Electrical power transmission systems are a key infrastructure and blackouts of theses systems have direct and indirect impacted on the economy as well as national security.
The blackout on August 14th 2003 was the largest in U.S. history. This created a lot of concern on the security of our power grid and how well our power distribution system works.
At a high level the power grid is a simple thing. It consists of many power plants all connected together by wires. This system works very well since it allows for sharing of power resources. If a power company needs to take a power plant off line for maintenance, the other parts of the grid and be router to take up slack.
The amazing thing about the power grid is that it cannot store power or energy, instead power is sent from the power plants directly to the consumers. At any moment, millions of customers are consuming megawatts of power, and at the same time, dozens of power plants are producing exactly the right amount of power to satisfy the demand.
It is important to note that there is no "national power grid" in the United States. In fact, the continental United States is divided into three main power grids:
· The Eastern Interconnected System, or the Eastern Interconnect
· The Western Interconnected System, or the Western Interconnect
· The Texas Interconnected System, or the Texas Interconnect
Map courtesy http://www.eere.energy.gov
These three main interconnections of the U.S. electric power grid are divided into the ten North American Electric Reliability Council (NERC) regions, whose job it is to maintain the reliability of power grid.
Photo courtesy U.S. Department of Energy
A map of U.S. electric control area operators (CAO). Computerized systems at each CAO monitor the power grid activity and balance power generation (supply) with power consumption (demand).
A 15 year study by the National Energy Regulatory Committee (N
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