Thursday, December 02, 1999
Cinergy slapped for hogging power in July
BY MIKE BOYER
The Cincinnati Enquirer
Cinergy Corp. is being rebuked by an industry organization that monitors regional electricity supplies for drawing down more power from the power grid than it should have during July's heat wave.
In a rare move, the executive board of the East Central Area Reliability Council (ECAR), which monitors electric supplies in nine states, is drafting a letter of reprimand to Cinergy President and CEO James Rogers, said Thomas Kraynak, manager of operations and resources for ECAR, which is based in Canton.
“The board feels Cinergy's actions jeopardized the reliability of power supplies in the region,” he said. “It wants to make sure it doesn't happen again.”
Mr. Kraynak said the letter, which should be sent to Cinergy in the next couple of weeks, carries no financial or other penalties.
A voluntary organization, ECAR comprises 29 major electric utilities serving 36 million electric customers in Indiana, Kentucky, Maryland, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Virginia and West Virginia.
During eight of nine hours surveyed by ECAR July 22, 23 and 29, Cinergy drew 700 to 1,600 megawatts of power in excess of what it had available.
Typically, utilities try to balance the power they take from the transmission grid, which ties electric companies together, with power they generate themselves or purchase from other sources.
“During the July period, we were in a situation where we were taking power inadvertently off the transmission system,” Steve Brash, Cinergy spokesman, said.
He said the situation in July “doesn't represent the way we've operated in the past or how we'll operate in the future.”
Since July, Mr. Brash said, Ciner gy has attempted to generate more power than it required to make up for the electricity it took off the system.
Typically, he said, utilities try to balance the amount of power they take and add to the grid each month.
In the 12 months before July, Cinergy was out of compliance only one month, he said.
“A lot of other utilities were out of compliance more than that,” he said.
The ECAR reprimand is the latest fallout from Cinergy's decision to not supply power to several wholesale power marketers during the July heat wave.
Because of the severe heat, Cinergy has said it couldn't obtain power at any price and rather than curtail power to its own customers opted to pay penalties under its supply contracts.
Cinergy faced a firestorm of industry criticism for its action. The company said it incurred $73 million in additional costs during July because of the problems.
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