Too Good to Fail: What's Wrong with the Electric Grid?

Elisa Wood
July 06, 2012 | 8 Comments

The temperature is 100 degrees and we have no air conditioning, no running water, no telephone and no Internet. It’s been 60 hours since our household lost electricity because of the super derecho, a rare surprise storm that swept ten U.S. states and the nation’s capital on June 29.

About 5 million of us suddenly are living in conditions of a century earlier. And as we fumble in the dark, it’s easy to see how vulnerable our profound reliance on electricity makes us.

The notion of grid reliability is embedded deeply in the American psyche. We are so accustomed to electricity flowing, we can barely comprehend its absence. By habit, we still flip on the light switch when entering a room, even after the power has been out for hours.

We have good reason to trust. After all, behind the switch is the world’s largest machine, the North American power grid. With 211,000 miles of high-voltage transmission lines and 5,800 power plants feeding electricity to our homes and businesses, the grid is an engineering wonder.

A wonder — until a storm, or a heat wave, or even a squirrel chewing the right wire in the right place knocks out power to large swaths of customers.

It is the grid’s size and interconnectivity that makes it remarkable and efficient, but also susceptible to widespread mishap. We saw that most clearly in the Northeast Blackout of 2003, when a cascading event caused failures that tumbled quickly from neighborhood to neighborhood, state to state, finally leaving 50 million without power.

But the American consumer generally does not view a blackout as a sign of an inherent problem with our electric grid. Following the June 9 derecho, about 30,000 workers, some borrowed from utilities as far away as Texas and Oklahoma, went to work restoring power in the Mid-Atlantic and nearby states. Still, consumers will be angry at the length of time it takes. And if the acrimony is as great as it was in New England last year following the freak Halloween nor’easter, politicians will take up the cause, regulators will investigate and some utility executives may find their jobs threatened.

If our lights fail and aren’t fixed quickly, we believe someone must be to blame. The problem can’t possibly be the nature of the interconnected grid itself. In the consumer’s mind, electricity is like air; it’s just there for us. If it’s not, someone messed up.

The energy industry refers to this as electricity’s invisibility. In many ways it speaks to the product’s success. Who in America ponders whether or not to buy electricity? It’s a given that we will connect our homes to the grid, pay the monthly bill and the power will flow.

But, this invisibility, this success, is a failing too.

Power companies throughout much of the nation are striving to make the grid less vulnerable by smartening it, and some of this smartening relies on consumer interaction, taking control over our electricity consumption through new digital technologies. It includes installing smart meters and energy displays, building microgrids and developing more solar energy and other forms of distributed generation, which decentralize the grid, and therefore take away at least some of the exposure that comes with size. (Think the Death Star in the movie Star Wars.)

Suddenly we need to pay attention to electricity, and we’d rather let it stay invisible.

So to make smart grid work, the energy industry needs to figure out what makes the consumer work. A great deal of study is now underway on human behavior and energy. The goal is to encourage us to embrace smart energy technologies, so that we will use electricity more efficiently. It’s been tough going. Most consumers see no underlying problem with the electric grid. If it’s not broke, why fix it?

I can’t say I like being without air conditioning and water. But maybe the occasional loss of comfort is a good thing, an eye opener, a reminder that we need to contemplate our electric system’s inherent weakness and work to strengthen it. The grid can break. It is not too good to fail.

Elisa Wood is a long-time energy writer whose work is available at RealEnergyWriters.com

The information and views expressed in this blog post are solely those of the author and not necessarily those of RenewableEnergyWorld.com or the companies that advertise on this Web site and other publications. This blog was posted directly by the author and was not reviewed for accuracy, spelling or grammar.

8 Comments

Bob Wallace
July 9, 2012

Perhaps we should start recording the costs of "adapting" to climate change.

Then later on we can give ourselves a dope slap when we realize how much cheaper it would have been to just quit using fossil fuels.

