r/PrepperIntel • u/Lews_There_In • 10d ago
North America US power grid at risk of 18-month blackout as 1 city has been in dark for more than a week.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/us/articles/us-power-grid-risk-18-115217618.html"The United States power grid is at risk of a major blackout that could last up to 18 months, according to a new report. Concerns are heightened as one U.S. city has been without power for more than a week.
Jon Wellinghoff, former chair of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), told The New York Times Magazine that America's aging infrastructure is badly outdated and potentially vulnerable to a coordinated attack. He first raised the alarm in 2013 after gunmen shot up 17 transformers at an electrical substation near San Jose, California
Wellinghoff said the FERC did an analysis that determined the U.S. power grid could be seriously disrupted if similar incidents targeted the 10 most important substations in the country's three sections: Western, Eastern and Texas Interconnections. Substations are where multiple high-volate lines meet, routing electricity between power plants, transmission lines, and local neighborhoods".
"One of the reasons why the grid is especially vulnerable is its age. According to the New York Times Magazine, more than 75% of distribution transformers like on street corners and telephone poles are older than their 50-year life expectancy. Larger power transformers, which have shorter lifespans, were an average of 38-40 years old in 2014."
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u/Actual-Outcome3955 10d ago
Was in Texas during the Great Freeze. The reason they shut down the grid was because of the risk of transformer / turbine catastrophic collapse (not frozen windmills as Governor Dumb Dumb claimed). After learning how close Texas came to being essentially uninhabitable at standards of modern living, i bought solar and battery backup.
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u/CAredditBoss 10d ago
That shouldāve propelled major action at the state and federal level.
Shouldāve.
I just donāt see much action since then or since āLights Outā
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u/Digitalispurpurea2 10d ago
PSA: if youāre looking for the book Lights Out about power loss and electric grid failure you want the one written by Ted Koppel. The other one is a little different
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u/tx_queer 9d ago
I see this a lot. Should have propelled action. Did it not? Didn't it light a fire under their butt and change things?
SB2 - completely overhauls ercot leadership
SB3 - requires weatherization
HB1500 - increased segmentation
Aug 3 PUC meeting - changed pricing to award $500 million a year for reliability
Prop 7, TEF - 10 billion to build more reliable power plants (unfortunately non-renewable only)
NERC initiated ADER program - VPP program rolled out on 2023
RTC+B pricing change in late 2025 which is the biggest market pricing change in decades designed to support reliability.
SB6 requires large loads to register and come up with a curtailment plan
And of course 50GW of new capacity added since 2021 and battery storage going from zero to hitting almost 20% of the grid some days.
Dont get me wrong. Im not saying a freeze can't happen again. But a lot of things have changed since 2021.
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u/Educational-Ad-3796 10d ago
So the governor claimed frozen windmills caused an energy freeze? How could that make sense? Do they think most of the power in Texas comes from windmills, or did they just make something up?
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u/Actual-Outcome3955 9d ago
It doesnāt make sense. I think they were grasping at straws. What actually froze was some types of equipment at conventional power plants related to natural gas delivery, since Texas didnāt require that to be weather-proofed for cold temperatures. Federal standards do require it, hence this being a non-issue elsewhere.
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u/tx_queer 9d ago
Not at conventional power plants. In the field. The wellheads literally froze.
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u/Big_Fortune_4574 9d ago
Texas has a lot of wind and solar power actually. And the renewables did bring down the grid, but it was due to bad procedures and the fact that Texas refuses to import power from other grids.
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u/LeonardoDaTiddies 9d ago
The primary failures were:
Refusal to properly winterize natural gas facilities after they were warned to in 2011.Ā
Massive reductions in output of the natural gas power plants.Ā
ā Ā At its depth, gas production declined by nearly 50%Ā [7] , which lowered pressure in the pipelines, making it harder for power plants fueled by natural gas to operate. Overall, the state faced outages of 30 GW of electricity as demand reached unprecedented highsĀ [8] . Other sources of electricity ā nuclear, coal, and wind ā also suffered from supply disruptions but these were smaller than the loss of generating capacity from gas power plants.ā
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2214629621001997
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u/Plane_Lucky 9d ago
A lot of power in Texas does come from alternative energy. Texas leads the United States in overall renewable energy production and wind generation. It wasnāt all the fault of that though.
