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Late Friday night (February 12) as I sat shivering in a 45 degree house more than 24 hours into a power outage caused by 12½ inches of wet snowfall, I began to contemplate my 19th century lifestyle 10 years into the 21st century. My gas oven didn't work because its operations were electronic. I couldn't get to my car because it was trapped in a detached garage and the only way in was an electric garage door opener with no other door available. None of my cordless land-line telephones worked because they, too, required electricity. My cell phone had run out of juice hours earlier. The only heat I had was from a gas log fireplace. I could use my stove, but had to light it using my fireplace lighter. And, using my flashlight, I managed to find an old phone that didn't need electricity. I could dial out, but the ringer on the old phone didn't work, so if anyone called me, I wouldn't know it.

36 hours in the dark and cold brings an appreciation for the delicate nature of our electrical infrastructure and the people, processes and technology it takes to operate and maintain the grid. It seemed to me that our way of life is more dependent than ever on electricity provided over the grid. And that most people outside our industry never give a second thought to how dependent they are on the grid. More importantly, I suppose that inside or outside of the industry, many of us never give the electric grid's vulnerabilities much thought.

So, what would happen if we lost the electric grid? Would the Sunbelt states begin to lose population? It was the deployment of air conditioning after World War II that was the main reason for the Sunbelt's growth. In large cities, how would rapid transit be affected? Many cities are reviving urban areas through electric train/tram installations. What would it be like to lose the internet, radio and TV? We've gotten used to instantaneous 24 hour news cycle, video games and DVR TV. Many Americans rarely read books or go to the library as often we once did. We would probably go back to natural gas lighting for our homes. My parents told me of using coal to heat their homes into the 1950s. Imagine the emissions that would be caused if we were forced to return to coal furnaces—the United States is more than twice the size it was in the 1950s. These musings only begin to scratch the surface of how much our lives are positively affected by the modern electric grid.

I understand that over 200,000 people were without power in the DFW metro area, where I live. Oncor got the power back on to everyone in about four days. That's a pretty good performance from my perspective. Oncor encountered several customers who wouldn't let them trim back trees so that they could get the lines back in operation. And, high winds also slowed repairs significantly. Elizabeth Souder, in her Energy Blog for the Dallas Morning News, noted that one customer parked his Hummer underneath a tree so that Oncor couldn't trim back tree limbs causing power outages to his neighbors. This guy's power was on, while his neighbors froze!¹

So, what about Oncor's push to get its Smart Grid up and running? Did that help with bringing the lights back on? Also, according to Souder, Oncor was able to save about 3,000 man-hours using data pulled from their Smart Grid database. In some neighborhoods, power would come back on for most of the customers. As it stands now, if a customer in that neighborhood does not get its power back on, Oncor remains unaware, unless the customer calls in. In the near future Smart Grid capabilities will allow Oncor to know of this automatically and address the problem. As implementation progresses even more, capabilities will go live.

Where does that leave my musings and me? I'm thankful that it's all nothing but speculation. I'm thankful for 21st century technology, especially the electric grid. And most importantly, the power is back on.

¹ http://energyandenvironmentblog.dallasnews.com/archives/2010/02/oncor-you-have-no-idea-how-dum.html