In article <bhj5ql$3sg$1@pencil.math.missouri.edu>, map@economicdemocracy.org
says...

"The government used to take responsibility for ensuring that each
area had enough spare capacity to act as a safeguard in times of
difficulty. But, since the deregulation of the industry in the 1980s,
the rules have been much less strict."

BBC Online (news.bbc.co.uk, specific url at bottom) reports:

What caused the blackouts?

Years of under-investment by power companies have left behind a US
electricity grid that is woefully inadequate to meet increased
demand.

SEE GRAPH:

http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/39405000/gif/_39405625_us_elec_decline2_g\
ra203.gif

The whole purpose of having an inter-linking grid is to ensure that,
should one area have a problem, neighbouring areas can easily send
some extra power in that direction.

What caused the initial problem is still in dispute.

But something knocked out power near the Canadian border and the
system began to demand power for other areas.

However, in this case, the neighbouring areas simply did not have any
spare electricity to help out.

And, far from being able to solve the problem, the extra demand caused
each neighbouring area to fail in turn, causing a domino effect.

"We're a superpower with a third-world grid," former energy secretary
Bill Richardson told CNN television.

"The problem is that nobody is building enough transmission capacity,"
Mr Richardson explained.

Demand for electricity in the US has been growing steadily, alongside
increased use of air conditioning and computers.

But electricity firms have not been investing in building new lines
able to transmit high voltages.

US power demand has surged by 30% in the last decade, while
transmission capacity has grown by just 15%.

That has meant that many of the electricity lines are running very
close to their limits, especially when extreme weather sets in.

And several high-voltage transmission lines are already regularly
jammed up especially in the New York area.

These bottlenecks make the whole system much less responsive to extra
demand or excess capacity in different regions, making it more
difficult for different areas to help each other out.

The government used to take responsibility for ensuring that each area
had enough spare capacity to act as a safeguard in times of
difficulty.

But, since the deregulation of the industry in the 1980s, the rules
have been much less strict.

Furthermore, the increased competition amongst power suppliers has cut
profit margins, making the firms reluctant to make new investments if
not absolutely necessary.

"The problem is that electrical transmission systems are a lot like
schools for politicians - it's very easy to defer maintenance on them
until things fall apart," said Pers Peterson of the University of
California, Berkeley.

"We have a transmission infrastructure that has had very poor
investment and is in a degraded condition," he warned.

The Enron affair has also had a negative effect by weighing heavily on
the share prices of power suppliers.

That has left the firms with less cash to invest in maintenance and
upgrades

..The precise cause of the power failure is not known...Either way,
the shortcoming served to prove just how close to the edge of its
limits the whole of the US electricity grid is.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/3153237.stm

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