Exactly. And we, as consumers, are not willing to pay the higher utility rates to upgrade it, and our utility regulators aren't willing to force utilities to meet higher levels of reliability. I forget if I posted about this in the past, but US consumers endure far more time without power than consumers in every other industrialized nation.

Of course, we have a gigantic, far flung grid. But beyond that, the government requirements for reliability are not as high in this country. Some parts of the grid are more robust, like in sunny, very air conditioned Arizona, where environmental conditions are extreme and energy demand from the grid is high.

Having a patchwork of private companies instead of large public utility companies also makes upgrades difficult. If one company owns the power plants, another company owns the high voltage transmission lines, and several companies own the local, municipal grids and then entities like power resellers, it is very difficult to make end-to-end improvements. And trying to enforce coordination between utilities, like emergency procedures, can be like herding cats when you have so many more players involved.

You touched on this, too, Wheels, but another problem with privatization was that the buying and selling of excess power between utilities became far more common. To a private company, unused generating capacity is a money loser and the regulations are loosened to allow it, so why not try to score some extra bucks by selling it to another utility that needs extra power, which is what Enron was doing. Unfortunately, the national grid was never designed to shuttle power between far flung utilities like this but now massive amounts of power are routinely switched back and forth in a big electric market. It's a disaster waiting to happen, which did happen in 2003. I'm not saying that the routine selling of excess electricity to a utility with higher demand is bad. I'm just saying that the grid isn't designed to handle that.

Unfortunately, since electricity at the utility company level is not like your house lights--you can't just flip a switch to turn it on and off--someone with malicious intent can take down the grid for an entire region by simply messing with one utility. You don't have to infiltrate every utility company's computers. One power surge can start a cascade of overloads and shut downs all down the line.