Pat Dollard | Young Americans

Our Congress likes to bitch about how ‘unprepared’ this nation is for a massive power outage (and we had one a couple years ago sourced here in Ohio) … and how antiquated our power grid is … While I believe it is the state and regional responsibility, what does it say that the epicenter of our nation’s government is so equally unprepared for disaster, power outage, or even terrorist attack …

Washington DC Examiner -

WASHINGTON - The prospect of having to endure rolling brownouts in addition to the Washington region’s already legendary traffic jams would make even Pollyanna reach for the Prozac. But that could happen in just three years unless state politicians and regulators on both sides of the Potomac approve more transmission lines to handle the Washington region’s ever-increasing thirst for electricity.

Both power-line and traffic gridlock have the same root cause: an inexplicable unwillingness to add the capacity needed to accommodate demand by current residents, plus the tens of thousands of newcomers who are expected to move to the Washington area in the next two decades with their iPhones, computers and hybrid cars.

Unless this region adds miles of high-voltage transmission lines, the existing system will not be able to keep up with demand by 2011, according to PJM Interconnection, an independent, federally regulated regional transmission organization that serves 51 million people in 13 mid-Atlantic states, including Virginia, Maryland and the District of Columbia.

PJM’s board has already approved major transmission-line upgrades to reduce electricity congestion and save consumers millions of dollars a year. One proposed high-voltage line, which will stretch 300 miles from southwestern Pennsylvania through Maryland to Loudoun County in Northern Virginia, is needed to prevent a predictable electric bottleneck on the existing east-west line that will literally turn off the lights if not corrected.

But members of Virginia’s State Corporation Commission and Maryland’s Public Service Commission are dragging their feet, requiring more studies to be done instead of confronting the looming issue of power congestion and possible brownouts head-on. This is the same ostrichlike response that has created the nation’s fourth-worst traffic congestion.

If PJM — which monitors the largest centrally dispatched electric grid in the world 24/7 — says the existing transmission lines will soon be overloaded, state officials should take heed, especially since the company has already completed hundreds of “what if” studies and has already analyzed the region’s future power needs. The decision before state officials should be where to put the new transmission line, not whether it should be built at all.

During California’s preventable power crisis, even techies at Apple and Hewlett-Packard were forced to work part of the day using window light and ballpoint pens.

It doesn’t take a crystal ball to predict a similar scenario in the Washington region if state officials don’t get their heads out of the sand.