Can We Prevent Another Blackout
Full article is at Time.com.
Article Excerpt:
Making the grid smarter will take real investment, but that’s been lagging, and like much of our infrastructure, the grid is overdue for an overhaul. “Government funding has been pretty modest in scale,” says Daigle. He notes that last year’s federal energy act contained authorization for smart grid investment — but no money has been appropriated yet. That needs to change. As electricity demand increases in the U.S. and we become ever more networked, the consequences of a major power loss worsen as well. The blackout of 2003 cost some $6 billion, but it could have been far more costly. A smarter grid can also help improve energy efficiency — if customers and utilities know exactly how much electricity they are using in real-time, they should be able to cut waste. Five years after the blackout, it’s past time to get smarter about our electricity.
Full article is at Time.com.
Posted on Tuesday, August 12th, 2008 - Industry Articles