US Power Grid

[Brownwater Riverrat 13]

I was watching the history channel the other day and I don't remember what the show was called but they referenced the United States Power grid. Well here's what's got me worried..............DID YOU KNOW THAT IT'S DIVIDED UP INTO ONLY THREE SECTIONS?

Yup, east, west and Texas. So when the grid takes a shit it's going to really take a shit. I just thought it was noteworthy.........:(

[Daca102090]

And part of those east and west distribution networks stretch up into Canada as well so much larger than just the U.S.

[helomech]

glad Texas has its own

[realist]

You are right only three. Texas is its own grid so the rest of the US is really divided in two. There have been some interesting write ups on it. No one seems to be concerned, "Nothing to see her keep moving". Now for me it is more like clicking my heels and saying there is no place like home three times. Well at least we have our health care.........

[Vodin]

Yeap things in the US are becoming questionable. But that was the plan all the time right?

[Brownwater Riverrat 13]

glad Texas has its own

Lucky bastards.............

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You are right only three. Texas is its own grid so the rest of the US is really divided in two. There have been some interesting write ups on it. No one seems to be concerned, "Nothing to see her keep moving". Now for me it is more like clicking my heels and saying there is no place like home three times. Well at least we have our health care.........

You're killing me Smalls!

[LUNCHBOX]

glad Texas has its own

That just means more visitors to Texas if the lights go off east or west.

[Stormfeather]

If theres a EMP, grid goes down, doesnt matter the state, just saying...

[Kesephist]

Yes, either a solar event, or some dimwit pops high altitude nukes in the right places.. EMP.

I recall reading the book WARDAY, which described a ridiculously optomistic nuclear exchange. Most of this country lost its electrical capabilites owing to six high altitude nukes being set off, which sounds about right.

(Mind you, this book was about as blatant a piece of pro-California propaganda as you could ever hope to avoid; the continental strikes in the exchange took out the Dakotas, Wyoming, San Antonio, Omaha, DC and New York City. Nothing happened to California... riiiiiight)

The nastier, more insidious variant of dropping the grid, so far as I've seen in fiction, is cybernetically. Computerized switching being hacked. Put too much of a load HERE, disable safety devices THERE, stir, you get large scale blackouts... or worse, if the overload is big enough. The 'Net doesn't fry, it starves.

Local power can get restored as long as the fuel to feed the generators holds out... and these facilities will be fought over, from a county sized hydro plant, all the way down to some poor farmer with a 100 gallon tank on his truck feeding a 3k generator to keep his chickens unfrozen during the winter.

The moves to a unified national power grid are totalitarian, expensive, and just plain STUPID. Ditto utilities offering things like 'smart' thermostats and outlets.

Was me and had my own means of power, I'd still stay on the grid, with spares of all my electronics in tightly lidded galvanized garbage cans, with 2 gauge jumper cables clamped to the lid and a central ground. I'd also have a old fashioned big switch to swap over from line to local generation. (No computerized switch there) , so:

https://tse1.mm.bing.net/th?&id=OIP.M51d6236753f660cb040a13910b66d355o0&w=285&h=217&c=0&pid=1.9&rs=0&p=0&r=0

Electricity as an everyday thing in the existance of mankind has only been so in the last 150-odd years. All of us have, I'm willing to wager, a grandparent or great grandparent who did their day to day without it. The Amish seem to be doing well lacking it.

My .0005 tr oz Ag.

Kesephist

KI7CIL

[realist]

Hey, Hey we in California are special people so nothing will ever happen bad out here. Everyone says California will have an earthquake and fall into the ocean we I think it will be the rest of the US that will fall into the Atlantic.........so there....... We ride in special small buses with our special helmets. Life is good what possibly could happen.............skip, skip skip what a wonderful sunset..............

[Socalman]

Instead of an EMP nuke taking out our national grid, I am more concerned that just some local accident or terrorist activity could take it down.

