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Issues Even though our current
grid is 99.97% reliable, power disturbances still cause major
problems for the U.S. industry.1 Specifically,
the US economy loses more than $150 billion dollars every
year due to power outages - that's approximately $500 for
every man, woman and child, according to the DOE.2
In some cases, utilities don’t know there is an outage until
a customer calls in to report it. Even then, some power companies
need to visit the scene before knowing exactly which parts
of the grid are damaged. |
When power
disturbances are not handled quickly, there is risk
of cascading failure. When a power line goes down, the
electricity that once flowed down the damaged line is
forced down other paths. If those other lines are already
close to full capacity, the onslaught of electricity
will cause them to overload as a result of congestion,
creating a domino effect that is the leading cause of
massive blackouts.3
America has suffered substantial
power failures five times in the past 40 years—three
of which occurred in the past nine years.4
Increased demand for energy combined with lack of real-time
information on the grid has led to this increase in
outages. |
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