U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)'s Grid Modernization Initiative is working to make sure our future power grid can meeting our nation’s growing energy demand. Curious about who we are? Click through to learn what GMI is all about!
David Akers
4mo
Will the Grid Modernization Initiative provide the power grid with protection against electromagnetic pulse (EMP) attacks?
Professor of CompSci & Consultant
4moWell, the grid very desperately needs much better data sharing and supporting communications, which has been mentioned as a major contributing factor of all major blackouts that I have looked at since 1999, and of course the big New York and surrounding one in 1965. So maybe DOE can one day put out a BOA for someone to do a convincing ROI analysis on the benefits of greater communications, because the default answer to much more sharing (which IMHO is needed) is that the CEOs and lawyers for utilities is of course "No!". And then FERC hopefully has enough teeth to mandate much better sharing and better communications to support it (no, MPLS does not give any usable QoS; ask ISO New England and others!). Because we know through experience that most utilities won't do anything unless there is a (figurative) gun to their head, and both the raison d'être and modus operandi of NERC is to do the absolute minimum to keep FERC off the utilities' backs.