Today’s LiveWire Spotlight is on the conclusions reached by the joint NERC/FERC Task Force investigating the loss of electrical and natural gas service across multiple U.S. states during the Midwest ice storm last February. The report shows that false indications from frozen sensing lines led to 89 automatic and manual generator trips – the most common cause of the outages. Freeze-ups in support components such as water lines and valves were also a major factor – and icing on wind turbine blades impaired normal rotation. We initially covered this when the investigation first began, and that article is available here.
In their joint press release on August 6, 2011, NERC and FERC announced that they would engage industry to modify Standards addressing winter storm planning and operations. No date has been set for the initiation of this effort.
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