Urgently Needed: A Dumber, Tougher Grid

Urgently Needed: A Dumber, Tougher Grid

by Bill Sweet

Since the hurricane and “nor’easter” that devastated the New Jersey and New York coasts two weeks ago, leaving millions without heat, gasoline and electricity, there has been a lot of loose talk about how a smarter grid might moderate the effects of such catastrophes in the future.
The smart grid will indeed have a role to play—especially in speeding recovery. As Massoud Amin of the University of Minnesota recently put it, “a more resilient, secure and smarter infrastructure…would localize impacts and enable a speedier restoration of the services.”
However, what we need even more urgently than a more agile and interactive grid incorporating advanced computing and communications in all dimensions is a grid that’s basically old-fashioned, stupid and really, really tough.http://spectrum.ieee.org/energywise/energy/the-smarter-grid/urgently-needed-a-dumber-tougher-grid?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+IeeeSpectrumEnergywiseBlog+%28Energywise+-+IEEE+Spectrum%29