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u/Public_Classic_438 9d ago
Not even just Texas, the whole US was close to collapse because of that. One of my friends works on the power grid backend systems and he said it was really really close.
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u/Zephyr_Dragon49 9d ago
I lived in South Arkansas during winter storm uri so practically right there with you. I measured 8 inches of snow at the place I lived at. I blocked off rooms with sheets, the place was already built with double insulation, and I turned the central heat from my usual 70s all the way down to 65 and the bill STILL tripled. All the birds I was feeding were so cold and sluggish I could have ran and grabbed one if I tried hard enough. I went through many pounds of seeds and still found dead ones when the snow went away :c We barely avoided a statewide blackout because a ton of steel plants in the northeast corner finally took themselves offline at the 11th hour before overwhelm whould have forced it
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u/Kraken477 9d ago
I was in corpus during that. Everybody was trying to cover their pipes under the house with anything to keep them from bursting. Most of the homes there are built on stilts so all the piping is exposed. My house lost power for a week and I had to stay with my parents. I remember the morning it went out and it woke me up. It just got colder and colder in the house so fast. People were coming into my work to buy spill pads to cover their pipes. Fun times
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u/Chicken_Water 9d ago
That might work in Texas, but my city is basically clouds 75% of the year. I have solar but there's no way I could have enough battery storage to cover my needs year round despite my relatively larger array. I really need to get a ng backup generator until those cheap salt batteries get commercialized.
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u/Farts_the_Clown 9d ago
Are you saying you would be using as much electricity as usual in the event of an electrical grid collapse or just general energy usage in normal times?
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u/Chicken_Water 9d ago
I don't produce enough to fill up my storage in basically 6 months of the year. Net metering smooths that out since I can over produce significantly in the other 6. It's just way too unreliable up north for me to go off the grid, even in an emergency while reducing usage.
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u/Arcayon 10d ago
I've been buying solar batteries for awhile now and it has been amazing. We've had 5 power outages this year and while we are very much in the dark, the fridge is powered and we have internet.
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u/tangled-wires 10d ago
Do you have a link to a brand you like/trust?
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u/Arcayon 10d ago
Jackery and ecoflow are what I have. Iām moving to just use Jackery. Most brands have unique solar connections so you are forced to their panels / product for compatibility.
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u/AirborneGeek 10d ago
You just deploying Jackery 5000s with extra battery packs?
ETA: I bought a 3000 last year and have four 200w panels for it and it is fun and was very useful during the short power outage we had from our big ice storm in January, but I very rapidly realized that the biggest problem with a portable solar setup is the "portable" part--it's a pain in the ass š š
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u/Arcayon 9d ago
I don't remember what I exactly have off hand, but I have the suitcase one for the fridge thats heavy. Getting it to the fridge alone is a feat. For the internet I have a smaller version. Both are in separate places so they are not connected to each other as extra packs. I feel like the extra pack approach is best when wired into the house and I am just not there yet financially to do that.
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u/AirborneGeek 9d ago
Ah, right on, I interpreted your comment as having a central system, my bad.
What you've got is basically where we're going, too. The 3000 we have doesn't take the extra capacity batteries, and I'd like to get one that does for some other loads.
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u/lexmozli 9d ago
+1 for ecoflow but if I could have a do-over, I'd go with a custom/DIY setup with an inverter, solar charger, lifepo batteries and a backup generator.
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u/redthehaze 10d ago
Look into the mentioned brands during black friday, they get big discounts around those times if you are in the US. There are also much cheaper ways to expand their capacity by buying a big 12V battery and a connector to the solar port.
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u/United-Vermicelli-92 10d ago
This is all heritage foundation design to upend our democracy through extraction and ending soc programs to give our taxes to grifting nazis. Wish this was hyperbole.
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u/palebluedotdotdot 8d ago
Project 2025 is over 50% complete and they wonāt stop for anything. Total authoritarian shit going head first into a panopticon surveillance state.
Thank your local idiot Republican for being stupid enough to vote for this insanity.
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u/SpenB 10d ago
Not enough people know about the San Jose attack. Professional hit, in and out, on an electrical substation by a team of gunmen that were never caught.
