Also, the article completely failed to mention the stunning loss in district court (a few days prior to the blackout) on the "New Source Review" issue. FirstEnergy is either going to have to shut down many of their older coal-fired plants, spend billions on upgrading them, pay huge fines, or all of the above.
This could well have been the reason for the bond downgrade, but wasn't even mentioned.
The only purpose of this self-serving article was to say "We told you so". But in the minds of many, poor research and inuendo seem to be adequate substitutes for facts and insight these days.
It was a pretty bad article. Jim's article was a bit more recent and carries more accuracy. It should be noted that the scuttlebut around the industry is that MISO was a little chincy on pay and thus didn't get a lot of seasoned transmission dispatchers/operators on their staff. So, even if they had the authority, they probably wouldn't have reacted to the problem. Plus, they might not have been informed enough to recognize the impending problems that losing lines into Cleveland represented. From my experience, even Firstenergy didn't seem to recognize that.
There's going to be a good number of parties implicated in the investigation, I suspect. Hopefully, the solution will be short on politics and long on engineering.
Also, the article completely failed to mention the stunning loss in district court (a few days prior to the blackout) on the "New Source Review" issue. FirstEnergy is either going to have to shut down many of their older coal-fired plants, spend billions on upgrading them, pay huge fines, or all of the above.
This could well have been the reason for the bond downgrade, but wasn't even mentioned.
Yes, FE did lose in a major court decision on the "new source review". What's interesting about that case, besides the fact that the Clinton administration's EPA had a sudden change of heart about the rules, was that a similar case involving a large power company in the south brought about the exact opposite decision.
The only purpose of this self-serving article was to say "We told you so". But in the minds of many, poor research and inuendo seem to be adequate substitutes for facts and insight these days.
Well, there is some truth to "we told you so" - Being ex-FirstEnergy myself, I am enjoying a little bit of vindication after seeing how the events unfolded. Many of us had expected Cleveland to go dark some day, but I doubt that many expected the blackout to spread all the way around the lake and into NYC.
Still, as I have noted before, there's plenty of contributing factors that made this event possible.