ANONYMOUS
July 8, 2012

The most important thing is to conserve the energy while it is not in use. For example, I've noticed that many shops in the U.S. had left their light on after normal business hours, which I wonder how much energy can be saved over time. While smart grid can greatly reduce the possibility of large scale blackout by upgrading the existing utility network, making the use of electricity more efficiently, it doesn't mean that the fault will not occur. Depending on the availability of solar irradiation for different geography, one possible solution to reduce the energy usage drawing from the power plant is to incorporate pv system with battery backup into your house or business. The use of this system will allow consumers to pay less for their electricity bill for compensating from renewable sources but to provide the storage energy in the battery during the power outage.
Any comment would really help.

ANONYMOUS
July 7, 2012

This is what happens when individuals in modern society become too reliant on government for their basic needs.

Dennis Houghton
July 6, 2012

The cost of putting residential services underground is about 4 times that of overhead services. Up to a moderate voltage of <35KV, distribution lines can readily be put underground. Conductor size (cost) will be much larger (higher) due to reduced heat dissipation capacity of underground conductors compared to overhead conductors in free air. At higher voltages the engineering challenges make the cost so high that the application is typically between a hydropower generator and its main distribution substation.

Most of the neighborhoods with underground systems that were without power were without power due to upstream distribution damage rather than local damage. Local power will not be restored until all of the upstream system is repaired and functional and they will never see a repair truck in their neighborhood.

Damage on overhead lines is much easier and faster and cheaper to find and repair than similar failures on underground lines. Yes, underground lines do fail just not due to wind. Floods, earth movement, gophers, moisture, insulation damage and careless backhoe operators are common causes of failure in underground cables. Only the backhoe operations are easy to locate.

As unsightly and seemingly vulnerable that the appearance of overhead power lines presents, they are still the best way to distribute electricity to consumer grids.

ANONYMOUS
July 6, 2012

Generally I am very impressed by the utility workers, the fact that they are able to get power back on line so quickly.

But why doesn't anyone in government and the Utility Companies get the smart idea to bury the majority of utility lines behind the transformer stations under the ground! It obvious it cannot be done all at once and everywhere but it sure can be done in a lot of subdivisions and cities.
The US is one of the richest countries, but one with the most outdated cripple utility grid in the western hemisphere. Wouldn't this be a nice federal/state project to create jobs and update the infrastructure?
The initial costs are higher but a lot cheaper, safer and more reliable in the long run.

Dennis Houghton
July 6, 2012

Line right-of-way maintenance (tree trimming) was one of the first deferrable costs to be exploited by sophisticated utility managers. Why do something every three years when you can probably get by for seven years with just minor problems for the customers? Oopsie, did not see that derecho coming. It is a tribute to the inter-utility cooperation efforts how 30,000 skilled line workers and their equipment were marshalled to deal with this industrial disaster. It is also a serious warning. What if we have two events like this at one time? It might take several weeks to recover full service. We are seeing a similar situation will our national wildfire response groups with assets stretched very thin already. Just wait until fire season really gets started next month! I have heard that extreme drought and erratic weather might be symptoms of significant and uni-directional changes in atmospheric entropy. Ms. Wood is exactly on point that most Americans do not understand the factors affecting grid reliability, otherwise they might be better prepared and more forgiving of outages. Energy self-sufficiency is a reasonable option for only a small percentage of US citizens. Most will rely on the grid for decades to come and we will learn sooner rather than later to be prepared for intermittent but frequent outages. Clean water in America requires electricity. Power loss is inconvenient, water loss is life threatening. Quality of life depends upon reliable electrical service.

ANONYMOUS
July 6, 2012

Now Ormond, you should be more polite. Most people cannot afford to have all that equipment purchased and stored in case of a rare event. What good would a generator be if she lived in an apartment? By actual test, the author managed to get her story online even during a major power failure. That is all that is required of her and your suggestion that she look for a new job is over the line.
Steven

Ormond Otvos
July 6, 2012

You're a "long-time energy writer" and you don't even have a small (2kw) generator? Or a half dozen 1 kwh car batteries running inverters? or even a small inverter that will run your refrigerator off your idling car battery?

Maybe a new line of work?

Add Your Comments

To add your comments you must sign-in or create a free account.

Elisa Wood

Elisa Wood is a long-time energy writer whose work appears in many of the industry's top magazines and newsletters. Her blog on energy efficiency appears on more than 100 sites and has been picked up by the New York Times and Reuters. She...