Dive Brief:
- Commonwealth Edison (ComEd) and American Superconductor (AMSC) will start planning the installation of a superconductor cable in downtown Chicago.
- The project will install the first commercial superconductor transmission cable in the U.S. and, at three miles long, is the largest such project in the world.
- The Department of Homeland Security has allocated $1.5 million of the promised $60 million in federal funding to ComEd and AMSC.
Dive Insight:
The reason for the new cable — and Homeland Security's interest in the project — is reliability. The AMSC superconductor cable is far more reliable than the traditional utility transmission line as it can carry up to 10 times the power of an average cable.
The cable is one of three potential superconductor projects being sponsored by Homeland Security. After the 9/11 terrorist attacks and the Northeast Blackout in 2003, which left 55 million without power in Canada and the U.S., the reliability of the grid became an issue of national security.
Earlier this year, a leaked Federal Energy Regulatory Commission report on grid security found that a coordinated strike could take out large swaths of the U.S. grids. A Congressional report similarly said such an attack could have a "crippling" effect on the nation's electricity supply — a level of vulnerability Homeland Security and the nation's utilities cannot afford.