WASHINGTON, Aug. 14 - While energy experts differed on the precise cause of today's power blackout, they were in agreement that the extensive failure betrayed the age of the region's transmission system and its struggles to keep up with demand.
``We are a major superpower with a third-world electrical grid,'' said Gov. Bill Richardson of New Mexico, an energy secretary during the Clinton administration. ``Our grid is antiquated. It needs serious modernization.''
The power system in the Northeast has long been plagued by inadequate transmission capacity and bottlenecks nationwide, especially in the New York metropolitan area. Most of New York City's and Long Island's power at peak times must be generated in the city and on the Island, because it is physically impossible to transmit that much power into the area along the existing lines.
Bottlenecks limit how much power can be shipped east to west across upstate New York, north to south within New York, and across the Hudson from New Jersey, and attempts to put a major line from Connecticut to Long Island under Long Island Sound have been thwarted for years.
``We've got excess power in upstate New York, but there's no way to get it to New York City because of the bottlenecks,'' said Denise VanBuren, vice president of Central Hudson Gas & Electric, which supplies power to eight counties north of New York City. ``It's very difficult in this economy to get financing for a major transmission line, and we've been concerned for a long time about the region's transmission capacity.''
With only a limited number of high-voltage lines, a power failure can spread more quickly when generators try to send their power to areas that need it, overloading the lines that remain. Generators are designed to switch off if their power cannot be transmitted, which is apparently what happened to dozens of turbines and nuclear plants around the northeast and upper Midwest today.
``If there had been more lines available at the time this event occurred, it's possible they could have absorbed the load and kept the failure from spreading,'' said Jack Hawks, vice president for planning of the Electric Power Supply Association, a trade association of generators.
The inability to pinpoint the exact site of the failure led to an unusual flurry of accusations on both sides of the international border. The office of the Canadian prime minister, Jean Chrタetien, initially said the failure originated in a fire in a power plant near Niagara Falls on the American side, possibly caused by a lightning strike. Later, the office withdrew that statement.
A short while later, the Canadian cabinet defense minister in charge of emergency preparedness, John MacCallum, said that the power failure originated at a nuclear power plant in Pennsylvania, according to the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. He did not explain his remarks.
American officials denied both charges. A statement from New York State's power grid system shortly before midnight said that the event began somewhere west of the Ontario power system at 4:11 p.m., immediately taking out electric opwer in Ontario and parts of Michigan and Ohio. Blackouts in the northeast and New York followed quickly, as generators there tried and failed to send power westward to the affected areas.
``It is not believed that the disturbance initiated in New York State,'' said the statement from the New York Independent System Operator, the consortium of power companies and state officials who manage the state grid. ``Reports that the occurrence began in Niagara are not supported by the facts currently available.''
New York State officials later said the event may have begun with a power surge at the Perry nuclear power plant near Cleveland.
President Bush said tonight he had heard the reports of a lightning strike in the Niagara area, and would have federal officials investigate the precise cause.