I work for an electrical utility. When I first started there, in the late 70’s, we were taught about the separability and redundancy built into the system, which was designed by cold war engineers. Each region had its own generation, subtransmission, and distribution components, and could be operated as a separate entity. The regions were connected at a high level for efficiency and redundancy. Not true today. No one wants generation plants anywhere near, so they are far away and out of mind. I remember standing on top of a mountain, looking down and seeing the fragile thread of the transmission lines across the desert. The strongest impression I had was one of vulnerability. We still have a comparatively robust system with a fair amount of redundancy at lower levels. But like the rest of our infrastructure, much of the system is old and overloaded. Solar panels and high speed rail won’t solve the problem. We need a national program to rebuild our infrastructure, combining people who are willing to sweat and get dirty with the most effective of the new technologies we have developed. In the meantime, I just remembered that I am overdue for maintenance on my portable generators…
Yeah, we’ve pinched pennies by reducing robustness. That’s a poor practice that produces rotten results.
INSTAPUNDIT
1 comment:
I think electrical engineers have lost their brain somewhere in the last twenty years. All this new computer technology to run the grid. The result? Fragileness under normal operating conditions.
To discuss an EMP burst would overload their donkey. This nation would regress to riots, looting, etc with an EMP burst. No electricity, computers, gasoline, vehicles, telephones, trains, trucks, nothing. OK, some older diesel trucks would run, some older gasoline vehicles with a distributor and points would run. Airplanes with magnetos should still work. Damn little else would work. A pathetic situation, but we are efficient.
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