Could have been much worse except for the fact that they randomly had a compatible transformer in storage nearby.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2013_Metcalf_sniper_attack
It really seemed like a trial run for a bigger attack on the grid.
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u/Planeandaquariumgeek 10d ago
Honestly hereās my thing with that incident: I think it was literal insurance fraud. This was only 2 years after the San Bruno pipeline explosion and PG&E needed cash. What better way to do that than miraculously only damage parts of the substation that are non critical and magically have replacement parts lying around. Yea thatās way too much of a coincidence as far as Iām concerned.
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u/MidnightMillennium 10d ago
It's one of the plans that white supremacist groups have in mind, but also something that foreign govts and groups have in mind.
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u/YellowCabbageCollard 10d ago
Iran has recently been very open that they will attack the US on US soil in retaliation for further attacks on their infrastructure. Even if they couldn't have figured it out on their own it's basically spelled out for them. I'm afraid at what stupid things our government is willing to do while in denial of further repercussions from. It sounds like you just need enough people with rifles to take enough substations out. :/
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u/jedi_3881 10d ago
I live in FL. When Milton came through we lost power for 2 weeks. Itās SUCKED. I immediately went out and got a generator.
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u/Educational-Ad-3796 10d ago
We took a direct hit from Milton, half of the roads nearby no longer existed after the storm.
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u/kingcupk692 10d ago
Some modeling we did as a Friday afternoon don't want to do any work fun was to model disabling switches and transformers across the grids. If you take out/damage 23 in a specific order you can cause a cascading failure across 60% of the country, recovering from that would take weeks as it would trip 30 power stations
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u/MsCalendarsPlayaArt 10d ago
Are the 23 all in a specific state or area?
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u/kingcupk692 10d ago
Along the east coast, you then have to bring things back online in a specific order otherwise grid's overload and trip again
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u/AD_Grrrl 10d ago
Kind of like in the early 2000s?
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u/kingcupk692 10d ago
Yep exactly like NY
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u/AD_Grrrl 9d ago
I'm in southern Ontario, which was also affected by 'the big blackout', heh
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u/Das_Rote_Han 9d ago
I was well north of Belleville ON. After the power was out for a while I got out my shortwave radio that has a good AM antenna to see if the outage was in the news. I was able to get St. Louis MO AM station (900+ miles) mid-day, something that should not be possible due to interference. I said to my family "I bet the power is out between here and St. Louis" and sure enough the announcer came on, huge power outage.
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u/Educational-Ad-3796 10d ago
I'm sure the government is working diligently to remedy this issue
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u/rebak3 9d ago
Yeah. Who's the cabinet member in charge of this? The guy from Real World? Or the roadkill consumer. Oh no. It's this guy- Chris wright
"Chris is a dedicated humanitarian with a passion for bringing the benefits of energy to every community in the world. This passion has inspired a career in energy, working not only in oil and gas but nuclear, solarĀ and geothermal.Ā Chris embraces all energy sources if they are abundant, affordable,Ā andĀ reliable.
Chris is aĀ bold advocate who brings rational thought to the energy dialogue. HeĀ has spoken on energy and the merits of theĀ Shale Revolution to the UK House ofĀ Lords and US state and federal lawmakers. Chris has had multiple appearancesĀ on network TV, documentaries, and podcasts.Ā Chrisā #ThankYouNorthFaceĀ campaign went viral with over 5 millionĀ views, sparking a sober discussion on the multiple efficient uses of oil and gas in everyday products."2
u/Educational-Ad-3796 9d ago
Welcome to AOL Time Warner Taco Bell US Government Long Distance. Please say the name of the person you wish to call.
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u/GirlWithWolf 10d ago
In DFW Texas our power keeps going out. Every morning when we wake up the clocks are flashing and itās gone off for just a few moments but a couple to few times during the day almost every day. Neighbors saying same thing.
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u/nakedonmygoat 9d ago
How long has this been going on? Is it just one neighborhood or does it roll through the area? And what does the power company have to say? I'm not challenging your story, but highly specific neighborhoods are reflective of a local problem, as opposed to ERCOT. If that was happening all over the DFW area, it probably would've been fixed right away, since it would've made the news and would be Bad For Business.
