You're a proponent of creating a "Self-Healing Smart Grid." What is that?

A smart grid is one that has real-time monitoring and reaction, which allows the system to constantly modify and tune itself to an optimal state. It also has anticipation, which enables the system to automatically look for problem areas that could trigger larger problems and disturbances. And it has rapid isolation, which allows the system to isolate parts of the network that are going through failureor about to failfrom the rest of the system, enabling a more rapid restoration.

As a result of these three functions, the self-healing grid can reduce power outages, minimize their length, detect abnormal signals (whether it's cyber attacks, material failure, human error, or a storm that is beginning to blow), make adaptive reconfigurations to the system, and isolate disturbances to eliminate or at least minimize their impact on the larger system.

Is our current grid getting worse or just stagnating?

It's both, actually. Infrastructure investments started declining in the early 1980s and have continued ever since. When we look at the whole, we have invested less and less in the overall infrastructure, while we're trying to push more and more through it. We had 149 outages that affected 50,000 or more consumers during the first five years in the last decade, 2000 to 2004. From 2005 to 2009, that jumped to 349. The infrastructure is unfortunately agingto the point that 18 years ago depreciation started exceeding the actual investment.

Steps toward upgrading to a smart grid have not really been done. The stimulus plan provided a good down payment, and industry met the challengethey came up with more than 50 percentbut it amounts to $ 7.8 billion total, which is only a fraction of what's needed.

What factors are hindering improvements to the U.S. grid?

One of them is that, on any given day, there are half a million people in America without electricity for 2 or more hours per day. However, outages are not always in the same location, and because of that, we have a very short attention span. But coping as a primary strategy is ultimately a defeatist strategy.

Second, there is a lack of leadership in the public and private sectors. There is a lot of uncertainty, and that hinders the development of the smart grid. Congress should incentivize investment in the infrastructure. We can create jobs in this areavery high-paying jobs. Just to integrate distributed resources such as wind power, we need to add about 42,000 miles of high-voltage line, and that would create over 210,000 jobs.

Third, there is a divide between federal jurisdiction and local jurisdiction. The high-voltage grid, for the most part, is under federal jurisdiction, but the distribution systems are under the local jurisdictionmostly public utility commissions. That basically kills the incentive for any utility group to do regional work and upgrade on a regional basis. We need coordination in the investment in the grid and in the research and development areas. We only invest 0.17 percent of net sales back into R&D and innovation. Yet all of society, our quality of life, fundamentally depends on reliable electricity.

How much do you estimate a nationwide self-healing smart grid would cost? Is it worth the price?

The cost of a smarter grid would depend on how much instrumentation you actually put in, such as the communications backbone and security. The total price tag ranges around $340 billion to $480 billion, which, over a 20-year period, would be something like $20 billion per year. But right off the bat, the benefits are $70 billion per year in reduced costs from outages, and on a year where there are lots of hurricanes, lots of ice storms, and other disturbances, that benefit even goes further. In addition, it would increase system efficiency by 4.5 percentthat's another $20.4 billion a year.

But this is also about job creation and an economic benefit. With the actual investment, for every dollar, the return is about $2.80 to $6 to the broader economy. And this figure is very conservative.

Wouldn't implementing software throughout the grid make it more susceptible to hacking or sabotage?

Security has to be part of the architecture of the design, not glued on as an afterthought. So you create what I call defense in depth. You have multiple, fast configurations in the architecture and self-healing built into the infrastructure. So if one part by some chance gets corrupted, attacked, or hijacked, you have a risk management approach to that.

I would also recommend mandating security for metering infrastructure. To provide protection against personal profiling, to guarantee customer data privacy, and to avoid surveillance or home invasions.

Do you see a grid overhaul in the U.S.'s future?

I hope we do . . . If you look at a macro picture, whenever we make this type of a big advancement, such as the moon shot or the national highway system, and when we put the American will, know-how, and passion behind any big, hairy, audacious goal, we succeed.

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