Collaborate Disseminate
The grid failure in 2003 which reverted much of the eastern US and Canada back to a pre-electrification era may be rather memorable, yet it was not the first time …read more Continue reading The 2003 Northeast Blackout and the Harsh Lessons of Grid Failures
We’ve all experienced power outages of some kind, be it a breaker tripping at an inconvenient time to a storm causing a lack of separation between a tree and a …read more Continue reading Cascade Failures, Computer Problems, and Ohms Law: Understanding the Northeast Blackout of 2003
A heat wave spreading across a large portion of the west coast of the United States is not surprising for this time of year, but the frequency and severity of these heat waves have been getting worse in recent years as the side effects from climate change become more obvious. …read more
Continue reading What’s the Deal with Rolling Blackouts in California’s Power Grid?
Trouble in the Golden State this week, as parts of California were subjected to planned blackouts. Intended to prevent a repeat of last year’s deadly wildfires, which were tied in part to defective electrical distribution equipment, the blackouts could plunge millions in the counties surrounding Sacramento into the dark for …read more
A massive power outage in South America last month left most of Argentina, Uruguay, and Paraguay in the dark and may also have impacted small portions of Chile and Brazil. It’s estimated that 48 million people were affected and as of this writing there has still been no official explanation …read more
Continue reading The South American Power Outage that Plunged 48 Million into Blackout
A presidential advisory council has warned the White House and Department of Homeland Security in no uncertain terms that a catastrophic months-long power outage represents a “profound threat [that] requires a new national focus.” The president’s National Infrastructure Advisory Council, a group of executives from the public and private sectors tasked with issuing advice on protecting critical infrastructure, in a December report calls on the government to enhance its efforts to prevent widespread electrical failures in the event of a natural disaster. “Significant action is needed to prepare for a catastrophic power outage that could last for weeks or months,” the report found, adding that a cyberattack timed to coincide with a natural disaster could be especially problematic. “Although emergency authorities are understood at a high-level, how they are implemented in practice is unclear,” the report states. “There is a better understanding for physical events that are more frequently practiced, […]
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If you lived through the Y2K fiasco, you might remember a lot of hype with almost zero real-world ramifications in the end. As the calendar year flipped from 1999 to 2000 many forecast disastrous software bugs in machines controlling our banking and infrastructure. While this potential disaster didn’t quite live up to its expectations there was another major infrastructure problem, resulting in many blackouts in North America, that reared its head shortly after the new millennium began. While it may have seemed like Y2K was finally coming to fruition based on the amount of chaos that was caused, the actual …read more