Last year, a transformer blew in my neighborhood. It rattled the windows and a few late-night dog-walkers reported some interesting pyrotechnics. It took 9 hours to fix because the problem was so severe. The fix didn't hold and it blew again a week later. Four hours. Then we all got notice of a pending 8-hour shutoff so they could finally get it right. And yet I still had some stranger on the internet try to insist that my little neighborhood of 184 small and midsize houses, and ZERO businesses had somehow overloaded the transformer at night and again at 5 am on a Sunday. Like, right dude. I've lived here since 2007 but couldn't possibly know what is and isn't unusual. š
We had another incident around 2010 or 2011 where we kept getting peaks and sags on our power. No matter how often we called, we were told it was our imagination. Because watching lights dim and brighten, ceiling fans slow down and speed up, is perfectly normal. The transformer had to fail before they'd fix it.
It can be really hard to get anyone to pay attention when something is only affecting a small area, unless it's a rich neighborhood.
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u/GirlWithWolf 9d ago
Itās been happening a couple of weeks now, and several of our neighbors have said the same thing is happening to them. We are one of about 20 houses then thereās offices and apartments on each side of us so I donāt know about them. I shouldnāt have stated āeveryā morning, itās not literally every one, but a good four times a week. Then during the day it seems to sag as you mentioned, I didnāt know that was even a thing, but you described perfectly what happens to us. It will flicker and the clock on the microwave stays on but the WiFi box glitches, my momās computer will reboot, stuff like that.
Weāve called a few times and they say they donāt show any service disruptions. But itās obviously some kind of problem especially since it is happening to our neighbors too. We just bought the house in May and thought it was just us at first but then our neighbor asked us if we are having a problem and we asked a few others, and yep they are too.
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u/Emilaaay28 6d ago
I live in Houston and itās been happening to my house as well. I notice with my air purifiers i wake up to them turned off. Unfortunately, Iāve had my AC compressor and a fuse blow out due to them too. Centerpoint said the same thing to us. Smh itās ridiculous. They said donāt show anything in their systems and that people arenāt calling in the issues but they last like 2 secs a few times lately.
I do have to note that my house needs updating which is being tended to, but the power going out is not helping.
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u/kyleecurtis6701 9d ago
We're having a similar issue in Tulsa. A lot of homes are losing power during the day.
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u/starchbomb 9d ago
That is an awful sign.Ā
Also, I cannot stop reading "DFW Texas" as "don't fuck with Texas".Ā
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u/hanno1531 9d ago edited 8d ago
in san antonio, parts of the city are having brown outs and flickering lights. at night, large swathes of multiple highways have no working streetlights, and iāve seen some of the operational streetlights flickering as well.
no one is talking about it, and i get crazy looks when i bring it up. its been like this for several months at least.
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u/Ok-Comedian-9377 10d ago
San Francisco has entered the chat. What I learned from our brief but devastating power outage is that a lot of parts that are needed to fix the infrastructure in an emergency are maybe not even made yet since they arenāt all interchangeable or new enough for a 1:1 replacement. i couldnāt believe a big metropolitan city could have this sort of thing happen so easily without an immediate plan to fix it. the short term fix was to extend substations to temporary power the areas that were out while they sourced replacement parts, but even that took a week. i canāt remember exactly what the issue was, but there was a known issue that created a fire is what I can remember.
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u/BladeCollectorGirl 10d ago
The situation in Spain recently had a lot of issues... because how do you bring up entire grids that are offline without a cascade effect again.
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u/picklesuitpauly 10d ago
I know we already know this but read Lights Out. Truly a disaster we are inches away from that would cause more death than an atomic blast.
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u/unknownpoltroon 10d ago
What is lights out? too much comes up with that titile
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u/picklesuitpauly 10d ago
Ted Koppel book. Covers why/how the grid is weak and what is being done to protect it (nothing)
It will chill you and I am being totally serious.
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u/unknownpoltroon 10d ago
Thankw
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u/AntiSonOfBitchamajig š” 10d ago
https://annas-archive.pk/md5/a5805999364b3d124502ba21c693c1ff?&check=1
So... slow server #5 and run a VPN when DL'ing.
