Perspective

A Year After the Blackout:

Grid reliability is still at risk unless the industry quickly takes action.

"Those who do not learn from history," the cliché goes, "are doomed to repeat it." The report issued by the U.S.-Canada Power System Outage Task Force on last summer's massive blackout in the Northeast certainly offers an excellent and thorough understanding of the causes of the event, which remains fresh in the industry's mind. Why, then, can't grid experts offer stronger assurances that similar failures will not occur in the future?

Rising demands and continuing low grid investment remain on a collision course. Transmission capital budgets have seen a modest post-blackout uptick that is nevertheless barely enough to keep pace with load growth and replacement, let alone boost system margins to foster more robust competition.

California's overtaxed grid has remained on a knife's edge all summer, and the pre-Olympics blackout in southern Greece reminds us of how rapidly and spectacularly grids can fail when they become unstable. Beyond improved understanding of the causes of blackouts, the industry must have clear grid investment signals to lift the specter of risk.