In light of India's recent two-day power failure that left more than 600 million people in the country without power, eyes have turned to the US power grid, which may soon face similar problems. A report from The Washington Post examines major power failures in the US, like Boston's blackout in March, the widespread outage in Southern California last September, and the well known 2003 incident that left 50 million in the Northeast without power. Like the Indian crisis, those failures were all attributed to a combination of deteriorating infrastructure and ever-increasing demands for electricity.

Unfortunately, this is neither a simple nor an inexpensive problem to fix — utility companies must balance the price of these costly repairs with satisfying both customers and investors. The American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) estimates that the cost of upkeep on the US power grid would be $107 billion by 2020, but warned that the price of neglecting such repairs would cost about $71 billion in damages in the same time period. For more on the US's current power woes, check out the full article at the source link below.