Free Republic

More info: http://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local-beat/Cal-ISO-Declares-Power-Emergency-64172852.html

The article at the link cites other publications like Le Monde, L'Union, and La Provence discussing the state induced media blackout - the press has been ordered not to report what appears to be record levels of violence. Police ambushes, burning cars, neighborhood fires etc.

Deployments of smart grids should be slowed until security vulnerabilities are addressed, according to some cybersecurity experts, citing tests showing that a hacker can cause a major blackout after breaking into a smart-grid system. The idea behind smart grids, a burgeoning energy sector in which even Google is playing a role, is that automated meters and two-way power consumption data can be used to improve the efficiency and reliability of an electrical system's power distribution. A washing machine in a household hooked up to a smart meter, for instance, could be set up to run only at lower-cost, off-peak hours,...

February 4, 2009 Dear Mr. Secretary: Since the Committee last convened in early November, the contraction in economic activity has deepened and broadened, while financial markets have remained under duress. The unprecedented volatility present in capital markets when the Committee last met has diminished somewhat but conditions still are exceptionally challenging. Policy efforts have begun to unlock credit for select high-quality borrowers. But the magnitude of wealth destruction, the still heightened cost of economy-wide capital and the impaired system of financial intermediation continue to cast a dark cloud over the economic outlook. Monetary and fiscal policy action now being implemented...

POSTED: 5:29 am HST January 5, 2009 UPDATED: 9:20 am HST January 5, 2009 Gabbard Wants Answers On Cause, Length Of Outage HONOLULU -- Some powerful state senators are seeking an explanation for why the power went out the day after Christmas and why it took so long to restore it. The chairman of the Senate committee on energy and environment announced Sunday he'll hold a hearing later this month to look into the power outage. Parts of Oahu were without electricity all night Dec. 26 and into the next day. On Sunday, Sen. Mike Gabbard called a news conference...

Oahu was without power overnight, possibly from a lightning strike, and Hawaiian Electric Co. officials said to expect it to last until morning. The outages, which began hitting various parts of the island at about 6:30 p.m., also affected the Kailua neighborhood where President-elect Barack Obama is staying. Mayor Mufi Hannemann said at about 10:10 p.m. that Honolulu police had talked to Obama. “He said he is fine and he and his family are going to bed,” the mayor said on KSSK. Gov. Linda Lingle advised all residents to do the same. She said Heco officials advised her that it...

HONOLULU (Reuters) - The resort and much of the island of Oahu where President-elect Barack Obama is vacationing was hit by a major blackout on Friday evening but it was not immediately clear if his compound had a backup source of electricity.

Some stuck without power powerless to fight bank fees Friday, September 19, 2008 By Margaret Harding THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH When his power returned without Internet service Monday, Tom Perry had a bit of a financial freakout. "It was kind of a panic-stricken moment there: 'Oh, no, what am I going to do?' " said Perry, whose credit-card and mortgage payment were both due that day. Perry, like many others, pays his bills online. Online banking and bill payment are pushed as the easiest and most efficient ways to handle such transactions, but a power outage such as the one central...

<p>Five years after the worst blackout in North American history, the country's largest power providers say the problems that turned out the lights on 50 million people have largely been resolved, but they fear that larger, systemic issues could soon lead to even bigger and more damaging outages.</p>

WASHINGTON -- Thousands homes and businesses are without power and Dupont Circle and Metro Center Metrorail stations are closed after a major outage in northwest D.C. on Friday. Officials said the outage was due to a failure at a substation on 10th Street. About 12,000 customers were without power at 10:30 a.m. Pepco said the outages stretches from as far north as U Street N.W. to F Street N.W., the Dupont Circle area to the west and Third Street N.W. to the east. Many downtown workers have been waiting outside on city streets because their offices are dark. Power is...

Bo (woof) In Commentary: I’ve always known that mice can’t read, but this story makes me wonder whether the same is true of cats. (A cat chasing a mouse in Tirana’s main power station caused a 72-hour blackout across parts of the Albanian capital, the electricity company said on Friday (local time). “A cat and a mouse ran into the high-voltage cables,” a company spokeswoman said, showing pictures of the electrocuted animals.) What part of the DANGER - High Voltage sign did Mittens not understand? (con't @ http://boknowsonline.com/2008/05/21/442/#more-442 )

The brand spanking new Airbus 340-600, the largest passenger airplane ever built, sat in its hangar in Toulouse, France without a single hour of airtime. Enter the Arab flight crew of Abu Dhabi Aircraft Technologies (ADAT) to conduct pre-delivery tests on the ground, such as engine runups, prior to delivery to Etihad Airways in Abu Dhabi. The date was November 15, 2007. The ADAT crew taxied the A340-600 to the run-up area. Then they took all four engines to takeoff power with a virtually empty aircraft. Not having read the run-up manuals, they had no clue just how light an...

