How Healthy Is Our Electrical Grid? It Depends on How You Measure It

I knew the power outage at yesterday’s Super Bowl would not go unnoticed.  Sure enough, a reader, Johannes Schmied, comments:

Super Bowl XLVII is history – it was a thrilling game worth watching. Yet what will stay best in my mind was the power cut that caused a second half time break to the match. Even though the cause for this power outage has not been fully analyzed yet, it showed me again, how vulnerable our energy systems have become and how heavily our society is dependent on energy. We need to enhance renewable energy production, create innovative solutions for energy networks and raise environmental awareness.

 I am not alone to believe that these will be among our major goals for the next decades…

… and I want to contribute as much as possible for reaching these goals – together with your company I feel this is possible.

As I wrote back to this fine fellow, his help is more than welcome.  And he’s 100% correct in what he writes here.  People often say, erroneously, that the problem we face in alternative energy is that we’re trying to fix something that is not broken.  I.e., in the U.S. at least, we have reliable and inexpensive energy. 

Why is this erroneous?  Yes, it’s fairly reliable – until it goes out when it’s needed most.  And yes, it’s inexpensive, as long as you don’t count most of the real costs — to our health, our national security, and the wellbeing of our environment.