INVESTIGATORS SUSPECT A SITE ALONG LAKE ERIE IN OHIO.

Investigators suspect a site along Lake Erie in Ohio.
COMBINED DISPATCHES
The largest power blackout in American history prompted new calls today for overhauling the nation's electricity system even as investigators searched for clues to what might have triggered power outages from New England to Michigan.
There were indications the blackout may have been triggered not in upstate New York or Canada, as many have speculated, but somewhere along Lake Erie in Ohio, according to the industry-sponsored group that monitors the transmission system.
"That's where the information is starting to point," Ellen Vancko, a spokeswoman for the North American Electric Reliability Council, said in an interview. "It looks like that's where the collapse started."
Vancko said it would take time to pinpoint the cause.
But Michehl Gent, the NERC president, said he was fairly confident terrorism wasn't involved.
"We don't have any indication of blown-up equipment," he said on ABC's "Good Morning America." "So, we're almost certain it's not terrorism of any kind."
New York Gov. George Pataki said the cascading problem should have been isolated by safeguards in the system. "That just did not happen," he said on NBC's "Today" show.
A member of the federal agency that regulates transmission lines said the resumption of power also was being hampered because the "transmission system -- our [power] highway -- is so weak and so fragile."
"It's very clear this is not about deregulation. It's about investing in the transmission system," said Nora Brownell, a member of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.
Other ideas
Some critics of increased competition in the electricity industry said it has caused utilities to concentrate on markets and ignore investing in the transmission grid.
Brownell said it was still unclear what happened.
The early confusion underscored the bedeviling complexity woven into the North American electricity network in recent decades, the boom in cross-border power trading, and the interdependence of the many parts and partners multiplied by energy deregulation.
The blackout already has spawned talk of overhauling the national electrical grid which many characterized as antiquated and raised new questions about whether deregulation of the power industry might have played a part in Thursday's disruptions.
The country's halting moves toward electricity deregulation over the past decade have dramatically increased the volume of power flowing on the grids.
But the transmission towers themselves remain the stepchildren of the nation's energy infrastructure.
People don't want them in their back yards or on their farms.
Energy companies aren't interested in building them.
And though the system is linked together with advanced computer systems, much of the equipment that opens and closes connections around the nation's three major grids is 1950s vintage, officials said.
"We're a superpower with a Third-World grid," New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, a former energy secretary, said Thursday.
NERC warned last year, "The nation is at ... a crisis stage with respect to reliability of transmission grids." It calculated that $56 billion was needed to upgrade the nation's grids, but only $35 billion was likely to be invested.
For two years, the Bush administration and leaders of congressional energy committee have called for new legislation to help expand the transmission system, but a major energy bill has yet to get through Congress.
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