Free Republic

Across Spain and Portugal, more than 50 million people recently experienced the largest blackout in modern European history. Thousands of commuters stood stranded on the concourses of Spain's transit system. In the span of five seconds, 60 percent of the country's electricity supply vanished. This wasn't caused by a storm or a cyberattack—just bad policy and the most underappreciated force in modern engineering giving way: inertia. When a power plant trips offline or demand suddenly spikes, the power grid has no cushion; it must respond instantly or it unravels. That's where inertia comes in. In coal, gas, and nuclear plants,...

Note: See comments after the blog entry. Chinese researchers show how the PRC “owns” the U.S. Power Grid I had a head-slapping “What the F” moment when I read the New Scientist story “How to Short-Circuit the U.S. Power Grid“. Let’s start with the fact that the military strategy of the PRC ever since the U.S. speedily won the first Iraq war has been to find ways to mitigate our technological superiority by attacking its most vulnerable point - the network. That includes, as the Wall Street Journal so sensationally reminded us, the U.S. power grid. How fast do you...