The grid: Everyone knows the word – few understand it
By Dr. Jay Lehr |January 27th, 2021|General Information|0 Comments
When we flip the switch, the lights come on without anyone thinking about it. This has only been true for the last 100 years in metropolitan areas, and for only about 80 in rural areas with the enactment of the Rural Electrification Act of 1936.
In 1935, only 25 percent of rural homes in the United States had electricity, and there are people alive today who grew up without it. Today few people are even aware of the system that Generates, Distributes and Controls the electricity that flows across he United States. The system is referred to as the grid, which is actually three grids covering the entire lower 48 states.
Over the past century there have been only two area wide blackouts affecting over 30 million people caused by a failure of the transmission system. There have been smaller blackouts mostly caused by storms affecting fewer people. Overall these grids have worked remarkably well. Reliability can still be improved upon but this is primarily a question of placing transmission and distribution lines underground to minimize weather induced outages.
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