ICF International Releases Issue Paper on the Cascading Blackout:
Why Wasn't the Power Outage Contained?
WASHINGTON, DC, August 19, 2003 - ICF International released
an issue paper titled Cascading Blackout: Why Wasn't
the Power Outage Contained? This paper outlines the
competitive pressures on existing transmission grid operations.
The sometimes conflicting goals of providing reliability,
moderating power prices, deferring transmission investments,
and avoiding the economic liabilities associated with
third-party power transactions can cause transmission
operators to take greater risks with the grid than they
have in the past.
ICF International Releases Issue Paper on U.S. Northeastern Blackout—Recommends
Actions to Prevent Future Problems
FAIRFAX, VA, August 15, 2003 - ICF International has released
an issue paper entitled Power Crisis: The Omission
of Transmission addressing yesterday's power outage.
This paper outlines some of the causes leading to the
problem and offers informed recommendations for future
actions. While the specific cause of the outage is still
being determined, the signs of substantial deterioration
in the power grid have been building for years.
Interview
with ICF International Energy Expert Regarding Major Northeast
U.S. and Canadian Power Outages on August 14, 2003
August 15, 2003 - Watch the CNBC Wake Up Call
television interview with Judah Rose, Managing Director
of ICF International's power and transmission practice,
regarding the sudden disruptions in the power grid and
why measures taken to isolate power grids failed. ICF International warned the U.S. Federal Energy Regulatory
Commission (FERC) and industry leaders of the possibility
of such a wide-scale failure earlier this year and forecast
a 1 in 4 chance of losing power in a major urban area. Note:
To launch the interview, you will need the latest version
of Windows
Media Player.
Special Reports, Publications, & Fact Sheets
Special Reports on the Electricity
Blackouts in the U.S. and Europe
The
European Transmission Conundrum—More Outages Suffered
and More Investment Required
October 6, 2003 - By Simon Allen of ICF International.
The summer of 2003 will be remembered for record-high
temperatures in Europe, coupled with electricity outages
across the Continent—most notably in Italy, Denmark,
Sweden, and London. Although the factors vary, the common
theme is that Europe’s electricity transmission infrastructure
cannot support the workings of an internal electricity
market. For transmission to play its part in a fully liberalised
market, a significant expansion and rationalisation of
the European electricity transmission network are required.
Capital investment also is required to increase interconnector
capacity and reduce congestion.
Transmission
Grid Frailty? Blackout Potential Not Limited to the Northeast
Quadrant
August 22, 2003 - The result of the recent massive power
outage in the United States and Canada was more than just
a loss of electricity. There is also a tremendous loss
of confidence in the grid. Customers and regulators are
asking questions such as: Could it happen again? If so,
where and how severe could it be? This issue paper concludes
that the Northeast electric transmission system is not
alone in its weakness and recommendes measures to strengthen
it.
Cascading
Blackout: Why Wasn't the Power Outage Contained?
August 19, 2003 - This paper outlines the competitive
pressures on existing transmission grid operations. The
sometimes conflicting goals of providing reliability,
moderating power prices, deferring transmission investments,
and avoiding the economic liabilities associated with
third-party power transactions can cause transmission
operators to take greater risks with the grid than they
have in the past. This paper explains why the blackout
was able to cascade throughout the northeastern United
States and portions of Canada, and not contained locally?
Lastly, Phil Mihlmester of ICF International goes one step
further with recommendations for action to prevent future
cascading blackout occurrences.
The
Economic Cost of the Blackout
August 21, 2003 - The recent power blackout has
revived the discussion on the need to upgrade the transmission
infrastructure. While that debate has its own merit, a
related and potentially scaier questions that needs to
be addressed is the vulnerability of our electrical grid
to terrorist attacks. ICF International recently raised similar
concerns in a hypothetical scenario of a terrorist
attack on the transmission grid in California. In
this issue paper, we use some of the insights gained from
the California simulation to measure the economic costs
of the recent blackout and reiterate some of the lessons
learned from the exercise.
Power
Crisis: The Omission of Transmission
August 15, 2003 - The recent massive power outage
in North America, affecting 50 million people in seven
states in the United States and Canada, stems from the
way in which the transmission system has been planned
and developed over the past 20-30 years. While the specific
cause of the outage is still being determined, the signs
of substantial deterioration in the power grid have been
building for years. Elliot Roseman of ICF International explores
the root causes of the problem.
Publications
Are
We Better Off?
Written by by Elliot Roseman of ICF International and published in World-Generation,
September/October 2004. This article assesses the pluses and minuses of the
actions taken to improve the reliability of the power grid one year after the
major August 2003 blackout that affected more than 50 million people in the
Midwest and Northeastern parts of the United States and Canada. In specific,
the article identifies more than a dozen areas of both positive action and
not-so-positive inaction to address the question of whether we are better off
now than we were on August 13, 2003. The answer is decidedly mixed to date.
The article provides a number of recommendations (including more joint state
consideration of transmission lines, the creation of more stand-alone transmission
entities, the incorporation of "value of lost load" into the assessment
of transmission additions, etc.) for how to improve where we stand.
The
Blackout of 2003—Viewpoints from ICF International
Published in ICF International's Perspectives, a quarterly
report that provides executive briefs on key insights
and perspectives, Fall 2003.
Is
the United States Really Prepared for an Attack on the
Critical Infrastructure? Are Public & Private Sectors
Coordinated?
