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Grid Failure Having lived through the first major grid failure (late 60’s) the subject interests me. I have a unique personal story about this one. My mother initially blamed me for it. It was winter in MA and her house had no central heating in the finished attic room I used so I had an electric space heater. Worked well until someone tried to use another high power drawing item on the same circuit. When that happened it meant going down to the basement and flipping the circuit breaker. When the lights went out my mother yelled at me for “doing it again”. On my way down to the basement I noticed the whole house was out. Checking further we noticed power was out at the neighbors too. At this point my mother was into one of her “Look what you have done now” rants. Since we lived way out in the country and were no strangers to power outages I got out the battery radio and we learned that the entire area was out and eventually that the entire east coast was out. We weathered the night quite well. The family room was able to be closed off. It had a fire place and lots of wood. We had kerosene lamps. The stove etc. was powered by propane which we had in a large tank. It was winter so refrigeration was not a problem. Some friends who did not have things as comfortable came over. We drug out the board games and my great grandmother’s old crank up Victrola that still worked. We played board games, listened to music from the 20’s and 30’s and kept up with things with battery operated radio. Once it appeared that the outage would last all night at the minimum we drug some mattresses and bedding into the family room and camped out for the night. A real “black out” party. Fast forwarding to today. I read an interesting article this morning about out power grids. It explains that our power grids are systems of individual power sources linked together for the purpose of moving power from areas needing more than they are generating to areas needing extra. It points our various reasons why this is not a good idea as some sort of catastrophic failure in one area could keep the entire grid down for weeks or longer. The huge transformers that are used to move the power are aging and not likely to be replaced. They have to be custom built and that is extremely costly. The most likely scenario is that they will have individual failures which are likely to result in long term local outages while they are being repaired. Depending on the scope of the failure one of these events could take down the entire grid. The country is divided into 3 separate grids – one for the eastern portion, one for the western portion and a separate one for Texas. The Texas one was instituted by the state in an attempt to eliminate the kind of catastrophic failure discussed in the article. Unfortunately the article stated that this leaves them in a worse rather than better position because in the event of a breakdown in their system they will not be able to receive power from other areas. I knew most of the information already present even though I never put it all together but there was one tidbit that was new to me. Quoting the article: “For what it’s worth, for those of you sporting solar and wind energy, you’re further taxing the grid—the grid just wasn’t designed to accommodate the surges and lulls of such systems, however green you find them. “ Not being scientifically inclined I never thought of this! Good thing I keep my camping gear ready to go – although this is not out of concern over disaster but in preparation should a good back country opportunity present itself on short notice. Maybe a major grid failure will turn into a fun adventure like the one back in the 60’s did. It will need updating through as I no longer have any board games and the Victrola now lives with my cousin along with a lot of other family furniture. Spiritwoman ^i^ |
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8/15/2016 11:26 am |
zap! Spiritwoman ^i^
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That blackout led to a really fun night. Every dark cloud does have a silver lining.  Elaine Shuel
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Our town has lost water for several days twice this year. The first time my friend called and asked if we had water....checked and no. The guy across the street called a bit later and asked the same thing. I went to the Dollar General not far from us and bought water. We had it for coffee, a sip for our necessary pills, and some to drink if we needed to but mostly just drank juices which I buy several different kinds. A couple of weeks ago I got up and no water again  Off to buy more. The city had lost water from a break somewhere. Now I have 4 gallon jugs and a couple of bottled waters! 
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Funny you should bring this subject up, I was thinking something very similar this morning, mostly about prepping should the grid crash. We seem to have most of our power outages here in the Spring. Bad storms with high winds, tornadoes, and lightening strikes have left my neighbors and me without power for a day, or two, sometimes more. I just pull out my camping equipment and we setup camp. I find it to be kind of fun, cooking breakfast, lunch, and dinner on an open campfire always tastes so good! Oh and let's not forget how good the coffee tastes when brewed on the old camp stove. Now I have a generator, but it's only used for a few lights and the fridge.
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Go back another decade and an ice storm took our little town out for several days. My stepdad worked a construction job in the city, and borrowed a generator from his company. We were the only house on the block to have lights. Our neighbors came over and spent the days with us, but went home again and bundled up for the night. As a kid, I didn't mind at all...... but hate a power outage today. Be a prism, spreading God's light and love, not a mirror reflecting the world's hatred.
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8/16/2016 8:53 am |
Our town has lost water for several days twice this year. The first time my friend called and asked if we had water....checked and no. The guy across the street called a bit later and asked the same thing. I went to the Dollar General not far from us and bought water. We had it for coffee, a sip for our necessary pills, and some to drink if we needed to but mostly just drank juices which I buy several different kinds. A couple of weeks ago I got up and no water again Off to buy more. The city had lost water from a break somewhere. Now I have 4 gallon jugs and a couple of bottled waters! Spiritwoman ^i^
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8/16/2016 8:56 am |
Funny you should bring this subject up, I was thinking something very similar this morning, mostly about prepping should the grid crash. We seem to have most of our power outages here in the Spring. Bad storms with high winds, tornadoes, and lightening strikes have left my neighbors and me without power for a day, or two, sometimes more. I just pull out my camping equipment and we setup camp. I find it to be kind of fun, cooking breakfast, lunch, and dinner on an open campfire always tastes so good! Oh and let's not forget how good the coffee tastes when brewed on the old camp stove. Now I have a generator, but it's only used for a few lights and the fridge. Spiritwoman ^i^
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8/16/2016 8:58 am |
Go back another decade and an ice storm took our little town out for several days. My stepdad worked a construction job in the city, and borrowed a generator from his company. We were the only house on the block to have lights. Our neighbors came over and spent the days with us, but went home again and bundled up for the night. As a kid, I didn't mind at all...... but hate a power outage today. Spiritwoman ^i^
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Power outages are annoying. I remember one when I had 3 older kids at home. No one's toys worked! Everyone wandered into the family room and looked at each other with that "what do we do now?" expression. I recall one ice storm around Easter that caught us by surprise. The weather was not extremely cold, but the ice on the wires, coupled with wind, brought down power lines all over the place. We took some old car batteries and hooked them up to small car lights for added hours of illumination and the kids called it "camping in the house". Now? It's a whole different story. We have battery lights and radio, and kerosene heaters, but if the power is going to be off for an extended time, we hit the road to the nearest unaffected city. Be a prism, spreading God's light and love, not a mirror reflecting the world's hatred.
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