Rebuilding Our Aging Grid

In recent years, the electric utilities industry has seen a significant increase in investment dollars. Load growth, anticipation of mandatory, more stringent reliability standards and new generators seeking interconnections are keeping engineers at Entergy and other utilities hard at work. When you consider that typical age-related failures begin to accelerate after 40 years, you can only conclude that much of the fleet is at risk of increasing failures, which will affect costs as well as the ability to deliver reliable service. Utilities are challenged to find the resources and the manpower needed to rebuild aging and overstressed grid components. The difficulties they face can be more easily addressed by collaborating with one another, by working through their associations such as AEIC, and by working closely with vendor partners.