Nope! It's probably quite accurate. The article opens with the March 1989 geomagnetic storm which caused massive blackouts in Canada. Canada implemented upgrades like the ones the US should get, to a cost of 1.2 billion[1]. Of course the US grid is significantly more powerful but the Canadian grid is spread much more sparsely, making it more vulnerable- regardless, the cost is certainly within the same order of magnitude, as the US grid only consumes ~8x more power and Canada is larger.

It really speaks more to the absurd level of war spending than anything else- and it truly was absurd. Trillions in direct, congressional spending. We shipped 12 billion on pallets[2] to Iraq and lost it, and most people don't even remember it. The cost of revolutionizing the US power infrastructure is literally peanuts compared to what we have spent in the middle east.

[1]: http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/the-power-grid-is-getting-smar...

[2]: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2007/feb/08/usa.iraq1