Friday March 30 11:34 AM ET American Grid Groans From Too Much Electricity

By Vibeke Laroi

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - North America's creaky power grid needs a major overhaul after failing to keep up with a dramatic increase in the amount of electricity clogging the over-stressed system, industry analysts say.

``The North American transmission system is gridlocked,'' said Larry Makovich, senior director for North American power at Cambridge Energy Research Associates (CERA), a Mass.-based independent research firm.

``Many opportunities are being missed, and we're setting ourselves up for a period of continued grinding inefficiency because things are not moving ahead,'' he said, adding there are no signs the situation will improve quickly.

Even though California's wholesale power market showed clear, early signs that it was heading toward a severe supply shortage and crisis, not much was done until a crisis -- rolling blackouts -- actually hit, analysts say.

A similar fate could befall the power grid, the vast system of high-voltage lines crisscrossing the country.

``There are lots of signs that the transmission system is gridlocked -- investment is low, new technologies are not being deployed -- but without a crisis there is nothing that is really forcing change,'' Makovich said.

One reason blackouts hit Californians in January was that a key transmission corridor linking the southern and northern parts of the state was overcrowded with too many electrons.

``They were doing such bizarre things as taking power from Los Angeles to Portland and back to San Francisco because the transmission system was clogged. It was the only way we could get power into the state,'' said Karl Stahlkopf, vice president of power delivery at the Palo Alto, Calif.-based Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI).

``That's a microcosm of what's really happening around the United States. With the exception of Texas, which appears to be in pretty good shape for both generation and transmission, the rest of the United States has seeds of the same troubles that we see here on the west coast,'' he said.

Meager Investment

The main problem is that generation and transmission infrastructure in the U.S. has not kept up with demand.

Over the last decade, U.S. demand for electricity rose by about 30 percent, while transmission capacity grew by only around 15 percent, Stahlkopf said.

In the next decade, electricity use is expected to increase by some 20 to 25 percent, he said.

This is much higher than the 4.2-percent gain in planned transmission facility additions projected over the next 10 years by the North American Electric Reliability Council (NERC), the federal agency in charge of keeping the lights on.

Building new transmission lines is almost impossible because of strong local opposition and the web of government agencies that are typically involved in the review process.

Other roadblocks are the uncertain regulatory environment for building transmission facilities, and a lack of sufficient financial incentives to efficiently operate and expand them.

Unlike the transmission business, which remains regulated, power generation, which is shedding decades of regulation in favor of free market forces, has recently seen a burst of new investment. But Stahlkopf notes: ``If you can't get the power to where you want it to go, it's not going to do you any good.''

A Strained Grid

The power grid, which is being used in ways for which it was not originally designed, is groaning from the strains of deregulation, a growing population and a booming economy.

The basic blueprint of most of North America's power grid dates back to the 1950s or earlier when utilities built enough power plants and power lines to meet their local needs, and later to meet some of the needs of their neighbors.

``It was not looked at as a mercantile highway,'' Stahlkopf said.

But now power is moving ever greater distances and in new directions, the number of transactions has swelled, and electricity is being traded not only by utilities but also by a whole new class of savvy marketers crafting complex deals.

The result is congestion problems throughout most of North America with some areas, like California, New York City, Boston and Minneapolis-St. Paul, facing severe capacity constraints.

If a storm or equipment failure were to knock out a power line, it could trigger a cascade of blackouts across several states, creating far more havoc than localized outages on the low-voltage distribution lines that serve neighborhoods.

But analysts do not see any immediate danger of power line failures.

``A transmission system is fairly robust. We can continue to get along without catastrophic failure for quite some time, even when things aren't right,'' Makovich said.

Solutions

Rather than adding new lines, people are trying to squeeze out as much power as possible from the ones they already have.

For example, system operators can run power lines closer to their capacities by relying on better monitoring equipment, boosting power output by 10 to 40 percent, Stahlkopf said.

And new conductors that have been tested in Europe, but are not yet in commercial use, can raise the capacity of a line by as much as 300 percent, he said.

Analysts also expect new independent, regional grid operators to help ensure that the network of power lines is kept nondiscriminatory, competitive, efficient and reliable.

But progress on reorganizing the power grid has slowed.

``The big problem in California is no one can agree on what went wrong. This has created a tremendous degree of caution on the part of people trying to restructure the power business,'' Makovich said.

``At best, it's delaying the restructuring of the wholesale market and the reorganization of the transmission business. At worse, it's a major reversal in the move to the marketplace.'' http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20010330/ts/usa_transmission_dc_1.html

-- Carl Jenkins (somewherepress@aol.com), March 30, 2001

Answers

Sounds like Y2K pushed a system destined to fail over the edge faster than we are prepared to handle.

-- JP Thomas (y2kids@y2kids.net), April 01, 2001.

The 'unexpected" explosion of the U. S. population since the last Census also did not help.

-- K. (infosurf@yahoo.com), April 01, 2001.