
US unprepared for an electrical grid collapse, but it costs only $300M - rictic
https://www.themoneyillusion.com/sunday-morning-quarterbacking/
======
flipgimble
This article has an unexpected resonance for me after several weeks of
pandemic lockdown. Just three months ago I would have laughed it off. Now I am
increasingly pissed off.

In the US, but I see reflection of this in Europe as well, has allowed
irresponsible puerile imbeciles to be elected. These people play games with
wealth and power, with no regard to the lives and well-being of the society
that pays for it. I did not mention any party, that perennial misdirection to
their collective heist. Also don't fall for the other smoke screen of small
vs. big government. I demand at least a competent government.

For politicians truth is whatever you make people believe it to be.

Meanwhile engineers and scientists struggle daily to find the hard facts of
the world to painstakingly build or discover something that improves lives. We
should be disgusted and revolted at who is leading us right now. We should
drive these fools out office and strip them of any respect.

If we don't, there will be no one competent left in position to rebuild from
this, or the next, catastrophe that "nobody" could have expected. Or maybe
there will be some states or localities that can get their act together, and
the rest will be a wasteland of warring cultural and racial tribes.

~~~
s5300
Quite tired and ill right now so I'm unfortunately not going to be able to
write this out even slightly well... but for some reason, I want to post the
thought anyway so I will. (Note: I'm a U.S. citizen)

In short: As an engineering student with quite severe chronic illness that
also got fucked over by abusive parents/a broken home I couldn't escape even
with scholarships... I simply can't come to the moral conclusion that the
majority of the population of the U.S. deserves the work of engineers and
scientists at this point. Now - obviously, you could say "well, they didn't
ask for the engineers/scientists help" \- but they definitely want the ability
to receive some sort of medical care, and if they _stop_ having a new phone to
buy every year on the dot... some vocal portion of the populace will be quite
unhappy.

Getting into how I actually feel about politics would be pretty
irrelevant/pointless. However - I do think the U.S. is at the point where the
average HN goer would agree the current government is a shitshow. Making that
statement - I obviously agree with it. _However_ , I've reached a point where
I truly believe I'd rather have another four years of this administration, in
a sincere hope that things keep going downhill and get exponentially worse,
just so some drastic form of change and restructuring will have to happen -
either that, or just the U.S. becoming a completely failed nation and
engineers/scientists just jump ship to a more competent country.

Not trying to troll in the slightest in posting this. Am I crazy, or does
anybody else feel the same way?

~~~
benrbray
I've had the same thought and it sickens me that we've come to this point.

As someone who has made the transition from teenager to young adult during the
Trump era, I feel like I've lost a game I never even had the chance to play.
We have clearly gone so far off course but very few seem interested in
steering us back to reality (between the impeachment "trial", the primaries,
and our handling of COVID-19).

After four years of the disaster that is the Trump administration, any
establishment Democrats like Biden elected to office will be praised _no
matter what_ they do, simply by virtue of _not_ being Trump. But that's not
real progress. They'll continue to neglect wealth inequality / infrastructure
/ privacy / technology issues.

And Trump isn't the problem, he's just a convenient distraction from the fact
that big money controls both parties. It's just that establishment Democrats
more or less want to maintain the status quo, while conservatives are using
Trump to brazenly roll back regulations.

Four years from now, we'll have even more damning evidence about the true
long-term economic/social/environmental damage done during his term (as if it
weren't clear enough). If he's not in office long enough, this will all be
blamed on the next president, adding more fuel to the fire for a likely 2024
run.

Or worse: Someone more cunning but just as evil comes along, charming voters
while more adeptly covering up their true intentions.

Our only hope this that enough voters get _really pissed off_ enough to vote
in every local, state, and federal election consistently enough for the next
couple decades so that we can start to heal.

Biden's not going to inspire that. Bernie, maybe, had the chance to. Trump
will do it. And if we can't survive another four years of Trump, we don't
deserve to.

~~~
zimpenfish
> Bernie, maybe, had the chance to.

Bernie didn't even inspire people to vote for him in the primary; how was he
going to inspire people if he got nominated?

