A Year After Katrina, Power Failure Can Still Cost Lives
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
August 26, 2006
Contact:
Crystal Borde
cborde@vancomm.com
(202) 331-4323
A Year After Katrina, Power Failure Can Still Cost Lives
Hurricane No Excuse for Power Outages
Hurricane Katrina was a dramatic wake-up call that showed Americans both how vulnerable and how critical the electric power system is during times of crisis. Yet a year later, experts are decrying the lack of action toward keeping the power on when we need it most.
“Had the electric power system in New Orleans functioned during Hurricane Katrina, lives might have been saved and the city, a year later, might look quite different,” said Kurt Yeager, executive director of the Galvin Electricity Initiative. “Technology exists that could have kept the electricity on in hospitals and other vital facilities during the hurricane. Instead, every summer, the electric power system in New Orleans and around the country is shut down on a daily basis by the most routine thunderstorms.”
The Galvin Electricity Initiative, launched by former Motorola chief Robert W. Galvin, is creating the business and technological blueprints to transform the nation’s outdated electric power system. While other groups and government agencies are researching the necessary changes, the Galvin Initiative is proactively evaluating sites to build commercial prototypes of a re-imagined system that will jumpstart the process of national electric power transformation.
Technology already exists to make the system both smart and secure. Digital enhancements to the grid would allow the system to sense problems and instantaneously begin to draw power from locally protected distributed generation and storage facilities and from unaffected areas. New materials would also make power lines stronger, more resilient and therefore less vulnerable. What’s lacking now is the incentive and commitment to put this technology in place.
The need for transformation was made dramatically clear in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Industry standards require that hospitals keep operating during a disaster such as a power outage. Yet the reality is that few can remain fully operational for long. New Orleans’ Memorial Medical Center ran out of fuel for its generators after just 24 hours, while flood waters were still rising. By comparison, Jackson, Mississippi’s Baptist Memorial Hospital, which has an efficient on-site generation and storage system, remained nearly 100 percent operational during and immediately after the hurricane.
Today, the utility that supplies power to New Orleans still has not reconnected certain sections of the city. The New Orleans subsidiary of the utility, Entergy, declared bankruptcy as a result of the Katrina losses and is now working with state and federal government officials to stave off a massive rate hike in order to stay afloat.
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