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“... cost of upkeep and of improvement gets passed onto the public.”

Which is no different than any other product.

I didn’t realize the government owned any of the power lines.

I realize compartmentalization of failures has proven to be a problem in the last decade or so. I still think the individual power companies should be taking measures themselves to prevent a cascade failure. I just don’t see how the government adds value here.

Then again, the whole idea of a grid seems like a weak point to me. True, it allows for generation in one place to support use in another, but it requires long transmission lines which are expensive and have significant losses. How hard would it be for terrorists to engineer the kinds of failures that have cascaded through large portions of the US and Canada ? I’d love to see small but deep geothermal made economical, with thousands of 100MW plants serving 100,000 homes each. If going to 30,000 feet depth were not so expensive, geothermal would work anywhere in the lower 48 states.

Then again, the whole idea of a grid seems like a weak point to me.

Without it, there would be massive wastage in some places and just plain nothing in other areas. It allows a sharing of excess as well as a prevention of shortages.

If you want a really good book on the subject, check out Infrastructure by Brian Hayes. I know it sounds boring but it is an incredible read.

“Which is no different than any other product.”

True, and that is how it should work. However, I do think that we have a national interest in making sure that the grid works everywhere, and if that means the feds have to pay for it to some degree, then I can understand why they are doing that. The alternative is to simply mandate that all owners of any portion of the grid conduct any necessary improvements. Currently, they are not doing it.