Word: grid
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...large city. But in the 1970s new federal utility laws threw transmission lines open to all comers. Now utilities could get their power wherever it was cheapest, even if that meant it had to travel farther: power generated in Alabama is sold to Vermont. The nation's power grid--the vast system of lines, transformers and switching stations--was never designed to move electricity long distances, let alone "from Maine to Miami," points out Terry Boston of the Tennessee Valley Authority...
...Power grids are a delicate balance between supply and demand in which sudden fluctuations can cause portions to fail. If, for example, a transmission line breaks, the system is designed to isolate the problem and disconnect it from the grid...
...last week's case, control mechanisms--computers, circuit breakers and switches--failed to contain the problem quickly, causing rapid fluctuations at substations elsewhere in the grid, tripping more shutdown mechanisms...
There's nothing like a multistate summertime blackout to get environmentalists and industry groups throwing spitballs at one another. Extreme greens wag told-you-so fingers and dream anew about a grid-free country, with homeowners generating their own power courtesy of clean, renewable energy sources. Industry types speak instead about building new nuclear or conventional power plants or muscling up existing ones--and delivering all the juice through a modernized distribution system...
...this instance, both sides are right--to a degree. While centralized power will probably always be with us, the best way to upgrade the energy grid may well involve doing away with some of it, democratizing energy production by handing the job off to communities, blocks and even private homes...