Getting a Grip on the Grid

by Vahid Mahani & Damir Novosel IEEE Spectrum, December 2005 Arguably, the most complex and tightly coupled systems ever constructed for use in daily life are those making up the interconnected electric power grid, which is by its nature vulnerable to system accidents. When such accidents are rife, they must be regarded as the symptom of inadequate grid design and management, itself a product of a bad system of incentives. Tellingly, expert groups investigating Italy’s nationwide blackout of 28 September 2003 and the northeastern North American blackout of 14 August 2003 reached very similar conclusions about their underlying causes. What is more, if recommendations made following the three major western North American blackouts between 1994 and 1996 had been followed, the effects of the 2003 outages would have been far less severe. Read more