Commonwealth Edison will soon begin work on a new system that would keep the city’s business center, the Loop, protected during a catastrophe, the Chicago Tribune reports.
Knocking out a single susbstation — the middlemen between power plants and customers — can disrupt the flow of electricity for a huge area. But there’s a way to return power to that area after it’s been knocked out. Commonwealth Edison will soon begin laying superconducting cable underground, parallel to the wire that usually ferries electricity to the Loop. The new cable can carry 10 times the power of a standard cable, so if a substation is damaged, the new cable is powerful enough to reroute power from other areas and into the Loop.
via The Verge
