The ground we walk on is covered with asphalt for roads, concrete for sidewalks, and is naturally decorated with grass, flowers, shrubs, and trees. Intermingled within are telephone polls, electricity wires, buildings, and other structures requiring power. We all understand that natural organisms have roots that ground them…
Our 3.8 million square-mile nation uses its space for a lot of purposes. About 50 percent of U.S. land is used for agriculture. Roads run for over 4 million miles across the country. Forests occupy nearly 300,000 square miles. But this vast and dynamic country requires abundant energy to…
o one could be blamed for having the wrong impression of pipelines. Views tend to align with politics, and media coverage often casts these silent transport methods in one extreme light or another. The facts about pipelines are quite revealing, but there is a lot of data to discuss…
When you see a tree, you know it has roots. When you pull weeds, you aim to get all of those roots spread across the whole garden just beneath the ground. What you may not think of quite as intuitively is that modern infrastructure has roots too. This month, Aii…
The power pulsing into your home right now probably comes courtesy of an antiquated system of power plants and transmission lines thought up while horse and buggies were still common on the streets. Even with the advent of the Internet age, we largely still use this one-way power network, and…
Forgotten, it seems, in much of the discussion of climate change is the phrase “climate controlled.” This seemingly oxymoronic word pairing usually refers to buildings, which use heating systems and air conditioning to keep what is inside insulated from whatever occurs outside. Clearly climate control does not refer to humanity’s…
Wind energy is often harnessed in large fields and land across the U.S. and around the world. What if we used the ocean and waterways to expand where we collect wind and take advantage of coastal winds? Would it be an eyesore or harm wildlife? Does the prospect of renewable…
The further you may be from the electrical grid, the more likely it is that you recognize the importance of energy storage. If you have access to abundant, reliable energy, then consider how far you would travel without a cell phone battery pack. An extra battery allows you to turn…
The Novel Coronavirus (nCoV) or COVID-19 is in the process of reshaping the order of things at home and abroad. As we all react to the spread of the virus, there are many obvious considerations – groceries, work, event cancelations, hand washing, and apparently toilet paper. But a less obvious…
Miami University, a public research university located in the small city of Oxford, OH, has been making unprecedented progress in the field of geothermal energy. Up until 2010, Miami had relied on carbon-intensive steam to heat almost all buildings on its 2,100 acre campus. Currently, 49 percent of those buildings…
Summer temperatures and tensions were high across the state of Texas, at least for some. While every resident of the Lone Star State dealt with immense heat during August, some Texans found themselves with ludicrously high electricity bills as well. This spike in price only affected a certain sector of Texas’…
While power is back on at the Atlanta Hartsfield-Jackson airport, the question remains: what happened to make the busiest airport in the world lose power for 11 hours on Sunday and strand tens of thousands of passengers for days?[1] Basically, an electrical fire in a tunnel beneath the airport…
Our Chairman, Brigham McCown, was privileged to speak to the students at George Mason University on the importance of grid security and maintaining our infrastructure. You can read the transcript of the talk here:
How Economic Indicators And Population Demographics Impact Incident Rates “Digging Deeper” is the Alliance for Innovation and Infrastructure’s (Aii) new blog series focused on using the Common Ground Alliance’s Damage Information Reporting Tool’s (DIRT) inaugural interactive data dashboard to track indicators, trends, and correlations with the goal of zeroing in…
On July 12, we published “Building a Smarter Electric Grid: How Investing in Smarter Electricity Infrastructure Will Energize America,” a white-paper focused on the opportunities presented by a “smarter” electric network and the specific investments that should be made to take full advantage of tomorrow’s energy technologies without sacrificing the…
