I hope President-elect Obama is enjoying his honeymoon.
Do you remember how on the campaign trail he fretted about the threat posed by America’s dependence on foreign oil, and what he was going to do about it?
While…what’s his name, wanted to drill for domestic oil anywhere, anytime and at any price, I think Mr. Obama wanted to make us power our vehicles and light our homes with “environmentally-friendly” vegetable oil and pigeon doodoo.
Look.
Today, the biggest energy threat America faces is not dependence on foreign oil, but dependence on a failing grid!
The country’s network of dilapidated power lines needs a bailout as a blood bank needs blood.
If you don’t agree with me, consider this.
In September, Hurricane Ike ran roughshod through Houston, the fourth largest city in the U.S. For over a week most of the city was in total darkness. Some areas were without power for over a month.
Ironically, Houston is the “energy capital” of the U.S.
Ike did more than just cripple power lines. Electrical pumps that power water supply failed in many parts of the city, so water went out for several days. In the apartment complex where I live, residents resorted to taking water from the swimming pool to flush toilets...and do God knows what else.
Mosquitoes feasted on my sinewy body each night I stepped out of the apartment to eat my canned dinner in the moonlight.
How is it that the energy capital of the country can be without power for over a month?
While you ponder that question, just last week in the Northeast, ice storms crippled power lines and knocked out power reportedly to 1.4 million homes and businesses in seven states. Who knows how long many people there will be without power.
A couple of years ago New York City was plunged into darkness by the failure of a part of the power grid. I believe history repeated itself there in 2007.
Californians will never forget the infamous “rolling blackouts” of the summers of 2000 and 2001, which resulted from the inability of the grid to move power from Northern California to the Southland (Southern California).
Do you catch my drift?
As an energy analyst back in the days, I used to cover the North America region. I don’t want to bore you with the minutiae of how government regulation dating back to the post WWI era in many ways contributed to the sorry state of today’s grid, but I’m telling you right now...the U.S. power transmission infrastructure network is a hot mess.
The grid is not really a “network”, not at the national level anyway. It fragments primarily along regional lines and sub-regional oversight – northeast, southeast, northwest, southwest, etc.
While this regional fragmentation limits the transfer of power failures from one region to another, it also stifles transmission of surplus power between regions when necessary by creating “bottlenecks” – this is what happened in California.
Anyway, that’s not even the major problem with the grid.
The main issue is that the whole grid is an anachronism. It is mostly old and dilapidated. These power lines are more appropriate for the 1950s and 1960s.
Just think about how many electronic gadgets a typical home now has. Then consider all the business and industrial energy guzzling high-tech equipment/machinery.
Many of these power lines are done. They were not designed to handle today’s power demands or withstand the elements – hurricanes, snow, tornadoes, etc.
Here’s how Martin Murray, a spokesperson for Public Service Company of New Hampshire, the state hardest-hit by the aforementioned ice storm, put it: “What is facing us is the apparent need to rebuild the entire infrastructure of some sections of the electrical delivery system.”
New Hampshire is not the only state whose power infrastructure needs a complete upgrade. The entire national grid needs it yesterday.
Each time I walk under or near a power line, I say a little prayer that the thing doesn’t snap from surging power demand and fall on my head.
It’s not enough to turn these lines into an “intelligent grid”, as advocated in the video below, by placing sensors and “smart” meters here and there along them.
Here’s Southern California Edison’s Solution To America’s Failing Grid.
It’s nice to be able to automatically detect power outages but this is like “putting lipstick on a pig”, since most of these power lines don’t actually have the required nameplate capability to transmit electricity on a scale to satisfy today’s demand.
A smart grid will help but what the country needs is a complete physical replacement of many of these power lines.
Yes. This will be an expensive undertaking.
However, the Chinese and Japanese will lend Uncle Sam the money - to spend wisely for a change.
The incoming Obama administration has promised to blow our minds with huge spending on infrastructure across the country to stimulate the real economy and create untold number of jobs.
When he says “infrastructure”, I hope he’s not talking about bridges to nowhere and airport tarmacs.
I don’t know if a bailout will really help Detroit or just stay its execution. You can study what happened to the UK’s indigenous auto industry for a precedent.
However, if Detroit gets a bailout and the country’s grid doesn’t, what happens to all those new cars if people aren’t able to drive them because they can’t get gas, which the gas station can’t pump because of a power outage caused by a failed dilapidated power transmission or distribution line?
