Category Archives: Power Grid

The next solar storm could be catastrophic for civilization

Solar storms are random in their timing and location. Since the sun is a sphere, these storms burst out of the surface of the sun in random directions. But occasionally, the timing and direction are exactly right for a solar storm to hit Earth:

Solar storms can wreak havoc. We need better space weather forecasts

“Without a good way to anticipate these solar storms, we’re vulnerable. A big one could take out a swath of our communication systems and power grids before we even knew what hit us. A recent near miss occurred in the summer of 2012. A giant solar storm hurled a radiation-packed blob in Earth’s direction at more than 9 million kilometers per hour. The potentially debilitating burst quickly traversed the nearly 150 million kilometers toward our planet, and would have hit Earth had it come just a week earlier. Scientists learned about it after the fact, only because it struck a NASA satellite designed to watch for this kind of space weather. That 2012 storm was the most intense researchers have measured since 1859.”

There are two types of solar storms, both of which could be catastrophic. Right now there are some efforts underway to harden power grids against these storms, but there is much left to do and the hardening is expensive.

The Doomsday Book” by Marshall Brain lays out this scenario in amazing detail and offers solutions to prevent this doomsday scenario from unfolding. You can order the book today on Amazon and other retailers.

Dozens of people in Texas died of hypothermia due to the power failures

Just unbelievable for a modern nation to see a doomsday collapse like the one seen in Texas. In the process dozens of people have died of hypothermia:

Suspected hypothermia deaths in homes mount in Texas

“With the snow and ice clearing in Texas after days of unusually cold temperatures, bodies are being found of people who likely froze to death as they struggled to stay warm after electricity was cut to millions of homes… They include an 11-year-old boy who died in his bed in Conroe, near Houston, and two older men found dead in their homes in the small West Texas town of Buffalo Gap in Taylor County.”

Electricity and water disaster in Texas

There is no question that the situation in Texas, which was completely preventable with proper regulations and management, has been an unmitigated disaster for millions of people:

‘CATASTROPHE’ Biden declares Texas major disaster after winter storm kills 69 & leaves millions without clean water, power or heat

“THE winter storm death toll continues to mount as millions of Americans are thrust into third-world conditions amid widespread power outages and contaminated tap water. At least 69 people have died of carbon monoxide poisoning, hypothermia, car crashes, house fires, and drownings, among other tragedies related to the freak weather in Texas and neighboring states. “

Many doomsday scenarios are caused by nature or terrorism. This one was caused by incompetence through purposeful deregulation of the grid.

Texas power outages: How the largest energy-producing state in the US failed in freezing temperature
Texas oil expert calls for change after ‘third world’ power outages

The Doomsday Book” by Marshall Brain lays out this scenario in amazing detail and offers solutions to prevent this doomsday scenario from unfolding. You can order the book today on Amazon and other retailers.

Frozen pipes add misery and property damage to texas Power Disaster

When the snow fell and power went out in Texas due to freezing temperatures, people no longer had heat or light, they could no longer drive, there was no food to be had in stores, and then there was one additional consequence that caused huge property damage – frozen pipes:

THAT’S MY CAR – Pipe Break Disaster as Texas Thaw begins
Pipes freeze and burst in Texas

The amount of damage that leaking water can cause is amazing because it destroys floors, carpers, drywall, furniture, etc. If on an upper floor it ruins the ceilings as well.

Just one more layer of misery added on top of everything else is Texas.

The Doomsday Book” by Marshall Brain lays out this scenario in amazing detail and offers solutions to prevent this doomsday scenario from unfolding. You can order the book today on Amazon and other retailers.

The Texas Power Grid nearly collapsed, and if it had the power would be out for weeks or months

It is unbelievable how close the Texas power grid came to complete shut down:

ERCOT: Texas was ‘seconds and minutes’ away from catastrophic months-long blackouts

From the article:

“Texas’ power grid was “seconds and minutes” away from a catastrophic failure that could have left Texans in the dark for months, officials with the entity that operates the grid said Thursday… The worst case scenario: Demand for power overwhelms the supply of power generation available on the grid, causing equipment to catch fire, substations to blow, power lines to go down. If the grid had gone totally offline, the physical damage to power infrastructure from overwhelming the grid can take months to repair, said Bernadette Johnson, senior vice president of power and renewables at Enverus, an oil and gas software and information company headquartered in Austin.”

