Dive Brief:

• In a settlement with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) and the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC), the Arizona Public Service Company (APS) has agreed to pay $3.25 million for its alleged role in a 2011 blackout across the Southwest. 
• The settlement gives $1 million to the U.S. Treasury, $1 million to NERC, and sets aside $1.25 million for the utility to make infrastructure changes. 
• The outage, which occurred across California, Arizona, and Mexico, affected about 5 million households for as long as half a day.

Dive Insight:

The problem, according to the agencies, was a lack of communication between the utility and its neighbors after a power line outage in Yuma, Arizona, caused widespread overloading of the grid.

APS "neither admits nor denies the violations cited in the settlement," according to APS spokesman Jim McDonald. NERC and FERC indicated the utility "worked cooperatively" with the investigation into its conduct before and during the outage.

The utility has "seized and acted upon" the recommendations of the NERC to improve reliability, according to McDonald. In Yuma, substations have been upgraded to handle higher loads, and a control system has been installed in Phoenix to help monitor the grid across the region.