White House Calls for Additional Spending on Nation’s Power Grid
The Obama Administration has released a report on the costs of power outages, which calls for increased spending on the nation’s electric power system. According to the report, power outages cost the economy $18 billion to $33 billion per year. Seven of the ten most costly storms in U.S. history occurred between 2004 and 2012, during a time when the U.S. electric grid was aging. The report suggests new spending should be focused on a few main areas, including “hardening” the system by installing stronger equipment, building more transmission wires and energy storage systems to make the grid better able to absorb shocks and installing more sophisticated technology. Massoud Amin, an electrical engineering professor at the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, who has long advocated increased spending on better grid technology, calculates savings resulting from a better grid would amount to $79 billion to $94 billion per year. Click here for the full story.
