Disaster, Non-Disaster | Green Energy News

August 10, 2003 – Vol.8 No.20

DISASTER, NON-DISASTER.

In some of the strongest language this editor has yet seen as an editorial opinion, one of the nation’s oldest and respected newspapers, the Baltimore Sun, spoke this week of the deaths of up to 3000 people in France because of extreme temperatures as a 9/11-sized death toll. To readers this compares the deaths in France to the act of terrorism.

And, after some discussion of global warming, and that the deaths in France may be related, the paper clearly warns...

“Doing nothing (on global warming), on the other hand, may one day look like a deadly criminal act. The country (the U.S.) is vigilantly trying to guard itself against terrorist threats -- but what will that avail us if we kill ourselves through climate change?”

(Visit the Baltimore Sun at http://www.sunspot.net/ (click Opinion, Editorials, The Sweat Ahead, 8/15/03)

But the disaster in France was overshadowed in the news by the Big Blackout. Though certainly a major inconvenience to people and a disruption in business activity, the largest blackout in U.S. history has also turned into the best-reported, non-disaster in the nation’s history. No one died, buildings didn’t collapse and no one was even hurt by the lengthy cut in power to portions of the northeast, midwest and Canada.

Politicians, government officials and electric utility experts quickly jumped to look for blame, the underlying causes, and to seek solutions. Yet all of them, so far, have only considered upgrading the power grid itself, not looked at overall electric energy issues. For example, why are systems that involve public safety - rail transit, water and sewer, elevators, traffic lights and air traffic control - not required to have back-up power systems? Had there been a major accident on a rail system, or deaths in stopped elevators, there most certainly would be calls for this requirement.

While the experts and officials talk of major investment in improving the grid, the best solution - in terms of preventing another outage - could be the opposite. Begin snipping some of the wires on the international grid.

If small grids - micro grids that powered only communities or neighborhoods - were created, for instance, troubles within that grid would be contained. If governments asked for more distributed power - fuel cells, clean combustion generators, solar and wind systems to power everything from individual buildings to subway systems - those power generating systems, and their back-up systems, would be up and operating when power outages were elsewhere.

There’s a precedent, too, for the success of distributed generation. The Internet. It kept humming throughout the shutdown. Where people had their own power supply - the batteries in their laptops - they could still connect. And Internet service providers, as well as land-line operators - who almost universally have back-up power systems - kept the bits and bytes flowing. (Interestingly enough many cell phone networks failed - apparently those operators don’t understand the need for power back-up.)