Our Hydro-electricity accounts for some 20% of our current needs. Hydro Power; think of that? We do use the most electricity per capita than any other country in the World, but we also have the strongest middle class and rank near the top in quality of life and standard of living. For instance try living in Baghdad at 120 degrees with no air conditioning. We have done quite well with our hydro in this country and much of this has to due with the abundant flow of water. Of course recently in many regions of the United States severe droughts have hurt our ability to make electricity from hydro.

Instead of paying attention to our needs as the population grows we are covering our situation we immediately find a scapegoat when things go wrong; Heads rolling on the Black out blame game. Wow, that is a fast acting after the blackouts; who can we blame? Lets blame Bob?

http://www.bizjournals.com/columbus/storie...y15.html?f=et58

It must be obvious to anyone who is reviewing these things from a far that we love to blame others after the fact instead of covering the bases before the fact. It is said that the transmission lines for the power grid need an upgrade of 600 Billion, which is not significant especially considering the enormity of the problem and the huge expansive distances it needs to cover, but really we should be looking into the infrastructure costs on a pay as you go basis. It seems a little un-nerving that all of a sudden we have this huge problem, the expanding countries building reactors right now are China, Taiwan, India (8) and Russia building six meaning it along with India will most likely export energy. Thus proving my point that we should be producing and selling to Mexico, Canada and Central America. Ships with giant ion lithium batteries could also take power to the islands of the Caribbean, since the technology exists now and can be used for such a purpose. Three ships, one in route, one loading their battery, one docked and supplying electricity. There is a Canadian company with this technology, which puts large batteries on a huge rail car system. We should be looking into this also at terminals for Burlington Santa Fe and CSX, if you get a power outage you will have enough minimal power back in service to keep chaos at bay within 8 hours. As a matter of fact Energy and Power have become so important that it is one of those things that you need triple redundancy back up for all the time. There are many different ideas for back-up batteries during power outs, think of the back-up which means the would be international terrorist thinks he can disrupt your system and as soon as he tries he is caught by a series of sensors and all he did is cause a flicker, while the most important systems reboot and spring into action.

http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/conte...09/b3772105.htm

The flow of energy and the integrity of the system can be maintained. Having automatic back-ups means we can do just that. Computer hacker, attacker, mother nature, no problem, back up and running in a nano-second. In a decade or so we could have such systems up and running on the scale, which would suffice in the case of a large black out or regional grid failure. Lets think about it.