Blackout: What's wrong with the American grid

[salvorhardin]

Very well written piece examining what's wrong with our electrical power grid on many levels.

Our grid is old. The average substation transformer is 42 years old—two years older than the designed lifespan of a substation transformer. For the most part, our grid hasn’t been modernized—it’s largely mechanical equipment operating a digital world, Clark Gellings said. Perhaps most importantly, the grid isn’t being prepared for the future.

...

The frustrating thing is that this isn’t simply a technology problem. It’s also social and political. Just like the national grid is really a patchwork of grids, it’s also a patchwork of regulatory systems. That uncoordinated mixture of regulation and de-regulation often fails to incentivize the investments the grid actually needs. Building transmission lines, for instance, is a job that crosses multiple states. Many of those states aren’t going to get a direct benefit from the line, even if that’s what’s best on the whole. Local regulators may understand that, but when they have to operate in the best interests of their state or county, they might still challenge the line, Gellings said. This is part of why it can take as long as 12 years to get a single new transmission line built. In another example, de-regulation in many states has created a confused system where there are now lots of stakeholders in the electric grid, but nobody has an incentive to think about, or invest in, the long term.

If we want the grid to work as well three decades from now as it does today, we need to put some money into it. Massoud Amin has estimated the cost of grid improvements. To make the grid stronger—adding more high-voltage lines and upgrading the existing ones—he says we need to spend about $8 billion a year for 10 years. To make the grid smarter—digital, centralized, automated, and with the kind of big-picture communication that helps us stop blackouts before they happen—it’ll take an investment of $17-20 billion a year for 20 years.

Full post: http://boingboing.net/2012/08/03/blackout-whats-wrong-with-t.html

[Edweird]

1. Hey, I'm all for it. Let's improve the grid. That'll keep me working.

The article isn't particularly well informed, however. But whatever.

[FrodosPet]

2. "The grid" is our most vulnerable national asset

Most of the attention is on the dangers of EMP (electromagnetic pulse) weapons and CMEs (Coronal Mass Ejections).

But I think the K.I.S.S. problems (insufficient capacity, obsolete and failure prone equipment, "conventional weapons" attacks) are really the ones to be scared of.

America needs the grid updated and secured.