~~~
mercer
Bernie had the main-stream media + the entire DNC apparatus against him.
That's a ton of power and influence.

I'm not saying he would've 'won'; it's quite possible he positioned himself as
too much 'non-establishment', or perhaps too little. but saying he didn't
inspire people to vote for him in the primary is not evident, IMO.

~~~
zimpenfish
> saying he didn't inspire people to vote for him in the primary is not
> evident, IMO.

The fact he didn't win is evidence of that, surely?

~~~
mercer
It's evidence, but it's not evident. Those are not the same thing.

------
btilly
How much should we worry about this?

[http://www.lloyds.com/~/media/lloyds/reports/emerging%20risk...](http://www.lloyds.com/~/media/lloyds/reports/emerging%20risk%20reports/solar%20storm%20risk%20to%20the%20north%20american%20electric%20grid.pdf)
was prepared by Lloyds of London after the 2012 detection of a large solar
flare by a satellite in interplanetary space. (That one missed the Earth.)

Their estimate was $600 billion - $2 trillion dollars of damage from an event
that happens roughly once ever 150 years on average. Therefore the amortized
cost of this risk _per year_ is $4 - $13 billion.

If a substantial fraction of the risk can be mitigated over the next decade
for $300 million, it would be cheap at 10x the price. In fact Berkshire
Hathaway probably has enough exposure to this risk that it makes financial
sense for them to not debate over who pays and to just create the stockpile to
reduce potential future insurance claims.

~~~
realtalk_sp
Sadly it might cost Berkshire even less to just reinsure against the risk.

~~~
pilsetnieks
I'm suddenly tempted to write a not-quite-serious novel about a time period up
to and including a post-apocalyptic dystopia that occurred simply because
almost all emergency measures in the world were replaced by insurance
policies.

In the end people subsist on irradiated rats and mutant vegetables but they're
doing great because each of them are owed millions of pounds by Lloyd's of
London which may or may not exist anymore.

~~~
mrslave
Something about this reminds me of Snow Crash.

------
xkapastel
> In testimony before a Congressional Committee, it has been asserted that a
> prolonged collapse of this nation’s electrical grid—through starvation,
> disease, and societal collapse—could result in the death of up to 90% of the
> American population.

This could happen at any time due to a solar flare. The coronavirus has made
it pretty clear that America is completely unprepared for any sort of major
deviation from "normal".

~~~
_bxg1
That 90% number seems really hard to believe. Additionally, from the
referenced article:

> There is no published model disclosing how these numbers were arrived at,
> nor are we able to validate a primary source for this claim. Testimony given
> by the Chairman of the Congressional EMP Commission, while expressing
> similar concerns, gave no estimate of the deaths that would accrue from a
> prolonged nationwide grid collapse.

I'm highly suspicious that that number is exaggerated in order to inspire
action on what still seems like a worthwhile issue.

~~~
grecy
> _That 90% number seems really hard to believe_

As context, I spent three years driving right around Africa, and before that
two years driving from Alaska to Argentina. I've seen my fair share of
collapsing infrastructure (Congo... Mali... Sudan, etc.) and what happens in
just a few days without electricity.

In less developed countries the impacts are actually much less than they will
be in our developed countries, because the people there are used to things
failing, and their lives go on regardless. i.e. many people have beasts of
burden to carry loads and farm, they have bicycles or walk to get around and
they grow their own food.

For us, it won't be so easy.

\- Very quickly all the perishables in the stores go bad, and food shortages
become very real very fast.

\- ATMs don't work - therefore no cash for anyone.

\- Gas and diesel are very hard to get out of underground tanks without
electricity (yes, you can hand pump it or use a generator... but how many of
those are sitting around ready to go?)

\- Communications go down - no cell phones, no internet, no radio, no TV. It's
extremely hard to get accurate information in that scenario.

\- Soon everyone is just focused on survival, so many other basics fall by the
wayside. Garbage collection. Sewage, drinking water, medical supplies and much
more all stop working.

\- In places with low population density and where people have some
"homesteading" skills this might not be so bad - they can just shoot a cow
once every few weeks or whatever. In downtown LA, NYC and Chicago, it's
extremely bad.

In just a few weeks you have mass hysteria, and things go downhill fast. Just
look at the scenes in the big box stores when COVID-19 hit of people getting
violent and stockpiling toilet paper. Now imagine how desperate everyone would
be if the power was out, and in all likelihood will be out for months.