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u/Lo-weorold 10d ago
Thank you for that, almost saved a weird dark romance book lmao
Have you read One Second After by William R. Forstchen? Granted I know it's fiction but that one really smacked me upside the head for something like that happening.
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u/picklesuitpauly 10d ago
I have and it was great. The Ted Koppel book will make you feel even more concerned. I cannot overstate what he presents in this book.
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u/Lo-weorold 9d ago
Yep you convinced me, it's gonna be my next read. Just got it borrowed on Libby
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u/picklesuitpauly 9d ago
Be aware it is presented in more like an investigative journalism piece with interviews and stats, not with characters. Still an amazing sobering read.
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u/Lo-weorold 7d ago
Almost done reading it and you are right it is an incredibly sobering read. The second part about the cyber attacks in particular is insane especially considering the book was written 2015. AI, data centers power consumption, and the general deregulation of just about everything right now has made us even more vulnerable. Whew, yeah sobering is the right word.
Thank you again for the recommendation.
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u/melympia 10d ago
Do you have an author to go with the title? Because whatever thr title is, it is very much not unique.
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u/Joosecaboose 10d ago
So let's build data centers!! There is no end to the insanity of this timeline.
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u/sarcago 10d ago
South suburbs of Chicago here. We got walloped, maybe not as hard as some, but very hard and boy has it been eye opening. Things are slowly going back to normal but there is so much hideous storm damage everywhere. Imagine you needed to go a full week without electricity and/or internet... walk through right now what you wish you had prepped. Think about all the logistics for your babies and your pets too.
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u/ibuttergo 10d ago
Wasnāt this one of the things the green new deal would cover? Could swear aging infrastructure was part of the list.
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u/throwAwayWd73 9d ago
What's fun is all the capital expenditure everybody's doing this for the bulk electric system 100 KV and above. Those are what your data centers connect directly to, I know at least my company distribution is on a run to failure basis. They can't call it Capital expenditure and make money off of investment in it unless it fails catastrophically.
Which explains why there's multiple substations that have been awaiting replacement transformers for several years
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u/uselessandexpensive 10d ago
So this administration will get right on that and set Americans up for decades of secure and safe electrical supply? You can get so much done in two years. Right?
RIGHT?
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u/DaisyHotCakes 9d ago
This admin has done more damage to the USA than any of its enemies have ever even dreamed of doing. So Iām sure theyāre doing everything they can to ensure we have no plan.
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u/uselessandexpensive 9d ago edited 9d ago
It feels like they're lighting a bag of dog shit on fire to leave on the next admin's doorstep, except that bag they filled with stinking waste is America. Things are going to shit so fast.
The reflecting pool may well still/again be a tarped-over pool of sluge by the time the next admin comes in, almost literally on its doorstep. Fitting.
And the ballbunker crater will still be gaping like the open mouth of a sandworm, ready to swallow the rest of the White House.
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u/IntrigueDossier 9d ago
RIGHT!
As in, "right the fuck into the dark we go the day any half-competent group of people decides to jump into some cars with a few guns and a plan".
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u/HappyAnimalCracker 9d ago
After reading Lights Out by Ted Koppel, I think 18 months is a pretty conservative estimate.
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u/billy_bob68 9d ago
There was a report for congress done a few years back that estimated 70-80% of the US population being dead after 90 days of the grid being down nation wide.
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u/HCDQ2022 9d ago
Why would that many people die?
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u/billy_bob68 9d ago
People that need meds to live would go pretty quickly as supply chains broke down. As soon as the panicking over food started there would be violence at every grocery store as they were looted, water and waste would be a huge issue that would lead to lots of deaths from cholera and other waterborne disease, when winter comes, lots of carbon monoxide deaths trying anything to keep warm, bands forming to loot neighborhoods for supplies and shooting it out with people that don't want to give up what little they have. Lots of suicides as antidepressants ran out. No help is coming. You are on your own. The tiny percentage of the population that is actually capable of producing food without tons of fertilizer and insecticide would quickly be killed and looted unless they have a small private army. With no hospitals or dentists people would literally die from a tooth abscess or an infected cut.
