Time Bomb: Sandy Exposes Aging US Electric Grid – CBN.com

Modern America requires electricity, a utility many of us take for granted – until we lose it. Just ask those who lived in the dark courtesy of Hurricane Sandy. .. The Christian Broadcasting Network CBN http://www.cbn.com

America’s largest cities are ticking time bombs the problem lies in a power grid that’s simply too old and can’t keep up Transformers already exceed their intended lifespan and a growing population puts greater stress on a framework never meant to see the 21st century New York City’s infrastructure

Is among the oldest in the country and experts say if upgrades are not made a priority the results could be catastrophic and not just here in the city but worldwide we witnessed just weeks ago how Hurricane Sandy brought the world’s financial center and America’s largest city to its knees and experts tell us

That multi-billion dollar disaster pales in comparison to what could happen with a complete meltdown when you start having damage to the electrical transmission and distribution system that’s where it’s catastrophic essentially it’s like a toaster you start heating up the system to the point where equipment actually becomes damaged

New York’s electricity moves from power plants to Transformers at a very high voltage they transform it to a lower more usable voltage that’s then sent throughout the city if a Transformer or switch yard is taken out the connection between the power plant and all the local lines is lost this means no lights

But also no water or steam that happened during Sandy with this explosion at the 14th Street switch yard there are hundreds of thousands of people that have no electricity which in New York because it’s a vertical city has no water we’ve also seen the collapse of failure of the steam system the steam

Plants rely on ConEd power to be able to operate the plant uh some have generators but not all so if they lose sustained plant in the summertime it is it is difficult a lot of customers are in trouble if they lose in the wintertime it’s significant because now you have uh major

Residential buildings that are all dependent upon steam the total blackout in New York City from Sandy lasted for a matter of days while much of the city pulled together frustrations grew in other areas leading to looting and Chaos Law Enforcement Officers fear a longer term scenario there is such a thing as

Right and wrong and there’s such a thing as good and evil and the evil will come out when the electric goes down how long can you humanly stay on your feet when you’re trying to evacuate a building trying to evacuate the subway tunnels trying to get injured to the hospital

And keeping an eye on those people that would take advantage of the ordinary person and to that the real threat of terrorists the terrorists are amongst us the minute we’re preoccupied with getting someone from an elevator emptying a subway train all those other things they will take advantage and

That’s what they look for this is the Farragut switch yard the electricity that comes through here Powers the financial district and also much of the New York City subway system as you can see it’s only protected by a flimsy fence and minimum security if it’s accessible to us experts say it’s also

Accessible to terrorists as horrible as 9 11 was to this nation and to the city had the terrorists flown two planes into this facility the consequences to New York City and to the nation would have been orders of magnitude more damaging than what actually happened Adam Victor of transgas developments took a potential

Infrastructure solution to city leaders back in 2001 a co-generation plant able to keep up with 21st century technology this plant would be in a position because of its location to reinforce the electric grid and the stream grid we’d be in a place where we could actually Electrify the New York City subway

Tunnel our plant would have what’s called black stock capability but even if the grid went down our plant would stay up and running we also decided to bury the plant and on top of this plant we were going to put a park Victor’s plan would have used private investors

To pay for the plant under a public-private partnership and he says it would have been clean and green we would have cleaned up the land we would have cleaned up the water we would have cleaned up the air with this facility Victor maintains however that politics

And lack of local support led to a rejection of his plan in court he adds that if this co-generation plant had been in operation it could have kept the lights on during Hurricane Sandy so what’s the hold up in fixing this aging system CBN News spoke with former New

York Governor George Pataki it costs money and it’s always hard for government to find money it might not be popular enough it certainly never is popular when you have an infrastructure project going near where someone lives or work but you can’t just focus on the issues of today you also have to think

About what the needs are tomorrow and it’s a balancing act and some people can’t do it very often the future needs the infrastructure needs are what forgotten Victor says he will continue to fight with the hope that city and state leaders will get on board before it’s too late

All infrastructure that has ever been built has failed and it’s a matter of time and all the infrastructure no matter how good will eventually fail and the sooner that we augment and reinforce this old infrastructure the safer we will be to prevent that Day of Reckoning Mark Martin CBN News New York