“Smart Grid” Puts State on Steadier Ground

Stephen Whitley (via nyssmartgrid.com)

Close to a decade after a severe 2003 blackout shut off power across New York, energy officials and executives say $75 million in “smart grid” investments have put the state’s power supply on steadier footing. The upgrades, partially funded by a $37 million federal grant, include new sensors and other cutting-edge technology along transmission lines to improve reliability by detecting and responding to problems before they can spread. The “smarter” grid should avert the cascading failures experienced in 2003, which started in Ohio, spread throughout much of the Northeast and cost up to $10 billion a day, said Stephen Whitley, CEO of the New York Independent System Operator, at a briefing yesterday. “I think if this network would have been in place back in ’03, and the operating procedures had been in place to make use of the data that was coming into the control centers, they would have seen a deteriorating condition, and local action would have happened in Ohio before the thing got so bad that in a matter of seconds most of the entire eastern interconnection went down,” he said.