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New York's Staten Island was broiling under a life-threatening heat wave and borough President James Molinaro was seriously concerned about the area's Little League baseball players.

It was last July's Eastern heat wave and Consolidated Edison was responding to scattered power outages as electricity usage neared record highs.

So, authorities followed Molinaro's suggestion to cancel that night's Little League games, which were to be played under electricity-sucking stadium lights.

"Number one, it was a danger to the children that were playing out there in that heat, and secondly it would save electricity that people would need for air conditioning in their homes," said Molinaro, who'd been forced to sleep at his office that night because of a blackout in his own neighborhood.

Throughout New York City, about 52,000 of ConEd's 3.2 million customers lost power during the heat wave. Triple-digit temperatures forced residents like 77 year-old Rui Zhi Chen, to seek shelter at one of the city's 400 emergency cooling centers. "It felt like an oven in my home and on the street," Chen said.

Should Americans view these kinds of scenarios as extraordinary circumstances -- or a warning sign of a darker future?

Experts on the nation's electricity system point to a frighteningly steep increase in non-disaster-related outages affecting at least 50,000 consumers.

During the past two decades, such blackouts have increased 124 percent -- up from 41 blackouts between 1991 and 1995, to 92 between 2001 and 2005, according to research at the University of Minnesota.

In the most recently analyzed data available, utilities reported 36 such outages in 2006 alone.

Compare the U.S. data to Japan which averages only four minutes of total interrupted service each year. "As you can see, we have a long way to go," said Andres Carvallo, who played a key role in planning the smart grid in Austin, Texas.

Experts point to the northeastern and southeastern U.S. as regions where outages pose the most threat -- mainly due to aging wires, pole transformers and other lagging infrastructure.

"They know where they have tight spots," said Mark Lauby, of the North American Electric Reliability Corporation, which enforces reliability standards. Without mentioning specific regions, Lauby said utilities are "making sure the generation and the transmission are available to help support those consumers."

Building a national smart grid "won't be cheap and it wont be easy," acknowledged Amin. Much of it could be completed as soon as 2030 at a cost of up to $1.5 trillion, according to the Department of Energy. It's unclear who would foot the entire bill, but the Obama administration has committed about $4 billion in investment grants.

Carvallo jokes about the so-called "Easy Button" at Austin Energy. It's not really a big red button on the wall, but it is a mechanism that allows an operator to control tens of thousands of home thermostats.

"Austin is two to three years ahead of everybody else," said Carvallo, now chief strategy officer for the smart grid software firm Grid Net.

He points to a volunteer program that offers free thermostats to customers who allow the utility to remotely control their air conditioners during specific months and hours. This way, thousands of power-gulping air conditioners can be cycled off for a short time when electricity was needed elsewhere.

By summer's end, Austin expects to begin enabling its 700,000 streetlights to be turned "on and off with a flip of a switch," saving $340,000 in electricity each year, and eliminating 200 tons of carbon dioxide air pollution.

Replacing old-style electric meters with "smart meters" is often described as the first step in creating a smart grid. All 400,000 of Austin's meters are smart meters.

Nationwide, 26 utilities in 15 states have installed some 16 million smart meters in homes and businesses.

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Customers complained of skyrocketing bills after PG&E installed smart meters into their homes, and for months officials had brushed off the complaints, wanting to talk about how many of the meters are working correctly.

In a well-orchestrated press conference in San Francisco, PG&E officials finally acknowledged the tens of thousands of reported problems.

"Regaining our customers' trust for PG&E and these devices is absolutely critical," said PG&E senior vice president Helen Burt. "I really don't believe we did a good job about seeing the world through the lens of the customer."

For weeks, PG&E has stressed the fact that just one percent of installed smart meters have had problems, "but lets face it, one percent of 5.5 million meters is nearly 50,000 customers," Burt said.

"One customer is one customer too many," she added.

Customers like Tiffany and Joshua Sucevich of Esparto said their bill quadrupled the month their smart meter went in, and then tripled again the next month.

"I cried, I literally cried," Tiffany said.

PG&E claimed the couple must have used more energy. CBS13 viewers have told us they've been blown off by the energy company when they tried to complain.

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They plan to release monthly reports on the smart meter rollout; they previously said the reports were not public. They're also adding staff for call centers dedicated to answering smart meter questions.

"Candidly, we should've done a better job explaining it from the beginning," Burt said.

PG&E said they are working to rebuild consumer confidence, especially since every customer will have a smart meter by 2012, like it or not.

PG&E is continuing to install about 15,000 smart meters a day.

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Business groups push infrastructure investment

The Senate passed legislation Aug. 2 that would create a national commission to analyze and prioritize America's infrastructure needs.

The key issue is how to fund infrastructure improvements. President Bush opposes an increase in gasoline taxes, contending Congress should first re-examine how it allocates federal highway funds.

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Governors pushing for federal money to repair roads, water systems and bridges say they did not get the response they wanted from the White House on Monday.

Governors raised the issue during a meeting with President Bush. "It's the best type of stimulus, even better than what was in the first package," Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell, a Democrat, said as he left the White House.

Bush this month signed an economic stimulus package to send $300 to $1,200 rebate checks to millions of Americans and to offer tax incentives to businesses. He opposed including infrastructure projects because "it's not really a stimulative way to get the economy going," White House press secretary Dana Perino said Monday.

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Save for a few projects, the Bush Administration is likely to oppose Congressional Democrat leadership efforts to increase spending on infrastructure. The opposition will be based on limited government and lower taxes grounds.

The United States has largely ignored the condition of its infrastructure for more than 30 years.

The public infrastructure spending would produce "a most salient result" economist David H. Wang said -- it would stimulate U.S. economic growth even more than the income tax rebate and investment credit act passed earlier this year.

"From both an infrastructure needs and an economic stimulus standpoint, you can make a strong case for infrastructure spending," Wang said. "Of course, if private sector investment and growth magically returns to robust levels, the case is less strong. But don't look for that anytime soon."

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