ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Wednesday, August 7, 1996 TAG: 9608070026
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: B8 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: GREG EDWARDS STAFF WRITER
MEMO: story ran with a different lead paragraph in the New River edition.
The U.S. Department of Energy wants a study of electric-service problems that may occur in the Mid-Atlantic region because of delays in building American Electric Power's proposed high-voltage power line.
The department wants the study completed by March 1. It will be done by electric-industry groups organized to protect the reliability of the nation's electric-power system.
A discussion of AEP's trouble in getting approval for its proposed 765,000-volt power line in Virginia and West Virginia - including the U.S. Forest Service's preliminary rejection of a route for the line across the Jefferson National Forest - was contained in an energy department report that was sent to President Clinton on Friday.
The main focus of the report, which was requested by Clinton, was the power outage on July 2 and 3 that disrupted electric service to 2 million customers in 14 Western states. A transmission line sagging into a tree triggered that outage with a short circuit that shut down power lines and power plants like a set of dominoes.
The report includes warnings from the electric utility industry that delays in the AEP power line could lead to something similar in the East - "a cascading failure of the transmission network" and "a major blackout" in the Mid-Atlantic region from West Virginia to the East Coast.
Ron Poff, AEP's power-line project manager, said he was pleased the energy department included an assessment of energy reliability in other regions in its Western outage report to Clinton. "DOE clearly is aware of problems that are developing in our area," Poff said.
But the energy department said its own assessment of the threat created by delays in the AEP line is that "for the near term ... any reliability risks are both small and manageable, but that they may increase over the next few years as demand [for electricity] in the Mid-Atlantic area grows."
In requesting a study of the line, the department said it wasn't taking a position on whether AEP's proposed line is the right size or on which route for the line would be the best from an environmental point of view. Its main concern, the department said, was to make sure debate over the line didn't harm reliability of power service.
The report says AEP's problems in getting a route approved for the line have pushed its construction back to 2002 or later. When AEP, then operating as Appalachian Power Co., first began trying to get regulatory approval for the 115-mile line from Wyoming County, W.Va., to Cloverdale in 1991, the company said power outages are a possibility by 1998 unless the line is built by then.
In a brief prepared for the energy department, the North American Electric Reliability Council said AEP's proposed line would substantially increase the ability to transmit power not only in Virginia and West Virginia, but also between the Midwest and East Coast. The council is the main organization for coordinating and promoting the reliability of North America's electric utilities.
The council notes that while the power line is needed primarily to provide reliable service to AEP's own customers, it also would play a role in the newly competitive power industry and particularly in wholesale movements of power by other utilities along AEP's transmission system. Until the line is built, "transmission constraints will impose limitations on the amount of electric power and energy that can be transmitted from the Midwest," the council said.
Opponents of the power line say the energy department report verifies what they've been saying all along. "It's being built to serve the East Coast and not us," said Jeff Janosko of Roanoke County.
Cliff Shaffer, a line opponent from Giles County, said an independent study of the need for the line would be welcomed, but he questioned the energy department asking the North American Reliability Council and smaller regional councils in the East, whose members are electric utilities, to conduct the study. An industry study would "not be very useful to us," he said.
LENGTH: Medium: 75 linesby CNB