Five years after the worst blackout in North American history, the country’s largest utilities say the U.S. power system faces the prospect of even bigger and more damaging outages.
The specific flaws that led to 50 million people losing power in 2003 have largely been addressed, they say, but even bigger problems loom. Excess generating capacity in the system is shrinking, for example, and power-plant construction has slowed as costs to build and operate plants have soared.
At the same time, it is estimated that electricity use will increase 29 percent between 2006 to 2030 — much of it driven by residential growth, according to a government report issued in June
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