Are we putting ourselves in an electric chair?

Today's posting will be relatively short but not so sweet. Do you rememberer what happened in Texas last winter? How the Texas power grid failed and what could stop it from happening again.

A couple of decades ago, around 2013, there were a number of articles about power grid failures in the United States. Here's an example: Comparison of major power grid failures in US and around the world (1). You can search for more using your favorite search engine. The terms I used are: US grid failure. If you do a separate search and add the word "response" I don't think you'll find much coverage of solutions to grid failure that have already been started, let alone completed, and that was before we started putting almost all our eggs in the electric basket.

generation, transmission and distribution are all necessary

Photo by J. Harrington

So here's my version of where we're at:

1. Our electric grid wasn't stable at the start of the millennium.
2. We've done little to improve it.
3. We're nowhere near close to reducing our greenhouse gases as much as we should.
4. We're becoming increasingly reliant on a power grid that's subject to increasing amounts of severe storms and power demands due largely to our failure to respond to climate disruption.
5. Our political system is breaking down.
6. We have no where near the unified approach we once had toward "putting a man on the moon by the end of the decade."
7. Those in positions of power have, for the most part, had it too easy for too long and don't know how to lead or respond to a real crisis.
8. American exceptionalism has now come to stand for exceptionally shortsighted and self-centered.

Superstorm Sandy made US aware that generators need fuel. If we leave it all in the ground, on what will our generators run until the system is back up? If we continue to produce gasoline, will there be power to pump it into cans for the local generators? Will the grid system have sufficient battery backup to last for several days or weeks? I don't know the answers to these and related questions. This country has been reliant on for profit public utilities and has permitted situations such as Texas' grid isolation to occur. We believe it's past time for US to follow an "everyone for themselves" strategy. We are all in this together, just as with responding to COVID-19 and getting vaccinated. Much as I hate to agree with former president George Bush about anything, it's time we realized, on some issues, "if you're not for US, you're against US." That's especially true of today's Republicans.

Statement on Energy Policy

By Carter Revard

It’s true we have invented quark-extraction,

and this allows our aiming gravity at will;

it’s true also that time

can now be made to flow

backward or forward by

the same process. It may be true as well that

what is happening at the focal point,

the meristem of this process,

creates a future kind of space,

a tiny universe that has

quite different rules. In this, it seems,

whatever one may choose to do or be becomes

at once the case. In short,

we have discovered heaven and

it’s in our grasp. However,

the Patent Office has not yet approved and cites

less positive aspects of this invention. First, it

does not generate profit, and

it does make obsolete all present

delivery systems for our nukes. Then,

it will let private citizens do things that only

a chosen few, that is, OUR sort, should be allowed—

fly freely from one country

to any other, spreading diseases

and bankrupting transportation.

Home-heating, auto-making industries will be trashed,

employment shelled, depressions spread worldwide,

sheer anarchy descend.

For these and other reasons,

no one must know of this. . . .

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