This comment on Reddit described the worsening situation in real time:

Comment by /u/redditmudder

From the comment:

“Update8 (FEB15 12 noon): ERCOT’s poor planning (long term, not just last night) has now caused Texas to lose 30% of its generating capacity. When this is over, we need to insist that ERCOT change both the emergency response load-shedding model, and their worst-case temperature event model. ERCOT’s poorly-devised playbook last night has caused what should have been an 8 GW shortfall to become a 22 GW shortfall… in real-world terms, that means six million additional homes are without power, versus what could have happened if the grid didn’t nearly fall off a cliff last night. Note: Both numbers I mention above were possible given the current weather conditions. The additional 14 GW shortfall is a direct result of ERCOT’s emergency measures further destabilizing the (already unstable) grid… telling everyone to start brownouts at exactly the same time (as happened last night) destabilized the grid so greatly that several baseload plants offlined themselves (so they wouldn’t blow up). Here are my long term suggestions to ERCOT.”

Say that a month-long blackout had occurred. Texas would have likely descended into total mayhem – no power, no water, no food (the stores were already bare), people dying en masse and so on. It would have been a true doomsday situation. How would anyone prepare for that? This is an interesting video for a perspective on this question:

How to survive the first 2 months after SHTF

The Doomsday Book” by Marshall Brain lays out this scenario in amazing detail and offers solutions to prevent this doomsday scenario from unfolding. You can order the book today on Amazon and other retailers.

The Power Grid in Texas Collapses Due to Cold Weather. 4 million homes without power in bitter cold

The situation in the state of Texas grows dire when the power grid collapses due to extreme cold temperatures. Without power, 4 million homes are without heat, light, internet, etc.

Texas’ power grid crumples under the cold – Competition for natural gas and frozen wind turbines are only some of the problems.

“Monday morning, as a jet stream brought frigid air south to the central United States, Texas residents found themselves facing rolling blackouts as the statewide grid struggled to meet demand amid a large shortfall in generating capacity. As the day wore on, many saw these blackouts extend for ever longer periods of the day, and grid authorities are expecting problems to extend into at least Tuesday. As of noon local time on Monday, the Southwest Power Pool, which serves areas to the north of Texas, also announced that demand was exceeding generating capacity.”

Texas has its own, private power grid and is not easily connected to either of the other two U.S. grids, so when Texas cannot generate enough power to meet its needs, there is a big problem. Unfortunately, Texas is seeing unexpectedly low temperatures that max out demand.

Power grids need to have excess capacity in all aspects – generating capacity, transmission capacity, etc.. Unfortunately, “excess capacity” and capitalism are at odds, because excess capacity is expensive but goes unused until it is needed.

The Doomsday Book” by Marshall Brain lays out this scenario in amazing detail and offers solutions to prevent this doomsday scenario from unfolding. You can order the book today on Amazon and other retailers.

Is battery backup a viable option in a grid failure?

Several chapters in The Doomsday Book talk about power grid failures, because there are multiple ways for the grid to fail, including:

  • Coronal Mass Ejections
  • Terrorist attacks
  • EMP attacks by foreign countries
  • Bad weather, like hurricanes

Hardening the grid against these problems can limit the duration of grid failures, but we will probably never have a grid with 100% uptime. I have personally been in a grid failure, caused by a hurricane, that lasted a week, and one caused by an ice storm that lasted several days.

What are the options for people when the grid fails. It is possible, with enough money, to create a whole-house backup system that can provide power for a long time. A large generator running on natural gas or propane can do it. So can a big battery bank with a large solar array.

The problem is that whole-house can mean a lot of power. Things like air conditioning, deep well pumps, electric hot water heaters, refrigerators, freezers, and electric car recharging require lots of power. You might need a 20 kw generator to handle the entire load of a typical suburban home. A battery bank need 100 kilowatt-hours of capacity plus a huge inverter to handle the full load of a house for any reasonable period of time. Both options get expensive.

This is why the book advocates a much smaller approach, understanding that if the goal is to provide only the essentials, the equipment needs are radically smaller and therefore affordable. For example, Keeping an internet modem plus router up, along with the ability to recharge devices like laptops and phones, takes relatively little power. Building a backup system to supply just these needs costs a few hundred dollars. The size of the battery is a few kilowatt hours and the inverter is small. A single solar panel could extend the duration significantly, perhaps indefinitely. At this low price point, every home or apartment could have this facility and then, in the case of a power grid failure, everyone would be able to communicate and use the internet.

