CHARLESTON  -- Getting electricity from one place to another more efficiently is a necessary challenge the United States must undertake and now might be the perfect time to do so.

That is the opinion of a national energy strategist who visited Charleston Feb. 11. Susan Eisenhower, granddaughter of President Dwight D. Eisenhower, spoke to a gathering of the West Virginia Roundtable at the Charleston Marriott Town Center.

Eisenhower is chairwoman of the Eisenhower Strategy Forum and has studied energy throughout her career. For the past several years, much of her focus has been on the nation’s aging electrical energy infrastructure. She said the economic turmoil the country now is in could provide the perfect opportunity to upgrade the inefficient system that she described as replete with bottlenecks.

“We have a lot of bottlenecks (in our electrical grid),” Eisenhower said. “It’s difficult to move excess power around the grid.”

Eisenhower experienced just such a problem in 2003. She was in New York City during a blackout that affected parts of New England, the Midwest and Canada. Other parts of the country had excess power that could have provided relief, but there was no way to get it to the affected areas, she said.

Upgrading the power grid and investing in alternative forms of energy are crucial for the country’s future, Eisenhower said.

“We need to modernize our transmission system to get energy from point A to point B,” she said. “We must find a way to solve the problems of all those (other) sources of energy.”

Eisenhower pointed out that Thomas Edison built the basic electrical grid infrastructure in the New York City area more than a century ago.

Modernizing the grid and developing other methods of producing energy will be a major undertaking, Eisenhower said.

Throughout her remarks she compared transmission system challenges to those that her grandfather faced while developing plans for the Interstate highway system in the 1950s.

President Eisenhower, she said, first realized the transportation problems of the U.S. during a cross-country trip with a military convoy in 1919. That trip took two-and-a-half months.

Today’s grid is similar to the nation’s roadways her grandfather traveled 90 years ago, Eisenhower said. But with the proper leadership, the nation can tackle the energy problem and help revive the ailing economy.

Construction of the Interstate highway system generated $6 for every $1 invested, she said. She sees a similar opportunity today if the electrical grid is rebuilt.

Plus, the nation’s increasing appetite for energy will require a more efficient and more practical grid, she said. The U.S. is expected to need 24 percent more power within the next 10 years. Worldwide, the demand is expected to grow by 34 percent, she said, quoting figures from the U.S. Department of Energy.

Eisenhower stressed that although leadership is needed in Washington, private money could be used to fund the massive project.

“To modernize the grid, some regulatory changes will be needed,” she said. “That will be challenging for sure but no more so than the requirements that were needed for the Interstate highway system.”

To read more, please pick up a copy of the Feb. 20 edition of The State Journal.