Lights Out—electric grid & substations: vulnerability & ways they might fail—Ashes Ashes #13
Channel: Stop Fossil Fuels
Date: 2018-12-18

What do airports, water treatment facilities, gas stations, and espresso machines all have in common? A dependence on a reliable and stable network of power generation and distribution. In America, and around the world, our electrical grids are aged, stressed, and increasingly at risk of attack. Worse, the centralization and increased interdependence of these grids mean the risk for large-scale failure has never been greater.

If we don't act quickly, the next time the lights go out, they may not turn on again.

Chapters

    00:00 Preshow
    00:45 What is the Grid?
    01:58 Some History
    03:53 The Grid Today
    05:27 Foliage
    07:45 Renewable: Difficulties
    09:40 Renewables: Subsidies
    12:06 Energy Storage
    14:37 Transformers: Ageing
    16:25 Transformers: Raw Materials
    17:19 Transformers: Lead Time
    19:53 Critical Substations
    21:04 Physical Threats
    21:29 Physical Threats: Liberty
    22:54 Physical Threats: Metcalf
    27:33 Transformers: Spares in Reserves?
    29:47 Cyber Threats
    31:42 Ukraine Cyber Attack
    35:09 Incentives for a Cyber Attack
    38:21 How Will War Begin?
    39:56 What happens when the Lights go Off?
    42:15 Electromagnetic Pulse
    43:06 Solar Threat
    44:04 Carington Event
    46:28 1989 Geomagnetic Storm
    48:04 Bureaucracy
    48:29 What Can we Do?
    55:21 Wrap up

Podcast by Ashes Ashes. Browse episode resources & read full transcript at https://ashesashes.org/blog/episode-13-lights-out

Reposted under CC License. Image from How To Overthrow a Government: https://youtu.be/m1lhGqNCZlA?list=PLhyuEATzj_iwVGqFC8RNY_bXm5ca1FxL-&t=1662

Stop Fossil Fuels researches and disseminates effective strategies and tactics to halt fossil fuel combustion as fast as possible. Learn more at https://stopfossilfuels.org

TRANSCRIPT EXCERPT

Daniel: The grid comes in 3 parts: power generation; transmission; and distribution.

Our dependence on it is growing in ways that we take for granted. Our transportation networks depend on it, we require it for all our basic necessities at home: cooking, air conditioning, even our water treatment centers. Partly because of the way this grid evolved and was cobbled together, and the way that generation has to constantly meet our consumption levels, it's extremely sensitive and fragile and constantly at risk of failure, and that risk is going up.

The risk is rising because #1 we have an aging system. When you look at a power line for example, you might not think there’s much to it, but these are extremely expensive, and a lot of our power lines were designed with a 50 year life expectancy. They were built in the 50s and 60s, they weren't meant to handle the extreme heat and weather patterns that we experience today. The Department of Energy estimates it would cost $900 billion to update these aging lines.

Part of that is to meet the rising threat that climate change is putting on our power grid. Our transmission and distribution lines are already at full capacity during hot temperatures in the summer when demand for electricity peaks, and rising heat causes these power lines to physically expand and sag, which increases the risk of power outages at the same time we need them the most.

Enormous blackouts have occurred from a single power line that sags and shorts out from foliage contact.

David: When we think of grid protections we might think of investments in new construction, or physical security, or maybe cyber security stuff which is a threat we'll talk about later, but actually the greatest threat to the grid statistically speaking are trees.

There are huge crews going around cutting trees back away from these lines, but these are also some of the first that are cut when profits start getting tight. So when economic downturns happen, or when power generation gets more expensive due to reasons like increasing prices of natural gas, or coal, or other important components of generation. Then these crews get cut and then you start seeing more and more outages from this problem.

Daniel: In 2015, 25% of all power outages in the Western United States were caused by weather.

David: Part of the reason that things as simple as increased temperatures or changes of weather can throw off the grid is because it is just so complicated. The grid is not this static, unchanging thing, but a constantly evolving, constantly growing, shrinking, adjusting, almost living being. We add generation, we add distribution, we change the type of generation… all this stuff is moving around constantly and it's not just one single grid across the country either, there's three major grids: one on the West Coast; one in the East; and then Texas has their own for a variety of reasons, the most prominent of which is trying to avoid Federal Regulations by keeping all the power generated within state lines.

But as the grid grows and evolves it has to deal with new problems, new challenges, some in the way we generate electricity itself.