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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: JDN who wrote (443565)	8/15/2003 2:49:11 PM
From: jlallen	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 769667

Do you have any idea how difficult it is to get the approvals to build a new power plant????

To: JDN who wrote (443565)	8/15/2003 3:16:07 PM
From: TigerPaw	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 769667

The problem of preventing such power failures has been that, for the most part, no one has an incentive to invest billions of dollars in new wires, new towers and new transformers. Old equipment may result in the failure of that equipment only. The failure of the grid is due to the dismantling of the regional isolation. Regional isolation is where connections between city sized regions of the grid are made by just a few large transmission lines. This makes it easier to separate one region from others in case of a major short. These lines act like the fuse which protects your house. In order to facilitate Enron-style energy trading additional interconnects are being built. This makes it easier to generate power in Detroit, but sell it in Kansas without overheating the transmission lines. The side-effect is the same as running new wires parallel to the fuse in your house. When a short happens in one area, even if the fuse blows, the power will seek these alternate paths one by one until all fuses are blown. That is what put the east coast in the dark, the energy genius of Dick Cheney. TP