Overloaded Circuits: Outage Signals Major Weaknesses In U.S. Power Grid; Aging Transmission Systems And Chaotic Regulation Create Risk of Failures; 'An Unstable Environment'
Last week's massive blackout could be the shock to the system needed to draw attention to critical flaws in the nation's power grid.</br></br>It won't be clear for a while exactly what triggered the cascading collapse that removed enough power from an eight-state, two country system of generating plants, substations and high-voltage power lines to leave millions of people in the dark. For now, the leading theory is that power lines failed in the Cleveland area -- perhaps coincidentally with plant shutdowns in the Midwest -- causing disruptions that rippled toward the Northeast.</br></br>But the crisis, which knocked out twice as much power as during the last big U.S. blackout in 1996, and lasted far longer, highlights weaknesses in the electricity system that could produce more traumatic events. That's particularly true if the economy picks up steam, increasing demand for power.</br></br>The main defects are transmission systems badly in need of improvement and a chaotic combination of regulated and deregulated markets. The unsteady regulatory situation, among other factors, inhibits the investment that is critically needed to improve transmission equipment.</br></br>The nation is stalled in the middle of a massive but incomplete shift from old-fashioned state-regulated utilities -- which generate their own power, move it over their own transmission lines, and sell to local customers -- to a system in which ownership of plants and transmission lines is broken up among a variety of players, and government oversight is fractured.