10 Years after North America's Largest Blackout
On August 14, 2003, nearly 50 million people in the U.S. and Canada lost electricity. Ten years later, are we any better prepared?
Is the U.S. Grid Better Prepared to Prevent a Repeat of the 2003 Blackout?
The nation’s electrical system has undergone some revamping--maybe still not enough--since tens of millions in the Northeast experienced a prolonged outage 10 years ago
Power Hackers: The U.S. Smart Grid Is Shaping Up to Be Dangerously Insecure
Achieving greater efficiency and control requires hooking almost every aspect of the electricity grid up to the Internet, making it more vulnerable to cyber attacks
What Is the Smart Grid?
Updating the aging electricity grid may save money, energy and greenhouse gas emissions

Wrangling Renewables and the Smart Grid: How Can the Federal Government Change the Future of Electricity?
The commissioner of the federal agency responsible for electricity supply in the U.S. explains the ongoing transformation of the energy sector

Behind the Light Switch: What Will a Smart Grid Look Like? [Slide Show]
A nut-and-bolts, transformer-and-cable view of the power grid as it gets smarter

What is the smart grid anyway? [Video]
The smart grid. Sounds good, right? But what exactly is it? And does that mean we have a dumb grid now? "The grid, it is smart today," Laura Ipsen, a senior vice president at Cisco, told the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Energy (ARPA-e) conference on March 2...

World's largest machine--the electric grid--is old and outdated
The U.S. electric grid is so old and outdated it can't handle the influx of wind power and other intermittent renewable resources. Integrating such sources requires adapting a system that is finely tuned to balance the amount of electricity being used with the amount of electricity being generated with fickle winds...

Securing the Smart Grid
The grid's flow of data is supposed to improve energy delivery but must be protected from hackers' prying eyes

Getting animated about the smart grid
Whether we want it or not, the "smart grid" is on its way. In this animated guide we show you the essential features.

Waste Not, Want Not: Energy via the Smart Grid
Simply using instead of losing energy, the U.S.--and the world--could power its way out of crisis. David Biello reports

What If the Smart Grid Isn't So Smart?
New analyses show that equipping consumers with real-time information about electricity prices could crash the grid. David Biello reports