~~~
madengr
You the guy with the YouTube channel?

~~~
grecy
yep.

~~~
mercer
link?

------
wcoenen
> _I’d like to ask you guys whether we are prepared for other black swans.
> Let’s start with a collapse of the electrical system due to solar flares or
> electromagnetic pulse attacks._

A Black Swan is a "high-profile, hard-to-predict, and rare event that is
beyond the realm of normal expectations". But we know that the Carrington
Event happened in 1859, and that it's only a matter of time before a big solar
flare will affect Earth in the same way. So this is not a Black Swan.

But yes, we should prepare for foreseeable rare events.

~~~
beambot
Events like the Carrington & Covid seem to fit: high profile, hard to predict
and rare. IMO, both qualify as Black swan.

At some point, you have to pick a threshold on the probabilities involved...
These events are likely independent & identically distributed (i.e. hard to
predict for any year), and I'd call sub-1% annual chance pretty rare.

But I'm receptive to a different threshold... But you can't just say "Black
swan only counts for previously-inconceivable events".

Edit: I'm assuming covid-19 is structurally different than Sars, mers, Ebola,
& H1N1 purely based on the global effect it has had to date. If you found
those others as pandemics (not according to WHO though), then you can remove
it as Black swan.

~~~
roywiggins
Not to be all Word of God, but Nassim Taleb does not consider COVID19 a black
swan at all.

[https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/the-pandemic-
is...](https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/the-pandemic-isnt-a-black-
swan-but-a-portent-of-a-more-fragile-global-system)

It's not a black swan because everyone with half a brain could say that there
would eventually be a global pandemic respiratory disease. H1N1 was
technically one, it just happened to be mild. We thought there was going to be
one in 1976 and raced to vaccinate everyone against it. These things happen,
like earthquakes. Nobody knows when, but if the San Andreas went tomorrow it
wouldn't be a black swan.

~~~
steve19
Are any black swans going to be black swans in hindsight?

Did anyone anticipate it enough to put their money where their mouth was? A
fortune, and a major service to humanity, could have been made by a private
individuals stockpiling PPE in vast quantities.

You say anyone with half a brain anticipated it. I didn't. Did you buy 500k
N95 masks and put them in a warehouse?

Knowing someone will happen is easy. I know for sure that a large meatorite
will hit the earth and cause mass deaths and crop failure, but I have no idea
in how many 100s, 1000s or millions of year it will happen. If it happens
tomorrow it would be a black Swan *

* an example only, we would get plenty of advanced warning.

~~~
JoshuaDavid
> Did anyone anticipate it enough to put their money where their mouth was? A
> fortune, and a major service to humanity, could have been made by a private
> individuals stockpiling PPE in vast quantities.

The response to this pandemic has actually worried me quite a lot on this
front, because it seems likely now that anyone who stockpiled PPE at pre-
pandemic prices and tries to resell during the pandemic at a price high enough
to justify their initial investment will be accused of price gouging and
possibly have their stockpile seized.

Which has the effect that nobody has an incentive to build a reserve of things
that will be useful in a future crisis, even if that crisis is foreseeable.

