[FRIAM] infrastructure and faux-diversity

[Prof David West]

Ted Koppel, NYT, wrote a book a few years back called "Lights Out." About the national power grid.

When published in 2016, the quoted assessment of DoD, FEMA, DOE, Congressional Energy Committees, and others was a *100% chance of catastrophic failure within 20 years*.

Death toll in the millions within days and weeks of the failure.

The grid is an amalgam of mismatched hardware and, perhaps more importantly, software that prevents inter-operability — including within grid, e.g. Texas. (local power companies control what bespoke hardware and software is used: there are no standards).

The grid is already infected with malware installed by Russia, North Korea, Iran, and China.

The key components, giant house size transformers, cost from 10-150 million each and take 2-4 years to manufacture, so there are no backups.  And best part — all are made in China.

Despite the consensus that this _will_ happen in the near future, no one is planning for what to do about it.

All kinds of other good news in the book.

True story: in 1971 an intrepid band of revolutionaries set out,  bombs in trunk, to blow up the railroad tracks between Salt Lake City, UT and Wendover, NV. Way out on the salt flats where no one would be hurt; trains given lots of advance warning. The rationale: nearly all of the ammunition used in Vietnam was transported by train from Baraboo, WI to San Diego, CA, via those tracks

Six left Minneapolis and one by one they lost their zeal and commitment until 2 were left. Contacted by a co-revolutionary in Portland, plans were changed, bombs were transferred, and the colleague used them to take out a single power transmission line, a carefully selected nexus in the northwest power grid, and caused a two-day blackout that affected Portland up to Tacoma, WA.

davew




On Wed, Feb 17, 2021, at 7:58 AM, uǝlƃ ↙↙↙ wrote:
> Your graphs are interesting, even without interactivity or 3d. But more 
> interesting still would be their (potential) evolution through time. If 
> I understand the TX situation correctly, the "hoarding" behavior you 
> mentioned was an accidental increase in load with which the traditional 
> energy sources couldn't keep up ... less about bumping up the 
> thermostat for a buffer and more about simple demand.
> 
> It would be interesting to see a dynamic graph of the load/demand.
> 
> 
> On 2/16/21 7:58 PM, Steve Smith wrote:
> > We did not get around to visualizing dynamic graph loading...   it is still somewhat of a holy grail in the biz.
> 
> -- 
> ↙↙↙ uǝlƃ
> 
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