Fixing Power Grid Will Mean Sacrifices

Aug. 18 -- The great North American power outage that plunged 50 million customers into darkness on Thursday was clearly an infrastructure failure on a massive scale. But blackouts should not surprise, considering the antiquated state of our 200,000 miles of transmission lines, experts say.

"We're a superpower with a Third World grid," said New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, who served as secretary of energy under President Clinton.

It's a message some energy experts have been trying to spread for years. But the largest power outage in U.S. history may finally spur action.

"Especially in the energy field, for change to occur, you usually have to have a crisis, like Love Canal or the Exxon Valdez. There's usually this kind of dramatic event that triggers a response," said Barry Rabe, a University of Michigan professor and environmental policy expert.

Indeed, the power grid will be a squeaky public policy wheel in the coming months, as Congress and a U.S.-Canadian task force begin investigating the failure.

But proposed solutions to the nation's power problems may not be popular. Upgrades to the power grid likely will mean sacrifices all around, experts say. Citizen opponents of power projects may have to calm their "Not In My Back Yard" fervor, companies may have to make expensive upgrades, and politicians may need to take responsibility for change.

The hefty price tag of upgrading the infrastructure is one reason that change has come slow. The North American Electric Reliability Council, the group charged with monitoring the power grid, estimated that improvements would cost $56 billion. The Electric Power Research Institute, a nonprofit energy research consortium, puts a preliminary estimate at more like $100 billion.

The cost comes largely from the age and intricacy of much of the power grid, experts say.

"The electricity system in this country has operated on the most part on 1950s technology," said Bill Gould, executive director of EPRI's northeast region. "There are probably lines in cities there for nearly 100 years. But the U.S. electrical system is a national treasure. It needs to be spruced up."