Section
Grid
22 briefs from the last two weeks.
Monday, October 19
Metcalf still explains the grid better than most white papers
In 2013, rifle fire at one California substation did more to focus Washington than a decade of slides.
Sunday, October 18
San Antonio’s hardening pilot is a template, not a finish line
A base, a city, and a municipal utility are treating EMP and geomagnetic risk as a shared operating problem.
Sunday, October 18
Inverter-based resources changed where the grid can break
Solar, wind, and batteries moved electronics into the open, outside the buildings that used to shield controls.
Saturday, October 17
Volt Typhoon is the cyber version of pre-positioning
U.S. agencies say a China-linked actor has sat inside infrastructure networks for later, not for today’s ransom note.
Saturday, October 17
Foreign hardware in the bulk system is a quiet access problem
An executive order on the bulk-power system treated some imported equipment as a supply-chain risk, not a trade footnote.
Friday, October 16
Distribution lines are long. The scarce part is still the big transformer.
The United States has millions of miles of wire and a much smaller set of extra-high-voltage units that everything upstream depends on.
Thursday, October 15
A heat-driven grid emergency is not an EMP. It is a preview of fragility.
When operators are already out of spare generation, any extra insult lands harder.
Thursday, October 15
Distribution cooperatives and big cities do not fail the same way
Rural long lines pick up more geomagnetic current. Dense cities fail harder when water and transit go.
Wednesday, October 14
Mutual aid works for hurricanes. It works poorly for a shared scar.
Crews and spare poles travel well. Spare extra-high-voltage transformers do not, especially if every neighbor needs one.
Tuesday, October 13
Protective relays can save a transformer by blacking you out
A trip is sometimes the equipment choosing to survive. It still looks like a failure from the kitchen.
Tuesday, October 13
Microgrids help the building they are actually tied to
A campus that can island is a refuge. A slide that says “microgrids” is not a refuge.
Monday, October 12
Wildfire shutoffs taught utilities how to turn the grid off on purpose
Public-safety power shutoffs are unpopular and, sometimes, the least-bad option. Space weather may need the same muscle.
Monday, October 12
Distribution attacks on substations are no longer hypothetical
The last several years have brought a run of physical incidents. Most failed to cascade. The trend is the point.
Sunday, October 11
Reactive power is the part of the grid nobody explains until it is gone
Transformers that saturate do not just heat. They stop supporting voltage.
Saturday, October 10
Black start is the art of restarting a grid that is fully stopped
Bringing a dead interconnection back is a planned sequence. Losing the plants that can do it is a special kind of failure.
Saturday, October 10
Spare parts are a national security stock, whether or not we call them that
The transformer supply chain is global, slow, and already tight in peacetime.
Friday, October 9
SCADA is the nervous system. It is also a target.
The control network that lets a handful of operators run a region is the same network an intruder wants.
Thursday, October 8
Islanding a house is a project, not a power strip
Backfeed kills lineworkers. A transfer switch is the adult way to own a generator.
Thursday, October 8
The Eastern Interconnection is one machine
A failure can cascade across state lines because the wires do. Restoration has to be just as collective.
Wednesday, October 7
Vegetation, sag, and space weather can stack on the same line
The physical grid fails in combination. Single-cause briefings are how commissions get surprised.
Wednesday, October 7
Demand response is a peacetime drill for shortage
When a utility asks you to shift load, it is borrowing the flexibility a real emergency will require.
Tuesday, October 6
A field guide to the equipment that actually matters
Poles are common. Extra-high-voltage transformers are not. Learn the difference and the news gets less noisy.