It's Electrifying

In the past two weeks, we've seen numerous problems with the power distribution and generation systems in the US. That's after a major Northeast blackout in 2004 that was the largest ever. That's after the rolling blackouts in California from just a few years ago. What was done in the interim? Not enough.

The problems in New York are one of inadequate distribution capacity, coupled with a heatwave and the decision to keep the entire grid running even though local circuits were being fried. Instead of a broader blackout of short duration, we got a localized blackout that has lasted far longer. That blackout appears to finally be over, but no one in the areas affected believe that they're truly out of the woods; there are still reports of manhole fires and scattered outages.

Out in California, they're concerned about having to implement rolling blackouts because they simply lack the capacity to produce enough power to meet demand. They're busy declaring grid emergencies. Sounds like issues of supply and demand to me. Too much demand. Not enough supply. They're hoping that a break in the heatwave will ease concerns over blackouts.

The problems in St. Louis were due to severe storms bringing down trees and power lines, and while the restoration of power is proceeding, the pace is far too slow for those affected; a complaint registered by many in the New York metro area who have suffered without power for more than a week as Con Ed tries to fix the lines in Queens and downed lines in Westchester after a wild week of weather that included microbursts and a F2 tornado that ripped across the entire county.

Conservation will not ease the problems in either the NY or CA instances. It would only delay the problem for a year or two (economic growth means more businesses and residential energy customers, which means higher demand for power).

So, the only way to solve this problem is to increase both power generation and distribution. Since power generation is largely stymied by NIMBY (and misguided environmentalists - again another story), I'm going to focus on power distribution for this posting.

Power distribution means taking the electricity generated at power plants, zipping them along high voltage lines, stepping them down at transformer stations, running along feeder cables, and stepping them down to local distribution for usage by the customers. Anywhere along the line, a problem could cause a blackout. Storms can cause blackouts when lines are brought down, or too much demand could cause a blackout by burning out lines.

To that end, more redundancy and robustness must be built into the power distribution system. For if a heatwave could lay low the power grid in California or New York, what could a terrorist do if they put their minds to it?