So yeah, it's easy enough to say "I think there's at least a 5% chance per
year of an event which results in at least 10 million people who will want to
buy a portable generator" (which is 10x the amount normally sold in a year). I
genuinely do think that's a true statement, and it would imply that the number
of generators currently being produced would need to be at least 50% higher to
meet demand averaged across all times rather than typical times, which is a
pretty big difference in a pretty big market. Normally when you think you know
something the market doesn't, you can bet against the market by investing in
whatever the market is undervaluing, and if you're right you make money. In
this case, I'm not sure how you would go about doing that. Investing in
companies making generators doesn't increase production. Buying generators and
leaving them in a warehouse risks your stockpile being seized in the case
where you were right about the risk. I'm honestly not sure how I would go
about putting my money where my mouth is here.

~~~
roywiggins
Even without the prospect of seizure, it's not free to maintain a stockpile,
or maintain a short. So you're also making a bet that it will happen sooner
rather than later- if it takes 100 years, your equipment will be rusted or
obsolete and you'll probably be dead by then. And you'll have paid every year
to maintain it, money you could have put into a slightly less risky and more
liquid investment that would have long since paid out.

All the day-to-day costs and risks can just totally swamp the potential
upside, even before the regulatory risk of seizure or being forced to sell
your stockpile at pre-crisis prices. Price-gouging laws are already on the
books, so it's not like it would be that much of a surprise.

------
abeppu
Maybe someone who knows a bunch about this stuff can enlighten me. I was kind
of under the impression that a large solar flare would damage _all sorts_ of
electronic equipment, by inducing currents wires all over the place.

\- If we had extra transformers on hand, how would you protect them from also
being damaged?

\- If a solar flare is powerful enough to damage these transformers, would it
also have damaged a large proportion of devices that use power? I.e. even if
you could get the electric grid working, would there be working systems of any
complexity to use the power?

~~~
petrocrat
Transformers are usually housed in metal boxes. Any wires inside metal
sheeting of whatever geometry would be protected because any current induced
would be induced in the metal container which dissipates the power of the
pulse. To learn more read about Faraday cages.

~~~
FlyMoreRockets
Transformers are safe unless they are connected to cross country wires, which
act as giant antennas, collecting energy from an EMP or a solar flare.

------
jerkstate
Did this guy even talk to a power grid engineer before posting his opinion?
Offline spares of long lead time equipment are _always_ kept by utilities. The
risk to the power grid is institutional knowledge, if something happens to the
small group of greybeards who run each regional utility, they could bring in
new qualified engineers but it would take time to understand the system (which
would cause an outage that either wouldn't happen in the first place or would
be short to become protracted). The other major risk is if they are kept from
doing their jobs due to budget or political issues (see: PG&E)

~~~
beckingz
The main issue is that ultra high voltage transformers are large, expensive,
have long lead times (12-36 months!), and are built almost entirely in China.

You're correct though, that the entire energy industry skews old and is at
risk of losing a lot of knowledge as talent retires.

The real risk is squirrels and trees though. Flora and fauna do not play well
with transmission equipment.

~~~
antsar
> long lead times (12-36 months!)

I was skeptical, but this seems right (at least circa 2012). Here's a source:

[https://www.energy.gov/sites/prod/files/Large%20Power%20Tran...](https://www.energy.gov/sites/prod/files/Large%20Power%20Transformer%20Study%20-%20June%202012_0.pdf)

(summarized in the Concluding Remarks section)

------
Havoc
I don't think it's true that the US is unprepared. Most major grids have
documented procedure to do a blackstart.

Which would be painful as hell but hardly 90% of population dies level
painful. Author seems to be assuming more widespread damage I guess. In which
case a handful of HV transformers aren't like to be the biggest headache. I'd
imagine there is a hell of a lot more sensitive equipment out there than HV
transformers. Internet, stock market, comms etc.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_start](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_start)

~~~
rvnx
This article is underestimating also how creative can people can become under
stressful situations.

For example, converting car engines as power generators, fixing these High
voltage transformers, etc.

People adapt, they will build power generators based on whatever they find,
industries will shift to make photovoltaic panels and electric production will
become local, etc.

Yes it's 90% of people dying if there is no electricity and everybody stays
home waiting to die.

1 billion people in the world live without electricity.

The solar flares are a minor risk compared to the main actual risk (war or
sabotage), if there is a war, no matter how many High voltage transformers you
have in stock, they are going to be destroyed.

