The Great India Blackout - Could It Happen Here?
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06 Aug 2012
by Ellen Vancko
The US grid is in vastly better condition than India’s, but major outages here have been costly and preventable. Given the threats posed by human error, solar storms, and cyberattack, we should take advantage of our resource diversity and get ahead of whatever problems may arise.
T
he massive power outages that swept across India this week leaving hundreds of millions of people without power brought back vivid memories of the August 14, 2003 blackout that left more than 50 million people in the Northeastern United States and Ontario, Canada in the dark. I’m not suggesting that India’s electric system is in any way comparable to ours, but we should remember that large blackouts have happened here and can happen again.
