A yahoo news story:
More blackouts seen as infrastructure groans
NEW YORK (Reuters) - An outage that left more than 400,000 New Yorkers without electricity on Wednesday marks the beginning of another sweaty U.S. summer in which the nation's aging power infrastructure struggles to keep the air conditioning on.
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Faced with the choice of hiking electricity prices to build up the U.S. power network or foregoing infrastructure upgrades to keep prices low, the United States has chosen the latter, leaving consumers more vulnerable to blackouts when demand peaks with rising temperatures.
Americans on average lose about 214 minutes of power per year compared with 70 minutes in the United Kingdom, 53 minutes in France and six minutes in Japan, according to a study by the Electricity Industry Center at Carnegie Mellon University.
"U.S. power prices are cheaper than in the rest of the world, but we have lower reliability. It is a choice that we've made," said Electricity Industry Center Executive Director Jay Apt.
"Countries like Japan invest a great deal more into the infrastructure, (like) harder utility poles and towers, but the cost of power is twice as high," Apt added.
Some 136,000 Consolidated Edison Inc. customers in New York lost power for about an hour on Wednesday during hot and humid weather, recalling blackouts last year that left parts of the city without electricity for more than a week.
While experts say lightning likely caused Wednesday's outage in New York, they warn consumers may face more blackouts this summer when the mercury spikes.
"Aside from the weather related incidents, we are very concerned that the nation could see more blackouts as the demand for power on extreme weather days continued to come perilously close to available supplies in some regions," said Kevin Kolevar, director of the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Electricity Delivery and Energy Reliability.
To help ease the electricity crunch, states need to work together on a regional basis to encourage the construction of transmission lines and power plants, and the adoption of more demand response and efficiency programs, experts said.
"We need to face reality. The demand for power is growing, while we are shutting some plants due to environmental reasons. The states need to accept that we need to begin planning more lines and more plants," Kolevar said.
Last summer, probably the only thing that prevented rolling blackouts in Southern California, Kolevar noted, was the use of programs that shed about 900 megawatts of demand.
Demand response programs provide customers with money or other incentives to reduce their power usage for reliability reasons or during times when prices are high.
More blackouts seen as infrastructure groans
NEW YORK (Reuters) - An outage that left more than 400,000 New Yorkers without electricity on Wednesday marks the beginning of another sweaty U.S. summer in which the nation's aging power infrastructure struggles to keep the air conditioning on.
ADVERTISEMENT
Faced with the choice of hiking electricity prices to build up the U.S. power network or foregoing infrastructure upgrades to keep prices low, the United States has chosen the latter, leaving consumers more vulnerable to blackouts when demand peaks with rising temperatures.
Americans on average lose about 214 minutes of power per year compared with 70 minutes in the United Kingdom, 53 minutes in France and six minutes in Japan, according to a study by the Electricity Industry Center at Carnegie Mellon University.
"U.S. power prices are cheaper than in the rest of the world, but we have lower reliability. It is a choice that we've made," said Electricity Industry Center Executive Director Jay Apt.
"Countries like Japan invest a great deal more into the infrastructure, (like) harder utility poles and towers, but the cost of power is twice as high," Apt added.
Some 136,000 Consolidated Edison Inc. customers in New York lost power for about an hour on Wednesday during hot and humid weather, recalling blackouts last year that left parts of the city without electricity for more than a week.
While experts say lightning likely caused Wednesday's outage in New York, they warn consumers may face more blackouts this summer when the mercury spikes.
"Aside from the weather related incidents, we are very concerned that the nation could see more blackouts as the demand for power on extreme weather days continued to come perilously close to available supplies in some regions," said Kevin Kolevar, director of the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Electricity Delivery and Energy Reliability.
To help ease the electricity crunch, states need to work together on a regional basis to encourage the construction of transmission lines and power plants, and the adoption of more demand response and efficiency programs, experts said.
"We need to face reality. The demand for power is growing, while we are shutting some plants due to environmental reasons. The states need to accept that we need to begin planning more lines and more plants," Kolevar said.
Last summer, probably the only thing that prevented rolling blackouts in Southern California, Kolevar noted, was the use of programs that shed about 900 megawatts of demand.
Demand response programs provide customers with money or other incentives to reduce their power usage for reliability reasons or during times when prices are high.