Two weeks ago, I was ready to head out and plunk a couple grand down for a portable generator that would take care of our most basic needs. Enough to run 'fridge, freezer a couple of lights, even our central heater if necessary. )Being in SoCal we do not experience the cold of many of you and could gt by with just extra clothing and blankets.) Then my wife's transmission took a dump on her way home from work. Genny put on hold until we can pay off the transmission work.

As far as the division of the national grid into two parts plus Texas, it would make sense for the operators of the system to have ways to switch the system into many smaller parts if needed. My knowledge of electricity ends where the two plugs enter the wall but it seems it should not be too difficult to do.

[realist]

Socal, an accident like that happened several years ago, someone threw the wrong switch. That incident caused an outage throughout southern California, parts of Arizona and Nevada as well as northern Mexico. So picture if something like that caused a domino effect for a long period, not good.

[RedJohn]

No one seems to be concerned
It was a real concern for Y2K.

[Kesephist]

And just popped up on ZeroHedge:

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-10-19/hidden-fragility-what-happens-when-electricity-three-days

Similar to a post I had earlier on here about an atrocious item called "American Blackout".

Kesephist

[Socalman]

So if the national grid does go down, how much gasoline are people going to already have in storage to run their generators? While an EMP is always a possibility, I still think it will be either an accident or a small band of terrorists that take us out for quite some time.

A few weeks, even months, ok. A few years, most of us are screwed.

[bacpacker]

My main goals for stored fuel are to run a small Gen y enough to keep my freezers cold while processing the goods inside, and running my tiller and chain saw sparsely as needed. Diesel will be co sued to do tillage for the garden only. And I'm trying to come up with solutions around that long term.
A thing else will be solar.

[Kesephist]

Been looking at human powered gensets with battery/supercapacitor storage. K-tor's Powerbox is a nice one for one or two deepcycles provided you have an inverter. And i for one will not have the slightest problem with pedaling and periodically checking the batteries with a voltmeter, and a oldschool brute force DPDT switch between charger and inverter, instead of computer commands. Key stuff for comms.

[Stg1swret]

If. or perhaps I should say when the US power grid goes down, it will get ugly real fast. I'm an "ols school type of guy, so I have a ton of hand tools. I can get by without all the modern conveniences. No generator, don't keep much fuel on hand. I do keep my car filled up. Take a page from the Amish play book, they have gotten by for hundreds of years without all the things we take for granted. If we have a major grid issue, by day 4, we'll see thousands dead and riots all over as people try to get the resources they think they need or are entitled to.

[Fidel MD]

It only took about 20 minutes for the entire NE including parts of eastern Canada to go dark in 2003. And it took some more than two days to get power back...Because one line touched some foliage and the software had a bug.

[Brownwater Riverrat 13]

Well, it could/will get real ugly, If and when It does happen. Now with a new administration checking in, and who is supposed to be aware of our FUBAR infrastructure when it comes to the power grid. We might just get an upgrade afterall.............but I'm not holding my breath, I'm going to buy wire to be able to put my solar equip. together.

Hell, right now the snow storms are knocking out power. You know, climate change, it got cold all of the sudden, then this white stuff came out of the sky, scared the shit out of everybody. Cars wreckin, people stayin indoors, white stuff everywhere! Then........silence............"thank you Lord for letting me live in the country so I can at least get a head start before these idiots show up in our neck-o-the-woods." "Sorry for all the shit I done and what I'm about to do.......Amen"

Some people are just stupid, ya know?

[Socalman]

We have a vacation place in the San Bernardno Mountains, nothing large, 1,006 sq. ft. I spend a fair amount of time on the local board up there and this morning they are experiencing a blackout. It seems that a transformer in the Lucerene Valley (western area of the Mojave) blew up early this morning. Estimates run from 2 hours to 48 hours to get back on line. The people posting are currently using cell phones, but the cell towers are mostly battery backup and will go dead around noon, though there is one tower near the center of Big Bear that has a generator. The ski areas are open on generator power.

