FirstEnergy announces plans to prevent another big outage

CLEVELAND (AP) -- FirstEnergy Corp., the utility that has taken considerable blame for the nation's worst blackout, said Wednesday it will improve tree trimming around power lines and make other changes to prevent another widespread outage.
Executives from the Akron-based parent of Ohio Edison and other companies discussed its plans during a meeting with analysts in New York that was broadcast on the Internet.
Updating computer software, improving communication with other utilities and bettering transmission operator training were other plans briefly outlined for analysts.
"No question that 2003 has been one of our more challenging years. We've navigated some pretty tough waters but we've righted the company and are on a course that should lead to greatly improved performance," president Tony Alexander said.
Last month, a report by a task force of U.S. and Canadian energy officials pointed to the failure of a FirstEnergy computer system that monitors electricity flow in causing the Aug. 14 blackout that affected 50 million people.