This week marks the tenth anniversary of the Great Northeast Blackout.A massive transmission line failure in Ohio plunged six states and part of Canada into darkness. A joint U.S./Canadian task force blamed Akron-based FirstEnergy for the blackout, and company spokesperson Mark Durbin says improvements have since been made to the power grid.
Durbin says those contingencies include "capacitor banks" at substations to keep power flowing, as well as a new transmission center in Akron, where engineers can track the grid.
durbin-2_systems_08.mp3
Regulators of the U.S. electric grid have imposed millions of dollars in civil penalties for reliability violations since new rules following the blackout made such fines possible.