------
wfbarks
I feel like 2008 was an era of irresponsibility. Home buyers took out risky
loans, banks sold these loans without accepting responsibility for how risky
they where, investors purchased these loans without taking the responsibility
to even see what kind of Loans where even in these mortgage backed securities.
Ratings agencies abdicated this responsibility too. Goldman lied to AIG, and
AIG didn't do the research to understand the credit default swaps they where
selling. Central banks didn't accept responsibility for anything, saying "it
was impossible to see the crisis coming".

It doesn't appear that we have left this paradigm at all. The only group that
has improved is the consumers, households have significantly cut back leverage
since the 2008 crisis. But companies have not. Companies don't feel they have
any responsibilities to prepare for these long tail situations, and
governments don't seem capable of doing it. leaving it to central banks to
throw trillions at the problem after the fact.

~~~
oldsklgdfth
I would argue that the 10 years after 08' have also lacked responsibility.

I think the secondary effects of the covid shutdown are going to highlight
some very poor decisions. Mainly rallying the economy, rather than making it
more robust. I'm interested in seeing what happens with housing specifically.

~~~
wfbarks
thats basically my point, Companies still aren't taking responsibility for
anything and are running the companies to keep the share price up so the Exec
team can collect on their options in 4 years and move on. Similarly the
government seems completely incompetent, and willfully blind to the risks
being taken.

~~~
oldsklgdfth
Maybe so, but they are being enabled.

Two things come to mind: \- stock buybacks can be eliminated with legislation
\- Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac are still under government conservatorship

------
runawaybottle
I think it’s in our interest to have some kind of political Readiness Act that
assesses events like this (Pandemic being in the list, along with this).
Spending a few billion on it is pennies compared 2 trillion that we thus far
have spent, not including the widespread economic cost.

Might be worth jamming into the Green New deal.

------
PacketPaul
The book “One Second After” deals with an EMP attack on the US. I don’t
understand why we are not better prepared.

~~~
barkingcat
because it costs money and decreases profits.

------
ars
I wonder how many other rare disasters there are that cost only 300M to
prepare for.

If it's just a couple, then sure, fund this one.

But if there are thousand of possible rare disasters - how can you possibly
fund them all?

~~~
dmurray
Now that we've got "global pandemic" marked off our bingo card, I'd put this
at the top of the most likely "unforeseen" worldwide disasters. Some kind of
supervolcano eruption is the other candidate.

Of course, not all disasters are global and every country or region will have
its own rare disasters to prepare for.

~~~
FlyMoreRockets
Add asteroid strike at with the energy level of a nuclear warhead to that
list. Fortunately, it is 71% likely to come down in the ocean.

~~~
dmurray
It would have to be a lot bigger than "a nuclear warhead" to cause a global
catastrophe rather than a local one, and it has to be more unfortunately aimed
than just coming down over land. It would be pretty bad if the Chelyabinsk
meteor had hit Tokyo or Mexico City, but as it happened it troubled glaziers
more than doctors.

~~~
FlyMoreRockets
The problem with a sudden nuclear scale explosion is that it could trigger a
nuclear exchange.

------
anovikov
How likely is simultaneous failure of 9 out of 30 of them? Totally unlikely if
you ask me. And some redundancy is built into the system, so it's not like
failure of 3 will cause loss of power in 1/3 of the U.S. - most likely none at
all (or maybe only scheduled blackouts in peak times in some of the places).

In Cyprus, we had such an event in 2011, when 2000 tons of explosives Russian
tried to smuggle into Syria, were intercepted by a U.S. Navy and redirected to
be offloaded here (because the ship carrying them was formally registered here
and flew a Cyprus flag - really being owned by the KGB), and these explosives
went off in the summer heat, wrecking a power station that produced 70% of the
electricity here.

We only had about 2 hours of blackout per day and a recommendation to limit
a/c use, for about a month.

