Dive Summary:
- While the 34-minute Super Bowl power outage spawned a media frenzy, the consequences pale in comparison to the smart grid's vulnerabilities to a possible terrorist attack; a report from the National Research Council, written in 2007 but declassified in 2012, warns that a well-planned attack could cripple the country's smart grid for "weeks or even months."
- Susan Tierney, co-author of the report, said that the U.S grid is particularly interconnected, meaning that potential problems are rarely isolated and cannot be cut off at the source.
- Massoud Amin, professor at the University of Minnesota and an expert on the U.S electrical grid, claims the grid's aging infrastructure "is not made for this century's demands"; according to Tierney and Amin, in order to solve the problem, both private and public sectors must be willing to splash the cash on a smarter grid.
From the article:
"... Though questions surround what exactly caused the lights to go out in the Big Easy, Amin said he believes a smarter grid would have prevented the incident. He advocates for a self-healing infrastructure that can communicate when problems arise, anticipate potential issues and isolate the area where the problem arises.
While energy experts and politicians on both sides of the aisle agree something needs to be done, little has been. ..."
