如何避免“桑迪”式瘫痪重演

（１）分布式电力存储

    今天，我们的电力系统不能存储它自身生产的电力。电力从电厂生产出来之后，必须马上使用，或者导入地下。如果不马上使用或导入地下，随着高功率电线与树木和其他陆基物体的相互作用，电线就会变热、松弛甚至开始发生故障。这也是造成2003年大断电的原因之一。由于电网中没有任何存储设备，因此一旦发生故障，也就没有任何缓冲空间，整个系统就会像多米诺骨牌一样迅速瘫痪。

    想象一下，一个没有硬盘的计算机网络是什么样子——在这样的网络中，必须实时使用所有产生的数据，既不能存储也不能收回任何数据。这显然是个荒唐的网络，但今天我们的电网恰恰就是这个样子。

    把电力存储到“硬盘”里历来都是个非常昂贵的项目，而且电力部门也想避免任何可能会提高用户费率的项目。好消息是，电力存储如今正变得越来越便宜，而且第一批商用电力存储单元今年就将在全美范围内安装了。

    安装了这些电池后，无论是建筑物还是家庭都可以按更便宜的非峰值电价用电，因此几年内就可以充分证明自己的价值。另外，一旦发生自然灾难，这些电池还可以提供备用电源和线路调节功能，避免电器电路被烧坏。有了电池设备，我们无需使用汽油和柴油发电，也能享受这些好处。

    德州的普西迪小镇就决定在它的电网中安装电池系统，因为它的电网与德州电网只靠一根线路连接。一家由AEP公司和伯克夏尔-哈撒韦公司（Berkshire Hathaway）旗下的中部美国能源（Mid-American Energy）出资建立的合资公司已经为这个小镇安装了电池系统。

（２）分布式发电系统

    互联网之所以如此繁荣，其中一个原因就是，它既在云端拥有庞大的数据中心，同时在每个用户的电脑上又有分散的计算数据。这种组合使得用户不管身在何处，不管每个网络节点是否出了故障，都能照样进行生产活动。因此亚马逊（Amazon）、谷歌（Google）和苹果（Apple）等企业可以一边凭借云端服务，一边凭借用户下载在自己设备上的本地应用，轻松地扩大业务。

    而电网是通过大型发电站进行集中发电的，因此在用户生活的地区，也就是电网的“边缘地带”，发电能力很有限。因此，这就催生了更多的潜在故障点，而不是一个能抵抗风险的系统，因为一次突然故障就可能造成网络的一部分断电。

Distributed Electric Storage

    Our power system today cannot store the electricity it produces. Once electricity is generated at a plant, it must be used immediately or has to be grounded into the Earth. When it is not used and not grounded, high-capacity power lines heat up, sag and start faulting due to interaction with trees and other ground-based objects This is in part what caused the 2003 blackout. Since there is no storage of any scale in the utility grid, there is no buffer space when any kind of fault occurs and the system quickly shuts down in a domino effect.

    Imagine a computer network without hard drives -- a network where you had to use all data produced in real-time and could not store or retrieve any of it. That would be ludicrous, but it is the very system we have in our power grid.

    Storing the electricity we produce in the grid equivalent of hard drives was historically quite expensive and power authorities wanted to avoid any project that would raise customer rates. The good news is that electric storage is now getting cheaper and the first commercial storage units are being installed this year across the US.

    These batteries can pay for themselves in a few years by enabling buildings and homes to use cheaper, off-peak electricity. In case of a natural disaster, they also provide backup and line-conditioning to smooth out any spikes which can fry appliances and electronics. Battery storage gives us these benefits without the use of gasoline or diesel fuel.

    Presidio, Texas is a town that decided to install battery backup to its grid since it is tied to the rest of the Texas grid by only one line. A joint venture of AEP (AEP) and Berkshire Hathaway's Mid-American Energy (BRKA) installed the battery units.

Distributed Generation Systems

    One of the reasons the internet is so robust is that it has both large data centers in the cloud as well as distributed computing in every users' laptop or tablet. This combination allows any user to be productive no matter where they are and whether or not every network node is working or not. Amazon (AMZN), Goolge (GOOG) and Apple (AAPL) benefit from this robustness and can scale their businesses easily with both cloud-based services and local apps that users have on their own devices.

    While the power network has centralized generation in the form of large-scale power plants, it has limited ability to generate power at the edges where the users are. This creates more points of failure instead of a resilient system that can adapt to a sudden blow to one part of the network.