This caused a dip in voltage that rippled across Pepco’s service area. Although regulators and Pepco, the regional utility, were still investigating the outage, indications are that the power loss was triggered when a 230-kilovolt transmission conductor broke off its support structure and fell, cutting off supply to the switching stations of a local Maryland utility. The likely cause of Tuesday's blackout was less dramatic. That massive hurricane, which struck the Eastern Seaboard in October 2012, left more than 8 million customers in 17 states without power - more than 1 million of whom did not get service restored for a week or more. "One of the things being worked on now is a significant effort resulting from Superstorm Sandy to improve the resilience of the grid,” he said. "This grid is likely to evolve away from a centralized system to a hybrid of centralized and more localized controls," said Jeffrey Taft, chief architect for electric grid transformation at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. These changes all point to the need for a more de-centralized grid that would be better able to contain the impact of blows to any part of the system, many experts say.
It also must find ways to handle input from rooftop solar panels that let homeowners control personal energy use while selling excess power to the grid. Crucially, the grid needs to be able to adopt smart technologies that monitor demand fluctuations. Much of the current system is too antiquated to take advantage of technologies that can make the grid more efficient. "If Thomas Edison came back and saw the electric grid, he would still recognize it," said Tom Willie, CEO of Blue Pillar, a company that manages backup energy systems for companies. Much of the backbone of the grid was designed in the 1950s, with 70 percent of transmission lines and transformers now at least 25 years old, and 60 percent of circuit breakers dating back about 30 years, according to a report by the National Governors Association. "All of our critical infrastructures are fragile," said Admiral Bill Gortney, head of U.S.
All those changes would require massive – and expensive – upgrades of the existing transmission system. Among the improvements the DOE may recommend are boosting the system’s ability to store electricity for use at peak times, increasing the use of real-time data to respond faster to outages, and making the grid better able to operate seamlessly with a mix of conventional fuels such as natural gas and the more intermittent energy of renewables such as solar or wind. electrical grid, designed to serve far fewer people than it does today, faces a range of challenges that were unanticipated when it was built, including threats of cyber attacks, a need to incorporate power from renewable energy sources and the likelihood of more frequent and severe storms as a result of climate change. The department recently spearheaded a 15-month review that examined the country’s energy transmission, storage, and distribution infrastructure. Tuesday's widespread power outage came just weeks before the Department of Energy (DOE)is expected to release recommendations for modernizing the country’s electricity infrastructure. By Valerie Volcovici WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The fact that a severed transmission line in Maryland could cut power to much of the nation's capital became the latest warning sign that the country's aging electrical grid can't meet modern demands.