Putting the Blackout into Perspective

It is now old news that a major power failure in the Northeast and Great Lakes regions and parts of Canada occurred yesterday. While power has been restored to much of the impacted area, some communities are still without electric power. Investigations starting today will drill deeper to understand the full magnitude of the problem, its causes and how to prevent this from happening again.

Several points need to made about this incident to put it in its proper context for investigation:

1. Compared to almost all parts of the world, electric power reliability in the United States is far superior. Yes, blackouts and brownouts have occurred, but they are very infrequent.

2. The response to the crisis by the electric power industry and government officials was immediate and for the most part effective in restoring power to much of the impact area. I'm sure we will see plenty of finger-pointing in coming days about the causes of this problem.

3. This incident should remind all of us that our electric power system is not invincible and it is susceptible to major disruptions. We should not assume 100% reliability. The real question is what percent reliability should we assume under different demand conditions?

4. This situation should remind us that our infrastructure systems require our constant attention, even when the systems are working as they should. We place enormous daily demands on these systems and do not reinvest nearly what we should to keep them working at an optimal level.

5. Our nation needs a "real" energy plan that encourages conservation, greater reliance on sustainable solutions, and sufficient reinvestment in our energy facilities.

6. This situation should remind us of our interconnectedness in a situation like this. In this case, the weak link in the chain causes the entire chain to break. Initial investigations point to Niagara Power as the trigger point for the cascading outages that occurred. Obviously, we will know more about the causes as time goes on.

7. There is an economic price to pay for this crisis, even as quickly as it appears to have been brought under control. Many businesses were disrupted by the crisis, causing downtime and loss of productivity. Governments and electric power companies have been working on overtime to manage the situation. These are but a few of the costs created by the blackout.

8. Finally, I think we can expect businesses locating facilities in the future to look much closer at electric power reliability. This will be an issue for both densely and sparsely populated areas. Both should expect greater scrutiny.