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Preventing Blackouts: Building a Smarter Power Grid | Scientific American

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A smarter power grid that automatically responds to problems could reduce the rising number of debilitating blackouts BY MASSOUD AMIN & PHILLIP F. SCHEWE Times Square, New York City during the east coast blackout on August 14, 2003. Matthew Peyton Getty Images Editor's Note: This story was originally published in the May 2007 issue of Scientific American and is being reproduced here on the occasion of the fourteenth anniversary of the 2003 blackout in the northeast United States. August 14, 2003, was a typical warm day in the Midwest. But shortly after 2:00 P.M. several power lines in northern Ohio, sagging under the high current they were carrying, brushed against some overgrown trees and shut down. Such a disturbance usually sets off alarms in a local utility’s control room, where human operators work with controllers in neighboring regions to reroute power flows around the injury site. On this day, however, the alarm software failed, leaving local operators unaware of the problem. O

August 13, 2008 12 min read Add Us On Google Add SciAm Preventing Blackouts: Building a Smarter Power Grid A smarter power grid that automatically responds to problems could reduce the rising number of debilitating blackouts By Massoud Amin & Phillip F. Schewe Times Square, New York City during the east coast blackout on August 14, 2003. Matthew Peyton Getty Images Editor's Note: This story was originally published in the May 2007 issue of Scientific American and is being reproduced here on the occasion of the fourteenth anniversary of the 2003 blackout in the northeast United States. August 1

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