Word: makovich
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...Larry Makovich, vice president and senior policy adviser at the Cambridge Energy Research Association in Cambridge, Mass., says the initial confusion isn't so unusual. "You have to think of the U.S. electrical grid system as one of the world's most complex machines," he says. "A good analogy is the U.S. air traffic control system - like airplanes, the wires and posts themselves are only part of the story. The monitoring and control aspect needs just as much investment...
Both America's electrical hardware and software components, Makovich concedes, are still dealing with "a legacy of underinvestment." In the decade before the 2003 blackout, for example, annual electrical transmission investment in the U.S. grew only about 20%. Between 2005 and 2010 it's expected to jump by some 65%, to about $15 billion - a level many U.S. infrastructure critics feel the country should have been at by the beginning of the this century, not a decade into...
...with air travel, U.S. electricity reliability is made more daunting by the nation's enormous size and its myriad geographical and climatic challenges, from mountains to hurricanes. That, says Makovich, is another big reason the U.S. has significantly higher rates of power loss than countries like France (only 53 minutes lost per year on average) or the Netherlands (only 29 minutes) - and why it may still have higher loss rates even after the big investments are finished. "Florida can be troublesome as a peninsular power system," he adds, with few neighboring systems to tie into and big exposure to tropical...
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