Bill Evans wrote in message
...
Perhaps yesterday's, continuing massive power failure in the northeastern
U.S.A. and Canada will convince the power utilities that they should focus
their energies and resources on their core business, rather than entering
a
new business that is already served by telephone companies, competitive
local exchange carriers (CLEC), cable television operators, satellite
services and, in some markets, broadband wireless access (BWA) carriers.

According to the August 15th Toronto Globe and Mail, "critics have been
calling for breakers to be installed throughout North America's grids for
some time, only to be told by the grid operators (power companies) that
there is no money to fund such a massive infrastructure overhaul."

Why would regulators, politicians and the power companies' shareholders be
interested in spending billions of dollars entering a new business when
they
obviously have major challenges in their own backyard. Seems like time to
"stick to the knitting".

William E. Evans, P. Eng.
VE4UD


There are certainly points where individual utilities connect to the "grid"
that would allow them to disconnect when unstable conditions are detected,
but I suspect the real problem is that many of them can't do it without
suffering major load shedding because they are buying, rather than
generating, a lot of their power. Cutting off a lot of their customers on
their own will bring political heat (like who gets to be the lucky ones). On
the other hand, when the gamble fails and there is a complete failure, just
blame it on "the grid"

Bill Evans wrote in message
...
Perhaps yesterday's, continuing massive power failure in the northeastern
U.S.A. and Canada will convince the power utilities that they should focus
their energies and resources on their core business, rather than entering
a
new business that is already served by telephone companies, competitive
local exchange carriers (CLEC), cable television operators, satellite
services and, in some markets, broadband wireless access (BWA) carriers.

According to the August 15th Toronto Globe and Mail, "critics have been
calling for breakers to be installed throughout North America's grids for
some time, only to be told by the grid operators (power companies) that
there is no money to fund such a massive infrastructure overhaul."

Why would regulators, politicians and the power companies' shareholders be
interested in spending billions of dollars entering a new business when
they
obviously have major challenges in their own backyard. Seems like time to
"stick to the knitting".

William E. Evans, P. Eng.
VE4UD


There are certainly points where individual utilities connect to the "grid"
that would allow them to disconnect when unstable conditions are detected,
but I suspect the real problem is that many of them can't do it without
suffering major load shedding because they are buying, rather than
generating, a lot of their power. Cutting off a lot of their customers on
their own will bring political heat (like who gets to be the lucky ones). On
the other hand, when the gamble fails and there is a complete failure, just
blame it on "the grid"