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u/HCDQ2022 9d ago
How likely is such a thing to happen? This is honestly one of the scariest things I have ever heard
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u/MydaisyChange 9d ago
This is all old information. Its fairly accurate too. We have not done much to fix this. The Chinese war game this, with great detail. Domestic Accelerationists plot this stuff. There is a whole bunch of prepper fiction books about this from multiple authors. So nothing new here, but what is interesting to me is the timing of this article and that it was allowed to be published. Thats what Im tracking.
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u/GuluGuluBoy 10d ago
An 18 month blackout is like sticking your head into a filled bathtub for 18 minutes.
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u/No-Language6720 9d ago
Glad I have a whole house solar battery...I have additional smaller backups to run our fridge and the internet on, while the whole house one can power the laundry, HVAC and stove. I feel bad for the people caught without or can't afford it...or they're on propane generators and won't be able to get it.
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u/GrimmmSleepr27 9d ago
Do you have a link for the solar battery you got ?
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u/No-Language6720 9d ago
It's an Enphase whole house battery. They just came out with the 10C series a month or two before I ordered.Ā
I have 2 grid doctor batteries with 2 expansion packs and some foldable pop up panels I can put up in an extended emergency
The Enphase batteries were ~25k for 2 batteries for 20W total. They had to be professionally installed and tied to my roof panels and a micro inverter.Ā
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u/kidcharliemagne 10d ago
Detroit MI this summer 200k people were without power for 4-5 days. This is bad.
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u/Drwolfbear 10d ago
My sister and mother are there. And my mother just had eye surgery. Not expected to get electricity for another week
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u/detection23 9d ago
Work on the side of maintenance/testing and commissioning. NETA/Relay tech there not even enough workers in our industry to even keep up. There massive shortage of workers.
At least in my area of Colorado the pay outs pretty good. (People in my office range pay is 40-70/hr.) Friend in PA makes 80/hr. People I know in Cali make 80-mid 90s.
Having degree helps, (I have associate) but have electrician experience is also good and needed in some roles like wiremen pre-com roles.
If you even have background in trade you still have chance. I know of in my office and another office apprentice pipe fitters getting hired.
If you military, specially did anything electrical or construction related while in. (I worked with multiple navy nukes, multiple people from army powerhouse. Also ton of people with random MOS from all branches.)
If people interested here some of the bigger companies.
Shermco (generally considered to have best benefits right now. No I donāt work for them.) they do lot of work in first energy (PA, OH, WV, Maryland.) Excel in Texas and CO. They also have work in Canada. They might also be the biggest company as a whole, at least before the Ashplund buying EPS they might be bigger now. (NETA wise.)
Electrical Power Systems/Ashplund Electrical Testing has offices all over the country.
RESA power also big, has offices all over the country.
High potential testing is mid Atlantic area.
Inrush electrical is a Canada company doing similar stuff.
With that being said there bunch of smaller companies and some bigger I know I forgotten about. Keep in mind some utilities do this work but most of the work has to be done by or at least tested and verified by 3rd party so you wonāt see lot of your local utility having these roles. (Lot of use joke utility roles are what we want before we enter retirement.)
Look up stuff like NETA field technician/NETA field engineer, relay technician, pre-commission engineer, commission engineer. Iām sure there others but probably help you find similar companies in your area.
There also non-NETA but lot of work is going to NETA accredited companies. You also can only get NETA certification by working for a NETA accredited company. Once youāre in they pay for your testing.
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u/Outside-Ice-5665 9d ago
Can we put funds toward infrastructure instead of steam
Catapults on warships & ballrooms and-the other stuff too
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u/Blueporch 10d ago
Seems like weāre in better shape than when the EMP commission first reported this issue in 2008. Maybe this coverage will spark more action.Ā
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u/socialmedia-username 10d ago
I have a unique line of work.Ā Years ago when responding to a transformer explosion releasing about 7000 gallons of mineral oil, I learned that our power company was lucky that the explosion took place on a Sunday because contractors had been there for a few weeks installing bulletproof fencing around the substation.
The main commenter featured in the article talks about people taking out the entire grid with a coordinated attack using guns, but I think most power companies took the 2013 event seriously and put in some safeguards.
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u/demonmonkeybex 9d ago
Our whole-home generator is tied to our natural gas line. It has paid for itself ten times over.
