Whats to stop attacks on Americas power lines?
While the sensors could pick up suspicious activity at power poles, they’d be especially useful at quickly locating any breakdowns. That could allow power companies to react in time to prevent power disruptions from cascading into blackouts. And the monitoring system could also help power companies quickly locate problems when severe weather tears down electrical lines. With networks of sensors, “Power companies would have additional abilities to view their systems and that would assist in disaster recovery,” Somani said. America has a lot of transmission lines, substations and generators that could use some monitoring. The Department of Energy reported the country had 157,810 miles of transmission lines in 2004. And the department reported that America’s power plants produced 3.97 billion megawatt hours of electricity in 2004. The monitoring system depends on sensors housed in black boxes just a few inches across. Somani recently picked up one of the sensors inside Iowa State’s Wirele
