The reason that widespread blackouts occur is that as the power grid becomes overloaded, the generating stations overload, and eventually drop off the grid. This in turn increases the load on the remaining generators, and boom, the whole grid goes down.
The essential problem is that the power grids are constructed to keep the power online, with the assumption that there will always be enough generating capacity to supply the load. However, when demand is high, and some amount of generated supply is lost (for whatever reason), the entire grid goes down, not just part of it.
The solution is to allow load to be shed. The problem is that current grids do not allow the shedding of power load with any fine degree of control, and even at the region level, it requires manual intervention. The systems have short-circuit protection on a fairly small scale, which is why most power outages are fairly localized.
One approach is to divide the generators and users up into localized zone. When a generating zone becomes too overloaded, it cuts itself off from the overall grid, and supplies power to its local zone. It may not have enough power to supply all of its local zone, which means it has to shed some its local load. Who gets shed is a whole other topic, but typically it's residential users, since they can typically sustain a minor power hit without much cost. This way, hospitals, refrigerated warehouses, the police and fire departments, etc stay up.
None of this is rocket science, and could probably have been easily done even 20 years ago. The problem is that governments will need to legislate power grid reliability requirements before anything happens, and of course we'll have to pay for it. However, in my mind, it's well worth the few extra cents per megawatt that it would cost. Particularly, since the next terrorist attack may also simultaneously hit the power grid, which as we have seen in pretty damn vulnerable.
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The reason that widespread blackouts occur is that as the power grid becomes overloaded, the generating stations overload, and eventually drop off the grid. This in turn increases the load on the remaining generators, and boom, the whole grid goes down. The essential problem is that the power grids are constructed to keep the power online, with the assumption that there will always be enough generating capacity to supply the load. However, when demand is high, and some amount of generated supply is lost (for whatever reason), the entire grid goes down, not just part of it. The solution is to allow load to be shed. The problem is that current grids do not allow the shedding of power load with any fine degree of control, and even at the region level, it requires manual intervention. The systems have short-circuit protection on a fairly small scale, which is why most power outages are fairly localized. One approach is to divide the generators and users up into localized zone. When a generating zone becomes too overloaded, it cuts itself off from the overall grid, and supplies power to its local zone. It may not have enough power to supply all of its local zone, which means it has to shed some its local load. Who gets shed is a whole other topic, but typically it's residential users, since they can typically sustain a minor power hit without much cost. This way, hospitals, refrigerated warehouses, the police and fire departments, etc stay up. None of this is rocket science, and could probably have been easily done even 20 years ago. The problem is that governments will need to legislate power grid reliability requirements before anything happens, and of course we'll have to pay for it. However, in my mind, it's well worth the few extra cents per megawatt that it would cost. Particularly, since the next terrorist attack may also simultaneously hit the power grid, which as we have seen in pretty damn vulnerable.