Outage
Sequence of Events
U.S./Canada Power Outage Task Force

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