HOUSTON, Feb 29 (Reuters) - FPL Group's (FPL.N: Quote, Profile, Research) Florida utility Florida Power & Light said preliminary results of the investigation into Tuesday's four-hour blackout indicated that human error was the primary cause. The blackout affected about 584,000 FPL customers in South Florida, the Juno Beach-based company said in a release on Friday. A total of about 1 million customers of four utilities across the state lost power as emergency safety systems were activated to prevent long-term damage to power plants and transmission equipment. FPL said preliminary findings indicated that a field engineer diagnosing a problem switch at...

<p>Widespread power outages were reported Tuesday from Miami to Jacksonville on Florida's east coast and as far north as Tampa on the Gulf Coast, police and utility officials said.</p> <p>As many 800,000 Florida Power & Light Co. customers are without power Tuesday afternoon, the company said.</p>

(IsraelNN.com) Arab journalists quoted in the Jerusalem Post on Thursday said that many pictures showing Gaza reportedly suffering from a massive blackout had been staged. Gaza-based journalists said that on two occasions they were asked to cover Hamas events in which senior officials sat in dark rooms with lit candles. Both events took place during the daytime, journalists said, with curtains drawn to give the impression of a blackout. Hamas claimed earlier in the week that Israel’s refusal to allow fuel shipments through Gaza crossings had led to a widespread blackout that had created a humanitarian crisis. The group held...

Fox is saying on cable TV that Duncan Hunter is having a press conference today at 2:00. They are speculating that he is dropping out. Nothing on the web yet.

LOS ANGELES (AP) - Parts of Southern California sweltered in triple-digit temperatures Monday as a heat wave stretched into the seventh day and contributed to power outages that left thousands without air conditioning. Temperatures soared in the San Fernando Valley with Woodland Hills reporting 102 degrees and Van Nuys at 99, according to the National Weather Service. Downtown Los Angeles also was expected to see temperatures climb above 100. Southern California Edison said 20,000 customers in Los Angeles, Orange, Ventura, Riverside and San Bernardino counties had no electricity, spokesman Steve Conroy said. San Diego Gas and Electric Co., which serves...

BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) -- A nationwide blackout hit Colombia on Thursday, with authorities struggling to determine the cause of the electrical grid's collapse. President Alvaro Uribe told journalists in the southern city of Cali that authorities would "know in a few minutes" the cause of the blackout, which took place at about 10:15 a.m. local time. He said the blackout "appears to have affected the entire country." Luis Alarcon, manager of state-controlled electricity distributor ISA, told Caracol Radio that the power outage appears to have begun with an undetermined technical glitch at a substation in Bogota and quickly spread to...

Comet McNaught has just made its appearance in the SOHO (SOlar and Heliospheric Observatory) "LASCO-3" field (at about the 11:00 position) -- and it is very bright!! The real-time image is viewable at http://sohowww.nascom.nasa.gov/data/LATEST/current_c3small.mpg. In the next couple of days, the 48-hr MPEGs of the SOHO LASCO-3 field at http://sohowww.nascom.nasa.gov/data/LATEST/current_c3small.mpg should be well worth watching. ~~~~~~ (The above URL is for the small (256 X 256) MPEG. The larger (512 X 512) MPEG at http://sohowww.nascom.nasa.gov/data/LATEST/current_c3.mpg appears to have a problem at present.)

Phoenix Motorcars has developed what could possibly be the perfect electric car. Classified as a Sport Utility Truck (SUT), this vehicle “can cruise on the freeway at up to 95 m.p.h. while carrying five passengers and a full payload.” The Phoenix Motorcars SUV will be introduced in late 2007, having a range of 130 miles, and can be recharged in less than 10 minutes with an off-board charging unit or trickle-charged overnight when plugged into a 220V power source, similar to the SUT. The estimated cost to recharge the battery pack is a small fraction of equivalent gasoline costs. Phoenix...