Power transmission is super resilient and relay protection is a whole science
of it's own. Especially in the U.S. when there are many virtually independent,
privately owned and loosely interconnected transmission systems, which puts it
at a relative advantage.

~~~
jessriedel
> how likely is simultaneous failure of 9 out of 30 of them? Totally unlikely
> if you ask me.

It's quite possible because their failure probabilities aren't independent. A
geomagnetic storm could take most of them out at once. Like respiratory
pandemics, this is an event that happens every ~century.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geomagnetic_storm](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geomagnetic_storm)

~~~
anovikov
But it will be known well in advance and can be mitigated by simply shutting
the grid down for a few hours. Only places which will experience difficulties
are those having a large fraction of nuclear power since a reactor can't be
quickly restarted once shut down, so power will restore only in some days.

~~~
jessriedel
Do you have a cite? My impression was that we do not have sufficient
preparations in place to do this.

(E.g., we may have satellites that can be taken as weak indicators, but they
are not designed for this, and there is no clear decision authority starting
from possibly ambiguous satellite data to prophylactically shutting down power
for 300M people against their will. Hopefully, recent events have made clear
that "leaders will get their act together and act decisively during an
emergency" cannot be the default assumption.)

------
mepiethree
If it were as easy as spending $300M, every utility company in the country
would be falling over themselves to do it. Utility companies make their money
by rate basing their capital expenditures. The rate you pay for electricity is
set by the state, to guarantee a certain ROI for the utility on approved
infrastructure. Utilities literally spend money to make money.

I couldn't agree more that our electric grid needs more investment. I won't
pretend to know better than the PUCs and the utilities about how that should
be spent or what should be passed on to the ratepayer. The only thing I do
know is that my company (Kevala) has mapped tens of thousands of substations,
transmission lines, and HV transformers, so it seems we would have a lot more
to back up than those 30. Good time for non-wires alternatives?

------
8bitsrule
It's a very complex topic. But clearly any country heavily invested in and
reliant on technology _must_ include a significant fraction of tech/science
literate leaders ... an actual requirement for (half of?) any state's
Congress-critters.

To whatever extent 'terrorism' is a real threat (and not just an excuse to
maintain the military budget), many other dangers like pandemics and an EMP
event and climate change were outlined _decades_ ago. F-35s and aircraft
carriers and hundreds of military bases won't cut it against them. Nor will
faith.

------
watertom
The movement to run the government as a business is at the heart of a lot of
these problems.

Governments have a different risk model than a for profit business.

For profit businessEs can’t in any way financially justify to it’s stock
holders the spending of money to protect against something that might never
happen.

I ran DR & BC for a very large global firm, I reported to the Board, and I can
tell you these people thought I was insane, even to protect against things
like fires.

“When was the last time you heard of a large office building having a major
fire with more than a couple of casualties?” This was actually said to me when
I was proposing to improve the company’s fire protection system. I got out
voted and they “ saved” the money. They still haven’t had a fire, so as far as
they are concerned I was stupid.

Electric companies are necessary so they know if something does go horribly
wrong they get bailed out.

------
yagurastation
I'll just drop this book recommendation here, which I found to be an
interesting read during this pandemic: Blackout: Tomorrow Will Be Too Late
(2012) Marc Elsberg

------
PopeDotNinja
Solar storm of 1859

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_storm_of_1859](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_storm_of_1859)

------
smrk007
Is anyone working on solving this problem?

------
renewiltord
Safrr Arkstorm or Tsunami are also pretty cheap to take care of. But that's
life.

------
dvt
Being "prepared for black swans" is a bad idea. Of course, you want your
system as a whole to be as antifragile as possible, but one should never
_prepare_ for black swans, but rather buy insurance (so to speak): hedge,
diversify, minimize impact. For example, we can imagine a world where some
other pandemic is being spread. One that, instead of attacking the lungs,
attacks the kidneys. All of a sudden we'd need dialysis machines -- not
ventilators. See how preparing for some _specific_ black swan is misguided (as
we can be hit by any other, equally unlikely, black swan event)?

> In testimony before a Congressional Committee, it has been asserted that a
> prolonged collapse of this nation’s electrical grid—through starvation,
> disease, and societal collapse—could result in the death of up to 90% of the
> American population.

Okay, this sounds like an interesting assertion. Can we back this up? Is this
just alarmism? Where's the data?

> Yes, $300 million dollars for a stockpile of 30 HV transformers is far too
> expensive to prevent 90% of the public dying and the rest reduced to
> cannibalism.

I see. So now we're assuming some off-the-charts assertion, which is dubious
at best[1], is absolutely true. The cannibalism is thrown in for extra flair.
Gotta' get them clicks somehow.

> Update: I forget to mention that I’m far more worried about accidental
> nuclear war, bioterrorism and AI run amok than I am about solar flares.

Anyone that's seriously worried about "AI run amok" (whatever that means)
doesn't understand the first thing about AI.

[1]
[https://www.popularmechanics.com/military/weapons/a25883/nor...](https://www.popularmechanics.com/military/weapons/a25883/north-
korea-cant-kill-ninety-percent-of-americans/)

