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| Science & Technology |
| The Inevitable Failure Of The US Grid |
| 2016-08-29 |
| Delta Airlines recently experienced what it called a power outage in its home base of Atlanta, Georgia, causing all the company’s computers to go offline—all of them. This seemingly minor hiccup managed to singlehandedly ground all Delta planes for six hours, stranding passengers for even longer, as Delta scrambled to reshuffle passengers after the Monday debacle. Where Delta blamed its catastrophic systems-wide computer failure vaguely on a loss of power, Georgia Power, their power provider, placed the ball squarely in Delta’s court, saying that “other Georgia Power customers were not affected”, and that they had staff on site to assist Delta. Whether it was a true power outage, or an outage unique to Delta is fairly insignificant. The incident was a single company without power for six measly hours, yet it wreaked much havoc. Which brings to mind (or at least it should) what happens when the lights really go out—everywhere? And just how dependent is the U.S. on single-source power? x When you hear about the possible insufficiency, unreliability, or lack of resiliency of the U.S. power grid, your mind might naturally move toward the extreme, perhaps National Geographic’s Doomsday Preppers. Talks about what a U.S. power grid failure could really mean are also often likened to survivalist blogs that speak of building faraday cages and hoarding food, or possibly some riveting blockbuster movie about a well-intentioned government-sponsored genetically altered mosquito that leads to some zombie apocalypse. But in the event of a power grid failure—and we have more than our fair share here in the U.S.—your survivalist savvy may be all for naught. This horror story doesn’t need zombies or genetically altered mosquitos in order to be scary. Using data from the United States Department of Energy, the International Business Times reported in 2014 that the United States suffers more blackouts than any other developed country in the world. Unfortunately, not much has been done since then to alleviate the system’s critical vulnerabilities. In theory, we all understand the wisdom about not putting all our eggs in one basket, as the old-adage goes. Yet the U.S. has done just that with our U.S. power grid. Sadly, this infrastructure is failing, and compared to many other countries, the U.S. is sauntering slowly behind many other more conscientious countries, seemingly unconcerned with its poor showing. More at the link |
| Posted by:badanov |
| #12 Trust me. The NIMBY factor has a LOT to do with why we haven't done a lot of major overhead grid upgrades, P2K. Both Farmers and City folk alike. Some folks in certain areas of the country understand the problems and actually help facilitate any improvements. They are a rarity, though. We can upgrade power plants all day long, but when you try to feed the 'new, improved' capacity into an ancient grid and switching system, very bad things happen. Very seldom does a newer power plant run at anywhere near capacity for just that reason. Now, just try and imagine when we suggest burying the cables into Mother Gaea. |
| Posted by: Mullah Richard 2016-08-29 21:48 |
| #11 United States suffers more blackouts than any other developed country in the world. Er, because it's the biggest grid in the developed world. The only countries of comparable size, Canada and Australia have far smaller grids reaching only a small percentage of their territory. I hate these faux statistics. |
| Posted by: phil_b 2016-08-29 20:55 |
| #10 Heisting Delta's old marketing slogan regarding the burnt up generators: "We love to fry, and it shows..." |
| Posted by: USN, Ret. 2016-08-29 15:22 |
| #9 As Frank Borman is alleged to have said "a stain on the carpet implies bad maintenance" Sorta like Van Halen and the M&Ms. |
| Posted by: Shipman 2016-08-29 15:02 |
| #8 Okay, if Delta doesn't have backup power for their HQ, I certainly wouldn't trust these clowns with my life on their planes. Exactly. No excuses. This was Delta's failure. You have backup generators and from time to time you test those generators. Not only that but you have remote, standby data centers where your database is replicated so when your primary data center goes offline your remote data center automatically goes online. Delta's CIO needs to be sacked and while they're at it the shareholders should demand the ouster of the CEO as well. |
| Posted by: Abu Uluque 2016-08-29 12:58 |
| #7 If you have not, see Season 1, Episode 1: The Trigger Effect, of Connections. |
| Posted by: swksvolFF 2016-08-29 09:21 |
| #6 Cities to be hardest hit. How's that NIMBY working for you beautiful people and your environment? |
| Posted by: Procopius2k 2016-08-29 08:27 |
#5 "Okay, if Delta doesn't have backup power for their HQ,..." From what I read (sorry, no link) the problem occurred when Delta transferred power from the primary source (Georgia Power) to Delta's backup generators. The backup generators caught fire and the fire spread to the primary transfer point, thus knocking out both primary and backup. |
| Posted by: Chuck 2016-08-29 04:59 |
| #4 this infrastructure is failing New infrastructure? Sure, in Iraq & Afghanistan --- so they'll love America. |
| Posted by: g(r)omgoru 2016-08-29 04:18 |
| #3 I've pretty much resigned myself to the idea that our government is so sure that everyone will have solar in the next 20 years that it has abdicated responsibility for taking care of the grid so they can steer the money towards servicing entitlements. |
| Posted by: gorb 2016-08-29 03:02 |
| #2 Okay, if Delta doesn't have backup power for their HQ, I certainly wouldn't trust these clowns with my life on their planes. That sort of failure is beyond stupid. I worked for a credit card processor and not only did our HQ have back up power but back up phone lines through separate carriers so that if one carrier went down, their phones still worked. |
| Posted by: Silentbrick 2016-08-29 02:38 |
| #1 Even on a good day, long line rural delivery in TX is not. |
| Posted by: Skidmark 2016-08-29 02:26 |