ven the most zealous onslaught of chain saws and cherry pickers can go only so far toward fixing what ails the grid. Like the North American electricity infrastructure as a whole, much of the BPA's transmission system is something of an industrial-age relic, badly in need of a technology makeover. If the power-delivery system can be thought of as a vast circulatory system of arteries and veins, then what's needed to bring it into the twenty-first century is a parallel nervous system that can sense, process, and relay vital information throughout the network. New power lines might aid the circulation of electricity in localized pockets here and there, but VanZandt and her fellow BPA transmission experts wanted to make more sweeping, system-wide improvements. That meant adopting new technologies to infuse new life into aging transmission lines.

The RAS system that VanZandt added is one such technology. The BPA also installed a set of gadgets called Flexible AC Transmission Systems, or FACTS. Unlike old, mechanical power switches, these solid-state switches resemble the microelectronic switches and routers used in computer networks, but are heavy-duty enough to handle hundreds of thousands of volts. Coupled with the computer brains needed to operate them intelligently, FACTS devices can respond to changes in power flow and voltage on the grid, making necessary adjustments in milliseconds. All these electronic components can exchange information at the speed of light, thanks to $160 million worth of new fiber-optic communications gear -- money well spent, even for a cash-strapped agency.

VanZandt does not embrace every new technology. She's wary, for example, of superconducting cables -- ultra-low-resistance conductors that can carry up to five times as much juice as ordinary lines. "What happens if one of those super-fat pipes goes down? You'd lose mega watts," she says emphatically. "All that current suddenly jumping onto another path would melt down everything around it. So if you have one superconducting transmission line, you'd better have a spare one right next to it." And that, she adds, would be super-expensive.

VanZandt favors technologies that add resiliency to the grid. She points to one example visible from a window at BPA's transmission headquarters. Through the misty precipitation so typical of the region (VanZandt refers to it, fondly, as "liquid sunshine") I can see several rows of stacked modules in the nearby substation that look a bit like giant steel beehives. "Those are called shunt capacitors," she explains. "We added a bunch of them after 1996. They're like the shock absorbers on your car that damp out the vibrations after you hit a chuckhole." The capacitors store and release energy, she says. In concert with other features they act as shock absorbers for the grid.

Thanks to such high-tech innovations -- shunt capacitors, RAS, FACTS, fiber-optics -- the BPA managed to avoid building major new transmission lines for more than 15 years. But the construction moratorium couldn't last forever. During the 1990s, the Northwest's population, concentrated mainly along Interstate 5 from Seattle down to Portland, grew at a rate faster than India's. In 2001, VanZandt and her transmission planners put together a list of 20 major projects that would be needed over the following 10 years to relieve expected bottlenecks, or heavily congested pathways, in the BPA's grid. They also commissioned an independent study to evaluate the 20 proposed projects and suggest which, if any, might be candidates for what they called "non-wires initiatives" -- alternatives to building new lines.

This move ruffled some feathers among the old guard at the BPA. "Most people in the transmission business are used to the old way of doing things," says Carolyn Whitney, the agency's vice president of transmission business strategy and public affairs. "The traditional mind-set is 'You've got a congested transmission path -- so condemn the land and build the sucker.' Suggesting that there might be other approaches to solving the problem is seen as a bit radical."

The "radical" contingent at the BPA went a step further. They set up an advisory group called the Non-Wires Solutions Round Table. The prime movers were Whitney and Brian Silverstein, the BPA's acting vice president of transmission planning, with VanZandt as an enthusiastic executive sponsor. They recruited a heterogeneous group of 18 of the Northwest's leading energy experts, including regulators; non-BPA utility officials; environmentalists such as Ralph Cavanagh, codirector of the energy program at the Natural Resources Defense Council; and executives from large industry power customers, such as Boeing. The group met four times in 2003 to work out an entirely new process for planning improvements to the grid. Instead of assuming that new construction is the best solution to every problem, they evaluate other ways of relieving congestion, such as energy efficiency programs; pricing strategies to reduce peak demand; and distributed, or localized, generation (including wind and solar power) so less long-distance transmission is needed.

Sometimes, putting aluminum and steel in the sky is the best way to go. VanZandt "is not about to make a decision that undercuts the BPA's responsibilities, nor is she taking risks with the grid," Cavanagh says. "When she can't find an alternative to building a new line, she damn well builds it." This past winter, in fact, the BPA finished constructing its first new transmission line since 1987. The 500kV line, known as the Kangley-Echo Lake project, crosses the Cedar River watershed, just east of Seattle. To prevent heavy equipment from tearing up the watershed, which supplies Seattle's drinking water, construction crews used helicopters to fly out felled logs and fly in new 135-foot-high transmission towers. Without the new line, computer modeling showed that the Puget Sound area would be vulnerable to blackouts.