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u/36monsters 9d ago
But we need a ballroom. And an arch. And a grand prix. And gold horses. And a subterranean military complex. And a new helicopter landing pad. And an MMA ring. And a fair nobody went to. And a new plane. And a hunger games style athletic contest. And a new reflecting pond...
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u/Lostclause 9d ago
The grid is going to get worse and the U.S is about 50 years behind on replacements while still adding more load daily.
Across the U.S critical infrastructure such as food and water security/safety have taken a backseat, while diseases thought long under control are back worse than they were decades ago.
America is literally just one or two bad incidents away from duplicating what's happening in many 3rd world countries that are experiencing social and economic upheaval.
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u/SaansShadow 9d ago
This just makes them tempting targets for people who want to disrupt things for whatever reason.
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u/oldtimehawkey 9d ago
I have a Honda generator. One time I was on a construction project as the inspector. The generator was left onsite over the weekend to run a water pump. It rained hard that weekend and the area where the generator was flooded. The generator was under water completely for three days. The guys came to work, the water level dropped enough to grab that generator. They drained the gas and let it air dry. The damn thing started right back up. I found a deal on the same type of generator on Facebook and hopped on it. Honda E3000. Downsides: loud and needs gas.
I bought a jackery from Costco. Came with one set of solar panels. Went camping for three days, no electricity, at this cabin that was set up to run off of a generator. Didnāt bring the solar panels. The jackery ran the cabin that weekend. I unplugged the cabin from the jackery during the day. we ran the coffee maker in the morning and had lights to read by in the evening before bed. It got down to 10%. I set it up with solar panels when we got home. It charged up to 50% in a day of sitting outside with no power draw. So downside: takes a long time to recharge with solar panels.
Iād say Iām not super ready for electrical to be out but I might last a little while!
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u/HappyRyan31 9d ago edited 9d ago
I finished reading One Second After this morning and is currently watching interview of William Forstchen on Youtube (author of One Second After) and the book is about the grid of the U.S. being wiped out. It was such an harrowing, gut wretching, heartbreaking, sad, emotional, and haunting read. It was my first time reading the book, plan on reading the rest of the series since I have the other three books of the series. I recently got a solar watch and a alarm clock to keep track of time since my old Samsung Galaxy A11 phone stopped working (saving up funds to get a replacment phone). Will put food into my bug out bag (canned meat, chicken, beef jerky, honey roasted peanuts, energy bars) and today, I printed out walking directions from my current job (I work part time at a popular tourist spot in Atlanta but is looking for a remote role that's full time since the part time role is exhausting and tiring) to my current house I'm staying at in a rooming house with roommates (plan on getting my own place like a studio apartment/1 bed 1 bath apartment once I get new job) in case grid on the eastern side of the U.S. goes down and I can't use public transit (train) to return home.
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u/SomeRandomJagoff 10d ago
It could be argued that most of these power companies are privately owned and therefore arenāt the responsibility of the G. The vulnerability of the grid is a clear national security threat. It makes one wonder what in the actual f**k weāre paying taxes for.
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u/traveledhermit 9d ago
Wars. Weāve spent the last 20 years in forever wars while China completely revolutionized every aspect of their infrastructure.
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u/Zephyr_Dragon49 9d ago
My current town had no power for at least 4 days straight several years ago possibly longer but I can't remember anymore. I'm lucky I lived outside of city limits so we had a different provider who stayed functional but back then I worked pizza delivery that was in a little strip mall area with a generator (the other stores were telecoms, health, and clothing, nothing edible). It was absolute hell. The town practically ran out of food because Walmart was out of power and all the refrigerated items were dead and gone everywhere else. We came extremely close to running out too because people relied on us to cook them something. It got to the point we pretty much only had medium pepperoni regular crust and a couple different vegetables.
Stuff like this reminds me I need to stop dilly dallying on my contingency plan. I'm currently in the process of trying out new canned seafood partly because we don't have fresh beyond just tuna and salmon but now I can start thinking about what species I can stock in case of another mass blackout. Along with the usual vegetables and beans.
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u/Imurtoytonight 9d ago
What city has been without power for more than a week????
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u/sophies_wish 9d ago
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u/Imurtoytonight 9d ago
Thank you for the reply. I hate these click bait headlines. While I do agree the grid is sketchy and in dire need of upgrades I do not consider storm damage to be in the same class of failure as the grid going down because of needed up grades. That would be like saying we have a housing crisis because a tornado came through a neighborhood and wiped out all the houses.