August 25, 2003 - Over the past 15 to 20 years, the Emergency
Response Community in the United States has concentrated
its planning, training, and exercise efforts on addressing
probable threats. Coastal states and communities naturally
focused their attention on addressing hurricanes and flooding.
States with active earthquake faults prepared accordingly.
The experiences during these events taught the public
and private sectors many lessons—one of the most
important is that close relationships between the sectors
is good business. This position paper explores how partnerships
can be developed through critical infrastructure failure
scenarios before disaster strikes. Visit our Homeland
Security section for more information on our comprehensive
services and experience addressing homeland security challenges.
In
Search of Electricity Transmission Capitalists: "Capex
Conundrum" Facing Transmission Investments
Published in ICF International's Perspectives,
a quarterly report that provides executive briefs on key
insights and perspectives, Summer 2003. Written by Elliot
Roseman and Paul De Martini; full
story published in Public Utilities Fortnightly,
April 1, 2003. This article examines the future of transmission
financing and the surprising new sources of private funding
for transmission expansion. With the need for transmission
upgrades and expansions to support increasing transactions,
utilities will be seeking nontraditional sources of capital
with interests in transmission. The "capex"
(capital expenditure) gap can be filled by investors seeking
to fund projects with long economic life, stability, and
regulated returns, such as electricity infrastructure
projects. Roseman and De Martini outline the likely types
of investors and what they stand to gain from partnering
with utilities.
How
Sausage Gets Made at FERC...
Written by Elliot Roseman and published in World-Generation
in May/June 2003, this article addresses the impacts of
the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission's (FERC) recently-issued
"White Paper" modifying its proposal for Standard
Market Design (SMD) in electric power markets. First,
SMD has become the Wholesale Power Market Platform (WPMP).
More substantively, the article indicates that the FERC
has turned responsibility back to the states for resource
planning, and offers flexibility (not "standard"
approaches) for congestion management and tariffs, while
holding the line on regional market monitoring and independent
Regional Transmission Organization (RTO) boards, among
other items. The bottom line is that FERC has retreated
to a position that it hopes will win approval from recalcitrant
state regulators and federal legislators. However, whether
this compromises too much, whether it achieves the goals
of facilitating markets and appropriate investments, and
whether it is, in effect, "whatever people may propose,
remains to be seen.
Doing
One's Bidding: The SMART Way
Published in ICF International's Perspectives,
a quarterly report that provides executive briefs on key
insights and perspectives, Winter 2003. The full article,
"Doing One's Bidding: The "SMART" Way—FERC's
SMD Proposal Brings Back Competitive Bidding With a Vengeance,"
was written by Elliot Roseman and published in Public
Utilities Fortnightly, December 2002. This article
examines how fundamental changes in the market plus the
Federal Energy Regulatory Commission's Standard Market
Design (SMD) and Regional Transmission Organization (RTO)
initiatives will soon bring back competitive bidding with
a vengeance. Competitive bidding will not be the same
as it was in the previous "Golden Age" of bidding
from 1984-95, since the demands of regional planning and
SMD will require new approaches and criteria. Learn Roseman's
take on the new bidding approach, which he refers to as
the "Standard Market Allocation of Resources Technique"
(SMART). To be "SMART," bidding will have several
features: it will evaluate the tradeoffs between all resources,
including transmission, generation, and load management;
it may be conducted by new entities (e.g., RTOs); it will
need to be time efficient; and it will require new evaluation
criteria—and perhaps standard criteria—to streamline
the evaluation process.
Measuring
the Economic Costs of Terrorist Attacks
Published in ICF International's Perspectives,
a quarterly report that provides executive briefs on key
insights and perspectives, Summer 2003. ICF International
and Regional Economic Models, Inc., (REMI) have been exploring
methodologies and models to better understand the near-
and long-term economic effects of terrorist attacks. This
report, which uses data collected from two hypothetical
scenarios, highlights the temporal and cross-sector complexities
of modeling such damages, because the ripple effects across
sectors and geographies may be significant but difficult
to predict. The analysis estimates the direct costs related
to an attack on the California electricity transmission
grid and a deliberate spreading of Foot and Mouth disease
in an agricultural state. Visit our Homeland
Security section for more information on our comprehensive
services and experience addressing homeland security challenges
Terrorist
Threats Against Energy Transmission Systems
Published in ICF International's Perspectives, a quarterly
report that provides executive briefs on key insights
and perspectives, Winter 2003.
A
Successful Future Forecast for Competitive Power Markets
Published in ICF International's Consult,
a quarterly report that provides executive briefs on key
insights and perspectives, Spring 2002.
A
Tale of Two Transmission Systems
This is a revised version of a piece that appeared in
Elsevier Science's Electricity
Journal.
Full article published in Electricity Journal,
April 2002, by Elliot Roseman. ©2002 Elsevier Science.
All rights reserved. Used by permission. This article
summarizes the five key objectives identified by ICF International
to streamline the wholesale power industry and lower long-term
energy costs through the creation of Regional Transmission
Organizations (RTOs), clearer regulations, ownership consolidation,
short-term investments, and new technologies.
Fact Sheets
Selected Projects
- Vulnerability Assessment of Disruptions to Power
Grid
For a Midwestern state, ICF International conducted a vulnerability
assessment to determine the susceptibility of the state's
energy infrastructure to a terrorism attack that could
result in power grid disruptions. This assessment laid
the foundation for an exercise requiring a unique public/private-sector
approach to education and partnered problem-solving.
