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The fewer resources we dedicate to grid resilience and modernization, the harder black starts become. And as grids get more complex and interdependent, recoveri

The fewer resources we dedicate to grid resilience and modernization, the harder black starts become. And as grids get more complex and interdependent, recovering from total failure becomes exponentially harder. A rare but sobering opportunity to reflect on something we usually take for granted: electricity. We live in societies where everything depends on the grid — from logistics and healthcare to communications and financial systems. And yet, public awareness of the infrastructure behind it is shockingly low. We tend to notice the power grid only when it breaks. We’ve neglected it for decades. In many regions, burying power lines is dismissed as “too expensive.” But compare that cost to the consequences of grid collapse in extreme weather, cyberattacks, or even solar storms — the stakes are existential. High-impact, low-frequency events are easy to ignore until they’re not.

roughly 1y ago
Yeah, this is the turkey’s dilemma - life on a farm is a lot better than life in the wild for 51 out of the 52 weeks of the year. Most of our modern economy and systems are built to reduce redundancy and buffers - ever since the era of “just in time” manufacturing, we’ve done our best to strip out any “fat” from our systems to reduce costs. Consequently, any time we face anything but the most idealized conditions, the whole system collapses. The problem is that, culturally, we’re extremely short-termist- normally I’d take this occasion to dunk on MBAs, and they deserve it, but broadly as a people we’re bad at recognizing just how far down the road you need to kick a can so you’re not the one who has to deal with it next time and we’ve gotten pretty lazy about actually doing the work required to build something durable.
- Slava_Propanei 1y ago
  [dead]
- maxerickson 1y ago
  What are some examples of modern system collapse? We've had substantial disruptions, but they've not been particularly irrecoverable or sustained.
  - exe34 1y ago
    For the people who died of normally preventable death during covid while the health services were overwhelmed, the damage is irrecoverable. The chips shortage lasted years. Every year we become more, not less, dependent on the supply chain working. Every year we become less, not more, resilient.
    - maxerickson 1y ago
      I don't think it's crass to separate the deaths that occurred from a novel disease from the impact it had in society. In the medium term, it's a blip, never mind the long term. There's a huge chunk of society that thinks there was a huge overreaction! The chips shortage has been difficult, but it's also been little more than an inconvenience when you look at it in terms of goods being available to consumers or whatever.
      - tehjoker 1y ago
        That chunk is heavily influenced by the propaganda that over a million dead people isn't a big deal. The propaganda is economically incentivized because slowing down the economy is bad for business even if it protects human lives.
        maxerickson 1y ago
        Do you consider this significant failure a collapse? I fell into the other poster's trap, talking about something emotionally charged that isn't really responsive to what I said initially.
        tehjoker 1y ago
        Nearly all collapses are of limited temporal duration (except for extinction events....). I think it is fair to call a health system that failed to protect the nation and world a collapse. It failed to perform its function in a dramatic way. Now, the fact that most of us survived at least is being exploited to say it was no big deal and actually, why not trash every public health institution so the economy is never shut down again? Sad whomp whomp horn: the economy is going to be negatively affected by covid disability and death on an ongoing basis and a new pandemic will still cause so much fear the economy will shut down.
- Xelbair 1y ago
  "Just in time" is a phrase I hate with vehement passion. You aren't optimizing the system, you're reducing safety marigns - and consequences are usually similar to Challanger. This is a solution that teenager put in management position would think of(along with hire more people as solution to inefficient processes), not a paid professional. Systems like electric grid, internal water management (anti-flood) shouldn't be lean, they should be antifragile. What's even more annoying that we have solutions for a lot of those problems - in case of electric grids we have hydroelectric buffers, we have types of powerplants that are easier to shutdown and startup than coal, gas or wind/solar(which cannot be used for cold start at all). The problem is that building any of this takes longer than one political term.
  - exe34 1y ago
    > You aren't optimizing the system Of course not, they're optimising shareholder profit.
  - Marsymars 1y ago
    > Systems like electric grid, internal water management (anti-flood) shouldn't be lean, they should be antifragile. How do you make those systems antifragile rather than simply highly resilient?
    - shermantanktop 1y ago
      Step 1: read a book by nnt
      - Marsymars 1y ago
        Yeah, I have, that’s why I’m asking the question.
