NOVI – On MITech TV Aug. 14, we joined Simon Whitelocke, president of ITC Michigan, to celebrate the company’s 20-year anniversary. The company was established just a few months before playing an instrumental role in determining the cause of the North American Blackout of 2003. Since then, ITC has worked to increase reliability of its transmission grid and advocate for nationwide transmission reform.
ITC emerged as the nation’s first independent electric transmission provider shortly before its employees watched large sections of the nation’s power grid go down in what became the biggest blackout in North American history. As government and electric industry organizations searched for the cause, ITC was the first to identify the cause – a sagging power line made contact with an overgrown tree in Ohio and triggered a cascading failure for 50 million customers.
The blackout showed how vulnerable our nation’s energy security can be when we don’t adequately invest in our infrastructure. Since 2003, ITC has reduced the number of outages on its systems and now routinely performs among the top 25 percent of utilities in North American benchmark surveys, but more needs to be done – as a nation, we’re only as strong as our weakest link.
Reliability is essential as extreme weather becomes more frequent and damaging. Many states, including Michigan, have aggressive goals for renewable energy and emissions reductions. We are trending toward the electrification of everything as we strive to reach state and national clean energy goals. Transmission is the critical link to achieve this vision, but our current grid needs to be updated to support everything we are asking of it. The grid must be able to support our future electricity needs by transporting power across the country despite an uneven distribution of wind and sunshine.
As we look to the future and more federal and state policymakers are educating themselves on transmission, ITC continues to advocate for regional transmission planning. In the meantime, to honor the company’s 20th anniversary, employees supported organizations throughout ITC’s footprint through volunteering and donations.
More information on the importance of modernizing the transmission grid is available at itc-holdings.com/a-modern-power-grid.
