Maine’s pre-Katrina moment

By Andrea Boland

    The Maine State legislature has done its work to address the threat of a total collapse of the electric grid from GMD, an extreme geomagnetic solar storm (or geomagnetic disturbance), so powerful and widespread it would black out Maine, the whole Northeast, Atlantic seaboard, or even the nation for months or years — but work remains.

    LD 1363, legislation sponsored by David Miramant of Camden, would have required CMP to install protections on the grid to allow it to recover quickly. Without protections, it could not survive.  Studies have been done by the Public Utilities Commission (PUC), first-responders, insurance companies, and independent national experts.  Sen. Miramant sums up the results this way:  “We have identified a problem, we have a solution, we need to fix it.”  We are in a pre-Katrina moment.  Everyone knows we need to build the dikes, but will we?

    A GMD is a powerful super storm of charged particles that comes hurtling through space at us from the sun, blasting into the magnetic fields that surround the earth, and sending big power surges through the electric grid, causing fires and burning out everything connected to the system.  It reaches everyone.  Solar activity is constant.

    Loss of electric power for months or years is not practically survivable, because the critical extra high voltage transformers that control the flow of electricity throughout the State would be destroyed or badly damaged.  They come from other countries and take up to two years to deliver in normal times, and we have no spares.  There are even manmade EMP (electromagnetic pulse) weapons that can have the same effect, and worse, that are a particular concern of the military.  Prevention of transmission system collapse is the only credible protection.  The alternative is unthinkable.

    LD 1363 would have required CMP to install protective power surge blockers on their extra high voltage transformers, their most critical transmission equipment.  There are 15 of them.  They cost about $10 million each, or $150 million total.  The blockers attach to them, and automatically block dangerous surging currents.  They’ve been tested and proven effective by Idaho National Laboratory. Their cost is $2.3 million, total, if Maine accepts the current offer, about $4 million installed.  If financed over five years, cost to ratepayers would be $.60 per person, per year for five years; if over the 20-year life of the blockers, $.15 per person per year.

    LD 1363 passed in the House, by a strong bipartisan vote.  It lost in the Senate by a single vote, unfortunately along party lines. Only two Republican senators, David Burns and Rod Whittemore, supported it.  Thus, we have no law to require CMP to install protections and secure the grid. Their lobbyists won, senators succumbed, and everyone else lost – an old political story.

    The industry has been fighting protective reliability standards at the national level for years. Do you know a big solar storm can cause death? The utilities know.  Does that bother you?

    People wonder why the electric companies don’t want to protect their own business.  There’s no clear answer.  They talk probabilities, but this has a 100 percent probability. They say they don’t need a higher standard of protection, but their data show otherwise. They don’t want to be regulated, but they are a monopoly, transferring their business risks to ratepayers, who would pick up the costs of massive losses, while CMP enjoys blanket liability protection.  It’s not a cost issue.  The blockers cost $2.3 million, but CMP includes as a viable option equipment, that has not been proven effective for severe solar storms and costs $42 million. They get 11.74 percent guaranteed rate of return on their investment, paid by customers; $42 million earns $4,930,000, $2.3 million earns $270,000.

    Fortunately, the manufacturer has left the offer on the table for now, so there is still time to consider it.  CMP could pick it up on its own.  Alternatively, the Governor or PUC could order them to pick it up.  Do you think they will?  Do you think they should?  Does it bother you that they haven’t already?  Maybe they should hear from you?  They’ve heard from me.

    Do you think anyone cares?  I do, especially those people up on the poles.

    Andrea Boland is a former state representative from Sanford. She has worked on this problem for years and introduced the first GMD and EMP legislation in the nation to pass, LD 131, in 2013.