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US unprepared for an electrical grid collapse, but it costs only $300M

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Re: US unprepared for an electrical grid collapse, but it costs only $300M

#41

Post by gerdesj »

btilly wrote: post #22

How much should we worry about this? http://www.lloyds.com/~/media/lloyds/reports/emerging%20risk... 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 r…

"How much should we worry about this?"

Risk assessment.

Hands up who anticipated SARS-CoVid-2 -> covid-19? ... OK who mitigated it with a fortuitous insurance policy? ... OK who simply happened to have enough cash in the bank by accident?

Now look at the grid. Any grid.

Re: US unprepared for an electrical grid collapse, but it costs only $300M

#42

Post by Izkata »

beambot wrote: post #37
wcoenen wrote: post #7

> 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 af…

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…

> 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.

Put another way, it seems reasonable to me that "no one alive has experienced it before (and probably not their parents either)" is a decent threshold.

Re: US unprepared for an electrical grid collapse, but it costs only $300M

#43

Post by prostheticvamp »

lisper wrote: post #30
Noumenon72 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand how you have identified this as the problem. Sure, states haven't coordinated on lockdowns, testing, or mask purchasing. But it's not because they're struggling against the federal government, it's because there's no official policy to coordinate with. Seems to me like our main difficulty deviating from normal is the fact that a 20% decrease in demand kills off 10% of businesses within weeks and ca…

> it's not because they're struggling against the federal government Actually, it is: https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/495519-maryland-gov... “The National Guard and the State Police are both guarding these tests at an undisclosed location [because] the federal government seems to be interrupting supplies that are being sent elsewhere in the nation, and so I wanted to make sure that we received what we ordere…

I mean... your example is /true/, but I’m hard pressed to think of a second one. One example isn’t a trend.

Re: US unprepared for an electrical grid collapse, but it costs only $300M

#44

Post by [deleted] »

gerdesj wrote: post #41
btilly wrote: post #22

How much should we worry about this? http://www.lloyds.com/~/media/lloyds/reports/emerging%20risk... 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 r…

"How much should we worry about this?" Risk assessment. Hands up who anticipated SARS-CoVid-2 -> covid-19? ... OK who mitigated it with a fortuitous insurance policy? ... OK who simply happened to have enough cash in the bank by accident? Now look at the grid. Any grid.

[deleted]

Re: US unprepared for an electrical grid collapse, but it costs only $300M

#45

Post by beckingz »

jerkstate wrote: post #32

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 eithe…

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.

Re: US unprepared for an electrical grid collapse, but it costs only $300M

#46

Post by lisper »

prostheticvamp wrote: post #43
lisper wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it's not because they're struggling against the federal government Actually, it is: https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/495519-maryland-gov... “The National Guard and the State Police are both guarding these tests at an undisclosed location [because] the federal government seems to be interrupting supplies that are being sent elsewhere in the nation, and so I wanted to make sure that we received what we ordere…

I mean... your example is /true/, but I’m hard pressed to think of a second one. One example isn’t a trend.

https://www.latimes.com/politics/story/2020-04-07/hospitals-...

"... the federal government is quietly seizing orders, leaving medical providers across the country in the dark about where the material is going and how they can get what they need to deal with the coronavirus pandemic. Hospital and clinic officials in seven states described the seizures in interviews over the past week." [Emphasis added]

Is that enough of a trend for you?

Re: US unprepared for an electrical grid collapse, but it costs only $300M

#47

Post by FlyMoreRockets »

petrocrat wrote: post #23
abeppu wrote: post #10

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 p…

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.

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.

Re: US unprepared for an electrical grid collapse, but it costs only $300M

#48

Post by oldsklgdfth »

wfbarks wrote: post #34

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 und…

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.

Re: US unprepared for an electrical grid collapse, but it costs only $300M

#49

Post by Izkata »

abeppu wrote: post #10

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 p…

A bit more self-centered, is there a way to protect consumer devices from something this? I'm primarily thinking external hard drives with pictures/video we wouldn't want to lose. Maybe a faraday-cage-box of some sort we could buy to just store a spare external in?

Re: US unprepared for an electrical grid collapse, but it costs only $300M

#50

Post by ComputerGuru »

Noumenon72 wrote: post #24
intopieces wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The coronavirus has made it pretty clear that America is completely unprepared for any sort of major deviation from "normal". This is the nature of the US system of competitive federalism. States only coordinate with the federal government when either (a) it's politically expedient, because the ruling party in the same for both at that time, or (b) the federal government forces this issue, at which time lawsuits en…

I don't understand how you have identified this as the problem. Sure, states haven't coordinated on lockdowns, testing, or mask purchasing. But it's not because they're struggling against the federal government, it's because there's no official policy to coordinate with. Seems to me like our main difficulty deviating from normal is the fact that a 20% decrease in demand kills off 10% of businesses within weeks and ca…

It’s more nuanced than that. As Gov Pritzker made public, states are having to bid against one another for PPE and driving up prices significantly because it’s every man (or woman) for themselves. He publicly castigated the federal government for not centralizing the acquisition of resources (which isn’t the same as footing the bill as they can allocate the materials (acquired at whatever better cost they can negotiate as a single buyer then) to states based off of population or need, ands charge them for them if they like.
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