NERC: Outages Began Along Line In Ohio

NEW YORK, NY -- The investigation into this week's power outages zeroed in Friday on an Ohio transmission line that appeared to have been the first one to crash.

The North American Electric Reliability Council said late Friday that the 345 kilovolt Chamberlain-Harding line near Cleveland was the first to trip off line on Thursday afternoon. It was followed in short order by five other Ohio lines and other transmission lines and power plants in the Midwest, Canada and the Northeast.

NERC noted that the reason the Chamberlain line went down was not known. The investigation into the incident is continuing.

The Midwest and East Coast are connected via a U.S.-Canadian transmission system known as the Lake Erie Loop where NERC officials said Friday the trouble was concentrated.