Nice Try!American Gas Association president and CEO Michael Baly's response to my article ("Electric Reliability: How PJM Tripped on Gas-fired Plants," May 1, 1995) concerning the January 19, 1994, rolling blackouts in the PJM power pool is damage control that fails. Here are the facts that Mr. Baly either ignores or distorts:
Forty percent of PJM's coal generation did not operate during the rolling blackouts. At least 80 percent of PJM's total generation where gas was the primary or sole fuel did not operate when needed. Virtually 100 percent of PJM's gas generation that was gas-only capacity and supplied with interruptible gas contracts did not operate.
Neither coal nor gas plants operated particularly well on that day, but the performance of gas plants was much worse. Indeed, if the plants that used gas as their sole or primary source had even matched the weak performance of the coal plants, rolling blackouts would probably not have occurred.