Ten years ago, every city between Detroit and
Ottawa, including New York, turned dark in what
became known as the Northeast blackout of 2003, the
most severe power outage to ever occur in the
industrialized world. For the next four days the
lives of 50 million Americans and Canadians were
turned upside down, and, due to the blackout, the
lives of eleven ended.
Airports, ground transportation systems, banks and
stock markets were shut down; cellular communication
and cable TV services were disrupted; and millions
were forced to boil their water and, absent air
conditioning, swelter in a 90 degree summer heat.
The immediate official response of US authorities
was taken out of a South Park episode: blame Canada.
But as time progressed the true culprit was
revealed. A sagging power line in Ohio touched an
untrimmed tree branch triggering a cascading grid
failure across the Northeast U.S. and large parts of
Ontario. Hitting America's economic hub, the outage
exposed the fragility of our electricity grid.
America's electricity system is made of hubs and
spokes with large centralized power generating
facilities connected to high voltage transmission
lines traversing thousands of miles and crossing
state and national borders. The cumulative length of
those lines surpasses the distance to the moon. If a
tree in Ohio was able to wreak havoc in our economy
how difficult would it be for a competent terrorist
to find an exploitable vulnerability and do the
same?
Much has been done over the past decade to
understand the vulnerabilities of our grid and
reduce the chance of a repeat occurrence. Public
utilities today face stronger and more enforceable
reliability standards, demand responsive pricing
that incentivizes consumers to adjust their
electricity use during peak hours is being
introduced, and many utilities are experimenting and
deploying smart technologies that can diagnose and
resolve problems as they arise.
But despite all of those upgrades the U.S.
electricity system is not less vulnerable than it
was ten years ago. Recent years have presented a
variety of threats, from extreme natural disasters
-- as was the case during the Japanese Tsunami and
Hurricane Sandy -- to cyber-attacks, solar storms
and high altitude electromagnetic pulse (EMP)
attacks. Paradoxically, the more intelligent our
grid becomes and the more reliant it is on internet
communications the more room there is for malevolent
cyber-attacks.
The reality is that no power system is immune from
failure. We must therefore seek ways to ensure that
should the system fail us again, the outcome would
be merely bad, not catastrophic. Yet, our national
discussion since the 2003 outage focused on how to
bolster the centralized system instead of focusing
on how to encourage more businesses and households
to better insulate themselves from system failure or
opt out of the grid altogether by adopting standby
generators, uninterruptible power source (UPS)
devices, backup storage batteries, fuel cells and
other means of off-grid generation. Such business
continuity capabilities should be our first line of
defense. But in 2003 they were rare. As a result,
ATMs ceased to discharge cash, gasoline pumps became
useless, and in high-end commercial buildings
employees were trapped in their offices and
elevators when the electronic doors refused to open.
The lesson from 2003 is that real energy security
begins at home, workplace, local gas station,
grocery, bank and other businesses we frequent. We
must begin to inquire with those service providers
and in our own workplace how prepared our
surroundings are for power outages and for how long
our vendors can island themselves to provide
critical services.
Such a focus also makes good economics. According to
Allianz insurance company, power outages sum up to
an annual economic loss in the U.S. of $104-$164
billion - a hidden indirect expense of roughly
$1,000 per household incurred through increased
insurance premiums across all the sectors of our
economy. The lion's share of this cost are not the
highly visible blackouts - The 2003 blackout caused
an estimated damage of $6 billion -- but the more
local and short blackouts and seemingly harmless
dips in voltage that never make headlines. If
businesses invested more in risk mitigation instead
of insurance premiums, consumers would not only be
more energy secure but they would also save money.
Americans deserve a modern and robust centralized
electricity system, but to paraphrase George
Clemenceau, electricity is too important to be left
entirely to the utilities. We need to know that when
the grid fails on us - and it will - at the very
least we can exit the building.
Gal Luft is co-director of the Institute for the
Analysis of Global Security and Senior Adviser to
the United States Energy Security Council.
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