The joint U.S.-Canadian task force investigating the Aug. 14 Northeast blackout will issue an interim report within two weeks with a large amount of technical information about the causes of the giant power failure but no policy recommendations.

Instead, according to Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham, the task force will ask for comment on its initial findings from the public at a series of meetings and issue a final report by year’s end. Abraham says the power engineering industry will have a chance to have input in the report following a model used by the National Transportation Safety Board, which gets industry comments on airplane crashes before making final reports. Abraham and Canadian Natural Resources Minister Herb Dhaliwal are co-chairmen of the task force.

Abraham, who met with Dhaliwal Oct. 17 in Ottawa to discuss the investigation, stressed that the initial seven-week "Phase I" had mainly covered data collection, including gathering records, creating a digital model of the grid and simulating the blackout events on computers to test theories about the crash.

State and federal energy officials with over 30 technical experts, including power engineers and computer and security experts, sit on the task force, which is working under a confidentiality agreement. DOE officials say the investigation is designed to be "totally neutral" and to lay the blame for the blackout wherever it belongs. But because of the complexity of the event there is unlikely to be one single cause for the blackout, Dhaliwal added. Instead, he expects to find it was a series of interrelated mistakes.

Under investigation are grid operations, computer and communications issues, personnel training and the adequacy of current infrastructure and right-of-way maintenance procedures. Abraham and Dhaliwal said they are focusing especially on whether problems arose on Aug. 14 because "voluntary" rules for grid operation were not followed. They believe that mandatory standards appeared necessary.

In the U.S., sources say, this issue is likely to be tackled through language in the pending energy bill. But the real problem will be applying the rules in practice, especially in areas such as the Midwest, where the authority of the Midwest Independent Transmission System Operator in relation to the utility transmission owners is weak.

An Oct. 15 letter from the North American Electric Reliability Council (NERC), Princeton, N.J., asked 160 operators of electricity control areas and larger grids to review their control procedures and report back within 60 days. NERC officials said the Oct. 15 request was "quite unusual." While NERC has no authority to force its members to file the reports, the officials said they plan to make the reports public and hope all will comply to avoid embarrassment.

DOE has said only that there will be at least two public forums each in the U.S. and Canada about the Phase II investigation.

Among those sure to comment is Akron, Ohio-based FirstEnergy Corp. Many of the earliest events on Aug. 14 occurred in its northern-Ohio operating territory. FirstEnergy is conducting its own study of the blackout with a consultant.