- BOULDER -- Energy experts
have been warning about large-scale blackouts in North America since the
early eighties.
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- Bill Browning of the Rocky Mountain Institute in Colorado
says a report for the U.S. Pentagon in 1982 cautioned the American government
about the fragility of the power grid system in North America.
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- The institute is an energy think tank. Browning runs
the green development section.
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- "Everyone is pulling power and there's lots of big
stations on the grid. All you need is one tenuous problem and it cascades
throughout," Browning told CBC News Online.
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- Other experts agree.
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- "It's pretty close to peak demand," Gerry Angiovine
of Navigant Consulting in Calgary, told CBC News Online.
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- "If suddenly you get one or two of the big suppliers
going down you may have a situation where you've got more being drawn than
the system can supply" he said.
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- Browning says a few years ago the same thing happened
on the West Coast. Six states lost power all because a squirrel got burned
on one of the transformers at a crucial time.
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- "Can you imagine? The entire power system breaks
down because of a small rodent?"
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- He says the solution would be to have something called
"distributed generation" ó a grid system supported by
smaller producers, almost on a building by building scale. Browning says
other energy sources such as fuel cells and micro-turbines should be used
to shoulder the burden of energy distribution.
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- "At one time, the grid system seemed logical. If
you have to do maintenance on one plant, then the grid connects everyone
so the power keeps up. But that is also a fragility in the system."
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- William Rosehart of the University of Calgary disagrees.
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- Rosehart told CBC Television that the system is far from
fragile.
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- "Because of the high temperature, the system is
at capacity and it becomes susceptible. What's been missing is that in
the last 10 years there's been no incentive to improve the capacity, so
the ability to deal with problems is decreased."
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- Browning says energy experts such as himself are not
surprised by the current blackout. He says it is bound to happen from time
to time.
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- "The system, as we have designed it, is brittle.
The only way we can make it resilient is to make it a (mixture of sources)
so that if portion of it goes down, we can have islands of power still
operating."
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- Browning says it often takes a major event to make authorities
realize something needs to be done.
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- Written by CBC News Online staff
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- Copyright © CBC 2003
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- http://www.cbc.ca/stories/2003/08/14/energyexpert_030814
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