Recovery Challenges

Most local power outages last just minutes or hours. 

Electric utilities quickly recover from most of these, and rely on interstate cooperative agreements to aid each other in the case of widespread storm or wildfire damage. 

However, rare power outages could occur over such a large enough area -- even nationwide -- and cause enough equipment damage that there would not be surplus crews or replacement equipment to recover from a blackout for many weeks, months or even years.

 

Electric Dominos

 

Infrastructure Interdependency

 

“Black Start” Recovery

Our national electric grid is a highly complex network of generation plans, interstate transmission lines and local distribution systems that requires constant adjustment to manage the constantly varying supply and demand for power.

A disruption in one part of the system can start a cascade of events that can cause blackouts covering multiple states and result in damage to components that can take weeks or potentially months to repair.

These disruptions can be triggered by any number of events, natural or deliberate, from hostile nations to terrorists to cyber criminals to severe weather…even from trees and rodents.

 

According to the Federal Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, there are 16 critical infrastructure sectors whose assets, systems, and networks, whether physical or virtual, are considered so vital to the United States that their incapacitation or destruction would have a debilitating effect on security, national economic security, national public health or safety, or any combination thereof.

Presidential Policy Directive 21 (PPD-21): PPD-21 identifies 16 critical infrastructure sectors:

  • the chemical industry

  • commercial facilities

  • communications

  • critical manufacturing

  • dams

  • the defense industry

  • emergency services

  • energy production and distribution

  • financial services

  • food and agriculture

  • government

  • healthcare

  • information technology

  • nuclear reactors, materials and waste

  • transportation systems

  • water and waste treatment systems.

They all depend on sustained electrical power as the “keystone” infrastructure to function properly.

Therefore, we are focused on protecting our electric power infrastructure as the highest, most urgent, and impactful priority for our immediate attention.

 

As referenced above, when a power generation plant goes offline, it requires electric power from -- and coordination with -- a connected source in order to re-start. Under normal conditions of either planned or unexpected localized outages if there is ready access to enough power from neighboring power plants or from stored energy onsite, this process is handled routinely

However, if outages and/or equipment damage were extensive enough -- due to common widespread problems such as a coordinated attack or an extraordinary geomagnetic storm -- restarting our electric grid could be thwarted by a “chicken or egg” problem. 

In other words, if there isn’t enough access to external sources of electricity from connected power plants due to the widespread nature of the outage or there isn’t enough stored energy on-site, offline power plants might be prevented from restarting.  

If imported power is not available, the vast majority of stored energy that can be converted to electricity on-site comes from coal, natural gas, nuclear or hydro power, all of which are being phased out in favor or alternatives such as solar and wind power with battery storage that lasts only hours rather than the days that might be required to effect a widespread, coordinated black-start recovery process.

Such rare but virtually inevitable widespread, long-term outages could be cause by natural or man-made causes such as massive solar flares, electromagnetic pulses (EMP), physical or cyber attacks, or resource mismanagement due to operator error or government policy.

Although critical infrastructure is often equipped with back-up power sources, the vast majority only last for hours or at most days. 

Some of these facilities, such as drinking water and sewage treatment plants can suffer damage that makes it difficult to restart them even after power is restored. Even power generating plants need a backup supply of electricity to effect a “black start” recovery.

The Covid-19 pandemic has demonstrated all too clearly how vulnerable our interconnected society is to even short-term disruption of critical infrastructure which, if unusually prolonged, can leads to panic, civil unrest, loss of life and economic catastrophe.

Without grass-roots demand, we are not confident that utility and government leadership will take all the necessary steps to prevent the loss of millions of lives and trillions of dollars caused by an unprecedentedly widespread and persistent power outage.

That’s why we have created Resilient Utilities Now! And why we need your help to StopTheNextOne.