~~~
elliekelly
Investing a nominal amount in strategic backup equipment that you might never
need _is_ hedging.

An event that has a low probability of occurring but that (if it occurs) will
be highly catastrophic is exactly the scenario that calls for hedging. Most
critical systems have already diversified by building in redundancies
(generators) and an insurance check wouldn’t be very useful for keeping the
rest of us alive.

~~~
dvt
> an insurance check wouldn’t be very useful for keeping the rest of us alive

True. I meant "insurance" in the general sense (clarified my post). Insurance
can be any number of things, as you mention, including hedging and
diversification.

------
csecdaemon
While I don't disagree that transformers... let alone key transformer.. are
critical. By disabling 9 transformers you cannot take down “THE GRID”. You
could certainly cause havoc and perhaps take down sections of a grid, perhaps
a large one such as new york city. But these would be localized. While
ensuring that critical components are local and available is important much of
this is being done in the energy sector. It’s not to say there simply are no
replacements. However, the energy sector, including transmission, is made up
of over 6000 separate organizations. Most of which are not federally
controlled or controlled by the local government. Put simply they are for-
profit companies. They are critical infrastructure and regulated by the gov,
but not a part of.

Put short, this is a serious matter, but not in the way it is presented here.
It would be a herculean effort to take out 1 let alone the suggested 9.
Especially in a coordinated fashion. EVEN IF it was achieved.. This would only
cause localized issues. Not takedown. “THE GRID”

This is a much larger discussion but a few things to consider:

1\. There is no singular "grid". It just does not work that way. There are
thousands of generation and transmission companies throughout the US. They all
maintain there own “grids”. There is connectivity to provide ways to connect
grids to sell/buy/shed power. But these connections are controlled and can be
simply… disconnected. 2\. Without going on a major diatribe on the many
different attack vectors and inherent vulnerabilities in the energy sector….
Suffice to say.. The easiest and most sure way to take out a transformer is
physical. They would need to be destroyed or disabled. Digital/remote
interference would require an immense effort and campaign… we are not talking
breaching the 9 locations… we’re talking hacking millions upon millions of
connected devices and coordinating load to take out a transformer or the grid
as whole…. The coordination and effort necessary for either are staggering.
3\. There are in fact spares and inventory… just not in the hands of the feds.

~~~
FpUser
_There is no singular "grid". It just does not work that way_

This did not prevent "Northeast blackout of 2003" when bunch of states in the
US and province of Ontario in Canada went without power for 3 days. I remember
it quite clearly. Was not big fun. Luckily my friends and I with families went
camping on the lake so did not really suffer other than some little disaster
in a fridge ;)

~~~
runawaybottle
From wiki

 _The blackout 's proximate cause was a software bug in the alarm system at
the control room of FirstEnergy, an Akron, Ohio–based company, which rendered
operators unaware of the need to redistribute load after overloaded
transmission lines drooped into foliage. What should have been a manageable
local blackout cascaded into the collapse of the entire Northeast region._

How fragile we are.

