FEATURE ARTICLE
Reengineering the Electric Grid
Deregulation places new demands on one of the world's largest engineered structures—and presents new opportunities for educated consumers
Thomas Overbye
Imagine a market in which a vital commodity is nonstorable—it must be produced as needed—while consumers expect to immediately draw exactly as much as they need at any time. Then imagine a massively interconnected delivery system in which a failure in a single location can propagate through the network with lightning speed. You have imagined North America's electrical grid. This complex industry is now in the throes of a transition from regulated utility to free market. The transition has not only widespread economic implications but also many engineering ones, including the question of how such a system can be kept reliable.
Go to Article