Dual Infrastructures: the Power System and the Information System
In the power industry, the focus has been almost exclusively on implementing equipment that can keep the power system reliable. Until recently, communications and information flows have been considered of peripheral importance. However, increasingly the Information Infrastructure that supports the monitoring and control of the power system has come to be critical to the reliability of the power system. With the exception of the initial power equipment problems in the August 14, 2003 blackout (see Figure 1), the on-going and cascading failures were almost exclusively due to problems in providing the right information to the right place within the right time. August 14, 2003 Blackout (NOAA processed the data from the Defense Meteorological Satellite Program. Please credit NOAA/DMSP)