It is time to invest in a power system of the 21st century

America's power system is also vulnerable to modern challenges - a harsh reality, underlined that over a longer period by Hurricane Sandy left 8.1 million people in the dark. However, should no longer surprise widespread outages. The American Society of civil engineers gave the country's electrical infrastructure a "D" class in 2008. Years earlier described a Clinton era Energy Secretary America as "A superpower with a third world grid". Although power system vulnerability over a decade has been clear, has done little to resolve this critical weakness. Wants the United States to remain globally competitive, must the country finally in the establishment of a 21st century makes sustainable economic growth can invest.

All power system excessively dependent on is central power generation and long-distance trains by nature prone to massive failures, and our system has proved this time and again. Every day nearly 500,000 Americans spend at least two hours without electricity during power fluctuations undesirable and blackouts economic activity to a halt grinding - the country up to $188 billion costs annually. Loss of money after failures will climb only higher in the future, since the economic activities require increasingly reliable electricity. High-tech companies need consistent, quality makes, manufacturing plants and almost all companies to protect need reliable energy for the operation of computers and other information technologies. Unfortunately, the nation's current power system not capable of is to not only comply with modern reliability, such as large power outages but also heavier are more common.

Fortunately, the United States have prepared examples to improve its power system. Germany and other European countries have already shown that modern energy systems are technically possible and economically viable. Investment in an intelligent network that integrates significant amounts of local clean energy improves the reliability of the system, economic losses in the event of. The German power system which sufficiently corresponds to midday energy solar roof includes must of half of the country, a global reliability record in 2011 with 15.31 Minute downtime. Even more impressive is that Germany - the world's fourth-largest economy and is home to a strong industrial base - requirements, which have provided massive amounts of reliable power supply and distributed renewable energy. As well as renewable energy sources provide more than 40 percent of the Danish electrical generation and its grid is much more reliable than in the United States. On average, the United States having three times as many failures as Denmark each outage lasts fourteen times as long. In other words, the United States give about 50 times, how long in the dark, even though Denmark is 40 percent of its electricity from renewable energy sources.

A modern power system utilizes the latest technologies, the growing demand for reliable energy. Enhanced distributed generation protects against cascading blackouts by weakening the impact of each individual power plant or transmission line scheitern households, businesses and industries. Response, advanced smart grid solutions - like demand, inverter and battery storage - improve driving ability of the grid by interference, while at the same time locally all vital dimensions of the power grid: energy, voltage and frequency. Importantly, provides power without waste, power surges or other interruptions in voltage or frequency that currently plague manufacturing plants and sensitive electronics integrated distributed generation with intelligent network solutions. Moreover, modern grid lay the groundwork for standalone energy "Islands" to continuous power during failures of the widespread grid, to provide essential services several universities and research institutions successfully rely on costly power Hurricane sandy and longer outages.

Despite broad claims that renewable energy is unreliable and expensive, the exact opposite is true evidence. As Germany and Denmark have shown, renewables are intermittent but not unpredictable and superior grid reliability can be achieved also with far higher market penetration of renewable energy sources as the United States is waiting in the next 10 years.

An error by the United States to invest in a 21st century power system would substantially more expensive than the costs prove the transition to a modern power system. The Galvin electricity Institute estimates that the annual cost of power outages more than double annual cost of preventive smart grid investments. To maintain our antiquated power system itself, massive investments are $673 billion by 2020 it is estimated that required. Why not invest this money in the creation of a modern makes system that is able to meet the full set of America's energy needs is?

The clean coalition has developed to reach a road map for the United States to a timely and affordable modern energy system. The roadmap contains summaries of the most important technologies and solutions for efficient travel. As long as the nation is still on central power generation and more than 280,000 km of transmission lines, the power system remains overly susceptible to errors for far-spread by accident, weather and deliberate attack. It is time for the United States in a power system of the 21st century, rather than hundreds of billions of dollars, to invest the care a pathetic legacy issues.

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