Audubon, Pennsylvania.
This was the control center for the PJM Interconnection power grid.
A nondescript concrete fortress, hidden amidst rolling hills.
But within this building's underground bunker, the largest power market in North America was controlled.
From the steel mills on the Lake Erie Shoreline to the White House in Washington D.C., the lights for sixty-five million people depended on the rows of servers and the fingertips of the dispatchers here.
Inside the control hall, a massive, curved wall of screens took up an entire side of the room.
It was densely packed with red and green transmission line diagrams, substation load indices, and real-time electricity price fluctuation curves.
Duty Manager Kevin O'Connor sat at the command console, a cup of espresso in his hands.
As a veteran dispatcher who had worked this post for fifteen years, he was accustomed to the dull yet tense rhythm.