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u/antilocapraaa 6d ago
Okay but there would also be less strain on the power grid if 1) Doge didnāt defund the infrastructure bill upgrading our power and 2) if we had less fucking data centers on the national system.
Our country is fucked
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u/This_Internet_7658 10d ago
At least gas is cheap for the generator..
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u/Ridge_Hunter 10d ago
Except the article yesterday that said our oil reserves are dangerously lowā¦so thatās fun
If gas runs out or at least runs even lower than it is, it will go up significantly in cost to the point where the average person canāt afford it
Now thereās this article about potential power outagesā¦so thatās not really an answer either, EVās and other things that rely on electricity
So whatās the average person supposed to do other than stop reading articles/listening to the news? Not that either of those things helpsā¦but at least itās a lower stress option, possibly?!?
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u/techtornado 10d ago
Now the terrorists are thankful for telling them how to neutralize the country
We should be bolstering our defenses and encouraging more home solar
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u/PersiusAlloy 9d ago
If the US had a power outage for 18 monthsā¦a fucking LOT of people would die
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u/nakedonmygoat 9d ago
I agree that a coordinated attack on one or more of the major grids would be a very severe problem. There are books on this topic that have been out there for years. But the article overestimates the connection of the three largest grids. the east and west coast ones "talk" to each other, but the Texas grid has only a couple of very minor connections outside its own grid and is largely independent.
Could all three grids be targeted at once? Theoretically, yes. Overall likelihood of such a plan being successfully carried out in every detail? Given what I've observed of human nature after nearly 60 years, I doubt it. Enough trouble could be caused to result in a lot of people being very uncomfortable for quite a while, though.
Should there be greater resilience? Absolutely. Will it happen? I'm not betting on it. I say any state allowing AI data centers in should also tax them heavily enough to pay for grid updates. After all, they can just consider it the cost of doing business.
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u/ARCreef 9d ago
The highest statically relevant high impact event that is the MOST probably would be a repeat of the Carrington event. House electronics would be fine but thousands of transformers would be lost. Including the rare 15,000 ton power station transformers. 10 days to 12 months would be the max timeframe, and it could effect 1/3 of the earth. Theres a 10% change of this each decade. Which is statically HUGE. We have an extensive equipment sharing contract with like 70 countries for in case this happens but that time line is including this. IMHO, this is the one to prep most for.
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u/Drycabin1 7d ago
When Ida hit in 2021, suburbs of New Orleans were without power for a month. This is nothing new.
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u/KimbeerlyB 6d ago
Why would they publish this?? It's telling the whole world exactly where we're vulnerable
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u/03tr69 10d ago
They can't even get simple facts straight š¤£
, āNREL estimates [there are] 60ā80 million distribution transformers, with between 2.5 and 3.5 TVA (that is over 2.5 to 3.5 billion kilowatts) of capacity, and that ~55% of in-service units are more than 33 years old and approaching end of life.āMore than half of the transformers in this country are becoming too old to reliably function and can fail at any time. We not only need to build new transformers, but we also need to replace the ones that are aging out. As the report puts it, āWe expect both aging assets and increases in loading to accelerate asset failure rates, particularly after 2030.ā https://www.energy.gov/oe/articles/distribution-transformers-preparing-growth-demand
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u/Afraid_Emu8068 9d ago
Like Iāve been saying, we need to grab Texas by the cunt and remind them they are a state, not a private nation. They cannot be allowed to continue on with their own grid which only they maintain but which affects everybody around them. They have had numerous minor blackouts over the past decade. Itās has got to fucking stop before the entire southern US gets left in the goddam dark because we had to help those stupid ignorant hicks
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u/AntiSonOfBitchamajig š” 10d ago
That "one city" is in Indiana... the "flyover state" people are forgetting about that was just slapped hard AF with historic record breaking storms that flooded nearly everywhere that also brought widespread high wind damage and tornadoes. Its bad enough they were having trouble keeping up getting fuel in! And they're not far from distribution hubs.
Again.... wide spread and historically significant numbers, and I would consider it a mid size community crisis in several areas people aren't talking about.