This article talks about some of the issues with trying to build a whole-house system, rather than a small targeted system for backup power:

The Myth of Whole-Home Battery Backup

Lots of insights in here about backup power.

The Doomsday Book” by Marshall Brain lays out this scenario in amazing detail and offers solutions to prevent this doomsday scenario from unfolding. You can order the book today on Amazon and other retailers.

The Nashville Christmas Day RV Bombing – Police had plenty of warning and did nothing

Early on December 25, 2020 in downtown Nashville, TN, a huge bomb inside an RV exploded. This is what the blast looked like:

Nashville explosion: CCTV captures moment of blast – BBC News

Thousands of articles have already been written about the day of the blast because it was so incredible and so unexpected.

But then we find out that the terrorist’s girlfriend and lawyer had reported his bombmaking activities to police, and nothing was done to stop him:

Anthony Warner’s girlfriend warned police he was building bombs in his RV last year

Police were warned Anthony Warner was making bombs in his RV more than a year before his Christmas morning attack in downtown Nashville. The tip came from Warner’s distraught girlfriend in August of 2019…. The police report states that an attorney who was also there and represented both the woman and Warner – told police that Warner “frequently talks about the military and bomb making.”

And then we find out the intent of the bomb:

Nashville bombing froze wireless communications, exposed ‘Achilles’ heel’ in regional network

The vulnerability of the telecommunications system in Nashville and beyond became clear Christmas Day when AT&T’s central office in downtown became the site of a bombing. Mayor John Cooper called the blast on Second Avenue an attack on infrastructure. The effects of that attack are sure to ripple through the region for weeks, as the telecom giant scrambles to restore services while maintaining the integrity of an active investigation site teeming with federal agents. State and local officials and experts say the fact that a multistate region could be brought to its knees by a single bombing is a “wake-up call,” exposing vulnerabilities many didn’t know existed and predicting it would lead to intense conversations about the future.

The Doomsday Book” by Marshall Brain lays out this scenario in amazing detail and offers solutions to prevent this doomsday scenario from unfolding. You can order the book today on Amazon and other retailers.

Nuclear weapons agency (and many others) attacked by massive computer breach

Terrorism often comes in the form of bombs and poisons, but it can also come in the form of cyber attacks. There has been a massive attack in the United States stretching up to some of the most secure sites in the country:

Nuclear weapons agency breached amid massive cyber onslaught

The Energy Department and National Nuclear Security Administration, which maintains the U.S. nuclear weapons stockpile, have evidence that hackers accessed their networks as part of an extensive espionage operation that has affected at least half a dozen federal agencies, officials directly familiar with the matter said.

The breach is so bad and so far reaching, it is thought that entire computer networks will need to be “burned to the ground” in order to lock them down again:

Hacked networks will need to be burned ‘down to the ground’

“We have a serious problem. We don’t know what networks they are in, how deep they are, what access they have, what tools they left,” said Bruce Schneier, a prominent security expert and Harvard fellow… The only way to be sure a network is clean is “to burn it down to the ground and rebuild it,” Schneier said.

An unbelievable situation for a country as advanced and powerful as the United States.

The Doomsday Book” by Marshall Brain lays out this scenario in amazing detail and offers solutions to prevent this doomsday scenario from unfolding. You can order the book today on Amazon and other retailers.

The Amazing Vulnerability of the United States Power Grid because of Transformers

Electricity is as important to modern society as oxygen is to biological organisms. But the United States power grid is remarkably vulnerable to attack by both man and nature:

The problem that the United States faces is that anything that destroys a large number of critical transformers creates an impossible situation because there is no easy way to procure and install replacements. This video lays out the scenario:

Govt. Documents See Risk of Surprise EMP Attack

“EMP. Why don’t we talk about electromagnetic pulse risks more? Recent U.S. government documents see an attack as not only possible, but the first choice of countries like Iran, Russia, China and North Korea. So much so that an Executive Order in 2019 tasked the Departments of Homeland Security and Energy to assess options to increase “resilience” before and after an attack. CIA officials think even a moderate sized nuclear weapon detonated at the right altitude above the center of the U.S. could knock out power for most of the country. With no power, food, water, gasoline and telecommunications networks have a likelihood of failing.”

The Doomsday Book” by Marshall Brain lays out this scenario in amazing detail and offers solutions to prevent this doomsday scenario from unfolding. You can order the book today on Amazon and other retailers.