Many of the people are starting to get concerned as temps are in the 20's and those who have central forced air heating are pretty screwed. Fireplaces working overtime! Glad our little place has gas wall heaters that do not require electricity to operate.

So, what do you all think would happen if 45% of the continental USA had the grid go down without knowing when it will be back?

[Fidel MD]

A massive and long-lasting power failure, whatever the cause, would result in an 80-90% mortality rate after 24 months, mostly from starvation and disease.

The chronically ill that rely on ventilators, dialysis, etc will die first. Those that require medication to live will die off once their supply of medication runs out.

Water is essential. Once the pumps are off, people will start to die from dehydration in 3 days. Drinking contaminated water will result in dysentery and cholera, and they will die from those diseases in a week or less.

The food supply, as we know, is only about 3 days in the cities, so riots and starvation will follow. Those that live in cities and think they're OK because they have food stored better have a hell of a defensive plan an enough resources (people, equipment) to make it work or the rioters and gangs will kill them and take their stuff. After 60 days, 70% of the city populations will be dead from starvation and dehydration.

Right now, much of the US is experiencing colder than typical winter temperatures. Without electricity, most furnaces won't work - assuming they can get fuel. Natural gas systems rely on pumps to provide distribution. If they fail, there goes gas a fuel source. Other furnaces require electricity for ignition and for fans, as well. Think you're safe because you have a fireplace? I hope you have enough wood (and it's really a wood burning fireplace). Horribly inefficient, but it's all you have. Pellet stoves? More efficient but require electricity to run the auger. And what happens when you run out of pellets? Another bad storm (next week) and tens of thousands more could die.

Sanitation will be an issue, especially in the city. Electric pumps are essential to keep the poop running down hill, and when the pumps quit the poop will keep flowing, backing up into whatever it can. Trash pickup will be a distant memory since electric power is needed to run the fuel pumps for the garbage trucks.

And hospitals are no better off. Yes, they have generators, but lack sufficient fuel for more than a couple of days to a week. I know that the hospitals I've been involved in disaster planning with are unwilling to commit sufficient space for more than a week's fuel storage - because they cannot imagine a disaster that would keep them from getting fuel for a week. Good luck with that.

My solution is to have sufficient fuels stored to last me a good long time. I can also heat my house and shop with wood, and have enough firewood stored to last two years. I also have solar and wind power for the house, in addition to the generators.

But I have been more fortunate than most...or as Louis Pasteur said "Fortune favors the prepared".

[Kesephist]

I only disagree, sir, in magnitude and circumstances.

Grid power going off, of itself, without a Carrington event, EMP or anything else happening... You'll get your 80% mortality rate, I think, after SIX months.

Your other points are correct, and I only differ about the timing. As quickly and as deeply as this society hooked up to the grid will be its undoing if the lights go out.

Much faster if the tech that is grid-dependent goes out too. At least with an outage, there might be pockets of flexibility that will, here and there, hold things at bay as back ups are brought into play.

A Carrington/EMP disaster, though? 80% in three months.

There was a rather ridiculous series called THE NEWSROOM some time back... one of the minor characters in it stated it accurately... disaster won't be enemy action, as interwoven the Net and electicity and services are. It'll be some kid hacker monkeying with lock and dam gates, fiddling with pressures at refineries, overloading electrical lines, all as a case of "I'll show you!"... or worse, just for the heck of it, on a lark. Think of the movie "WarGames", and pop an extra Nytol tonight, 'cause if the nightmares these possibilities awake in you are ANYTHING like the ones they do to me, you'll need it.

33 AAWU

Kesephist

[Fidel MD]

Well, lets all pray we never find out.

It doesn't matter WHAT takes the grid down. If the grid goes down, lots and lots of people will die.

I set a 24 month framework because of not quite well enough prepared people hanging on for the first couple of years, and succumbing after a crop failure after their last seeds were planted.

Biblically, Joseph had the vision of 7 fat years, followed by 7 lean...I think that having enough food and seeds for a few bad years and bad crops is probably prudent. 7 may be a bit much, but hey....you can always eat it.