There has been a six-fold increase in grid outages in the United States since 2000, according to a study by the Pew Charitable Trust. The number of disruptions have risen from two to 18 per month.
The study — “Distributed Generation: Cleaner, Cheaper, Stronger – Industrial Efficiency in the Changing Utility Landscape” — reports that there have been 300 “grid disturbances” in the past three years and annual costs of such disturbances is $150 billion. The report also found that 90 percent of new energy capacity since 2000 has been from natural gas and renewable sources and that by 2020 40 GW of coal-fired capacity will be slated for retirement.
This week, Space-Time Insight, which provides “situational intelligence solutions,” entered into a strategic cooperation agreement with Omnetric Group to offer advanced outage management technologies to North American utilities. The release points out that the Consortium for Electric Infrastructure to Support a Digital Society estimates that the U.S. economy loses $104 billion to $160 billion to unplanned power outages annually.