Steve Mitnick, a former chief energy adviser to the governor of New York and a former power transmission company executive, led an unprecedented two-year study of hundreds of millions of monthly electric bills and hundreds of thousands of power outage reports. The study produced surprising new findings with major public policy implications.
 

The study findings include:

• American households spend 2.86 percent of their budgets on electric bills, exactly the percentage households spent in the early 1980's. 
• Low-income households spend much less on electricity than other Americans. 
• Electricity usage is increasing again, particularly in faster-growth states. 
• Utilities and their regulators can significantly harden the grid against storms -- cyber-threats, too -- with low-cost improvements to equipment and personnel, as detailed in Mitnick's new book "Lines Down."

Mitnick will discuss this and other controversial findings at a briefing on Thursday, June 20, 2013 at 2:00 PM, at the Washington offices of the United States Energy Association, 1300 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW, Washington DC.


The session will be will be on the record.