Lights Out Again?

Months after the stifling blackout last August that crippled eight states and parts of Canada, North America’s aging power grid is still, well, aged, and not much has been done to fix it, according to a recent study by the joint US-Canada Power System Outage Task Force. Now, with summer around the corner, we’re still at risk of having a similar blackout. Congress hasn’t passed any new legislation regulating the power industry, the North American Electric Reliability Council, which oversees the industry’s voluntary blackout prevention, still has no way of penalizing those who don’t comply, and the grid could still experience a new power outage cascade. It’s time for the power industry to get real-time electric grid tracking systems in place while we all wait for government regulation to catch up. Batteries, anyone?