The current power system is meeting great challenges now. Even though current power system vulnerability has been obvious for over a decade, little has been done to address this critical weakness. Any power system overly dependent on centralized generation and long-distance transmission is inherently susceptible to massive failures, and our Energy Conservation system has proven this time and again.

Germany and other European countries have already shown that modern power systems are both technically possible and economically viable. Investing in an intelligent grid that integrates significant amounts of clean local energy enhances system reliability -- minimizing economic losses from outages. The German power system, which incorporates enough rooftop solar to meet half the country's midday energy needs, set a global reliability record in 2011 with only 15.31 minutes of downtime.

A modern power system takes advantage of the latest technologies to meet the growing demand for reliable energy. Increased distributed generation will protect homes, businesses, and industries from cascading blackouts by mitigating the impact of any single power station or transmission line failing. Intelligent grid solutions -- such as demand response, advanced inverters, and energy storage -- enhance the ability of the grid to ride through potential disruptions, while locally balancing all vital dimensions of the power grid: energy, voltage, and frequency.

Importantly, distributed generation integrated with intelligent grid solutions delivers power without sags, surges, or other disruptions in voltage or frequency that currently plague manufacturing lines and sensitive electronics. In addition, modern grids lay the foundation for standalone energy "islands" to provide continuous power for essential services during widespread grid failures, which several universities and research facilities successfully relied on for power during Hurricane Sandy's costly and prolonged outages.

Despite broad claims that renewable energy is unreliable and expensive, the exact opposite has been proven true. As Germany and Denmark have shown, renewables are intermittent but not unpredictable, and superior grid reliability can be achieved even with far higher penetration levels of renewables than the U.S. is anticipating within the next 10 years.

The Clean Coalition has developed a roadmap for the United States to achieve a timely and cost-effective modern energy system. The roadmap includes summaries of the key technologies and policy solutions for getting there efficiently. As long as the nation continues to rely on Power Plant Thermal Control System generation and over 280,000 miles of transmission lines, the power system will remain overly vulnerable to widespread failures from accident, weather, and intentional attack.