Today marks the 10th anniversary of the massive Northeast blackout due, in part to a downed tree on a power line in Ohio and the failure of the distribution system to contain the outage locally. 45 million people in the US and 10 million in Canada were without power.

Since then, the utilities have reported some improvements on the interconnects to keep the power flowing in case of localized outages. Hardening the distribution system is a huge concern, especially with all manner of natural disasters occurring in recent years - tornadoes, hurricanes, and flooding being the most common. Nationally, people have on average 1 blackout a year - usually weather caused.

Around here, PSEG is installing new power lines/poles, and some people are upset because the new poles smell and are much taller than they thought they’d be. They ignore that the new poles are more likely to survive wild weather, have new lightning grounding systems, and carry more power so that the grid is more stable.