"The demand for electricity to have a strong, growing economy is too great to be simply offset by more conservation"
Spencer Abraham
Recently, I saw a great show on one of the cable channels. It had to do with one of my "pet rocks" - our aging and antiquated electrical grid. I thought in this time of great change in our country, if we had to change something which made sense to do so, it would be upgrading our grid.
In terms of the age of our country, our electric grid is nothing short of ancient. The only comforting thought is our grid is in the same shape as most around the world. We truly take our grid for granted - if something happened to even a part of our grid for only a day, the results would be paralysing. How our houses, our jobs, our transportation and our utilities function, all are a result of how well our grid works.
Our grid has two major problems - it is outdated and it is not robust. I am not so concerned about it being outdated, as efforts have been started to turn our grid into more of a "smart" grid. Better distribution, better switching due to peaks and so on. Hopefully, making the grid smarter will add efficiencies that will allow us to do more with less, at a more affordable price.
However, having the grid not being robust is a horse of a different color. Quite simply, there are a few different events which could cripple our grid enough to propel our great country back a hundred years. A hundred years ago, people in our country knew how to survive on limited or non-existent electricity. Today we do not. Every year, our grid get stressed more and more due to increased demand and the components for failure are already in place.
For example, consider the following:
- We have aging power equipment which leads to higher failure rates as well as preventive and corrective maintenance costs.
- Obsolete system layout which require additional substation sites.
- Outdated engineering does not fit well with today's demands and problems.
However, the thing that keeps me up at night is not the slow decay of the system - it is the "big hit" that would take it down. As we have seen from major storms such as Katina or Sandy, a wide spread natural disaster could disrupt power to an area for days, weeks, or sometimes longer. With the recent event of Super Storm Sandy, crews from all over the country came to the Northeast to help restore power as quickly as possible. Even with that, over 30,000 families went without power for over a month.
What would happen if we had a solar flare (not science fiction - they happen) which knocked out half the nation's grid? It could take three years to fix. That is a long time to go without the life giving benefit of electricity. Water could not be pumped, furnaces and air conditioners would not work, elevators in high rises would not work and gasoline could not be pumped. People could not go to work, employers could not operate facilities, and food could not be distributed. In short, some people would die until power was restored.
Worse yet, what would happen it we had a man made event which took out the entire grid. Our scientists and military planners have known for years that a precise air burst over the center part of the country with a modest yield nuclear charge would knock out every unprotected electrical device in the country, including our grid. This would cripple us beyond measure and it would take decades to restore our power system to where our lifestyle would approach normal. The expected loss of life in our country due to starvation, dehydration, exposure and disease would be nothing short of staggering. It would be the modern day equivalent of the Black Plague.
Is there anything we can do about this short of tossing and turning every night? Absolutely! Compared to what we are spending on all kinds of stuff today, the cost to modernize and ruggedize our entire grid is nothing short of "chump change". Estimates I have heard are in the hundreds of millions. Not trillions, not billions - millions. With a worst case scenario resulting in devastation to the nation, spending a few hundred million to upgrade an ancient system just makes sense. Yet, we never hear anything about this.
Power, like the air we breath is something we take for granted until we no longer have it. Our nation, once known for boundless imagination, now seems to suffer from a lack thereof on things that really matter. "Power to the people", once a political slogan, is now so much more than that.
What would happen if we had a solar flare (not science fiction - they happen) which knocked out half the nation's grid? It could take three years to fix. That is a long time to go without the life giving benefit of electricity. Water could not be pumped, furnaces and air conditioners would not work, elevators in high rises would not work and gasoline could not be pumped. People could not go to work, employers could not operate facilities, and food could not be distributed. In short, some people would die until power was restored.
Worse yet, what would happen it we had a man made event which took out the entire grid. Our scientists and military planners have known for years that a precise air burst over the center part of the country with a modest yield nuclear charge would knock out every unprotected electrical device in the country, including our grid. This would cripple us beyond measure and it would take decades to restore our power system to where our lifestyle would approach normal. The expected loss of life in our country due to starvation, dehydration, exposure and disease would be nothing short of staggering. It would be the modern day equivalent of the Black Plague.
Is there anything we can do about this short of tossing and turning every night? Absolutely! Compared to what we are spending on all kinds of stuff today, the cost to modernize and ruggedize our entire grid is nothing short of "chump change". Estimates I have heard are in the hundreds of millions. Not trillions, not billions - millions. With a worst case scenario resulting in devastation to the nation, spending a few hundred million to upgrade an ancient system just makes sense. Yet, we never hear anything about this.
Power, like the air we breath is something we take for granted until we no longer have it. Our nation, once known for boundless imagination, now seems to suffer from a lack thereof on things that really matter. "Power to the people", once a political slogan, is now so much more than that.
No comments:
Post a Comment