    - baq 1y ago
      Things which can’t self improve can’t be antifragile by definition. NNT alludes to this multiple times - systems together with processes and people running them can be antifragile, but just things cannot. I postulate the grid as a whole is antifragile, but not enough for the renewable era. We still don’t know what was the root cause of the Spanish blackout almost 24h after it happened.
the_duke 1y ago
Just to highlight this: the last significant power outage in Western/middle Europe was 2003. [1] That's 20 years without any significant problems in the grid, apart from small localized outages. It's not hard to start taking things for granted if it works perfectly for 20 years. Many people don't even have cash anymore, either in their wallet or at home. In case of a longer power outage a significant part of the population might not even be able to buy food for days. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2003_Italy_blackout https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2003_Italy_blackout
- genewitch 1y ago
  > a significant part of the population might not even be able to buy food for days. And who's fault is that? Why did europe allow this? Why will the US allow this, eventually?
  - olyjohn 1y ago
    Why will the US allow this? Because there's too much money to be made by middle men who want their cut of the transactions.
  - ithkuil 1y ago
    I don't know but I find it very practical to not carry piles of cash in my pocket and home and know that we're less likely to get robbed just because of the cash we have. I don't know how true the relationship between the cashless lifestyle and safety actually is, but it works and I feel ok; I'm not sure that the prospect of a few hours of national blackout once in 20 years will make me change my mind significantly.
    - artursapek 1y ago
      Cash is extremely easy to conceal. fear of burglary is a ridiculous reason not to have some saved for a rainy day
      - AStonesThrow 1y ago
jrs235 1y ago
Honest question, are we better off in the long run, and is it a better solution, to decentralize energy generation and make more smaller grids rather than linking them all up? This isn't to say completely getting rid of the ability to transfer between the smaller grids to assist with power disruptions but to decouple and make it less likely for catastrophic "global" failures like this.
- zanellato19 1y ago
  It's hard to build big generators, so as we already struggle with infrastructure I don't think that's feasible, but it would be great.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- mhandley 1y ago
  With a high fraction of renewables, the reverse is probably better in the long run. The larger geographic area you connect, the less you're affected by weather systems, and the wider area you can draw dependable dispatchable power such as hydro from. But that depends on having enough grid capacity to move enough power around, which is currently a problem. But I wonder from a reliability (or lack of cascading failures) point of view whether synchronous islands interconnected with DC interconnects is more robust than a large synchronous network?
pyrale 1y ago
Burying lines is not a panacea, it generates massive reactance changes compared to a classic line.
yibg 1y ago
Maybe a good reason (in parts of the world where this is practical) to have some solar + battery storage. Doesn't even need to fully replace grid power, just enough to run the barebones when the grid goes out.
- marcosdumay 1y ago
  If we are talking about a 72 hours blackout, I would be concerned about water and sewer working before one even thinks about home electricity.
  - Vilian 1y ago
    Houses have water tank that work as buffer for when the water stop, couldn't residential batteries work the same way?, it could detect drops in voltage and stop charging, so even if the grid is unstable in a black out, the residential isn't going to light up immediately, or only the houses without batteries
miki123211 1y ago
We're slowly reaching this point with the internet too. I feel like to many technologists, the internet is still "the place you go to to play games and chat with friends", just like it was 20 years ago. Even if our brains know it isn't true, our hearts still feel that way. I sometimes feel like the countries cutting off internet access during high school final exams have a point. If you know the internet will be off and on a few days a year, your systems will be designed accordingly, and if anything breaks, you'll notice quickly and during a low-stakes situation.

roughly 1y ago

Yeah, this is the turkey’s dilemma - life on a farm is a lot better than life in the wild for 51 out of the 52 weeks of the year. Most of our modern economy and systems are built to reduce redundancy and buffers - ever since the era of “just in time” manufacturing, we’ve done our best to strip out any “fat” from our systems to reduce costs. Consequently, any time we face anything but the most idealized conditions, the whole system collapses. The problem is that, culturally, we’re extremely short-termist- normally I’d take this occasion to dunk on MBAs, and they deserve it, but broadly as a people we’re bad at recognizing just how far down the road you need to kick a can so you’re not the one who has to deal with it next time and we’ve gotten pretty lazy about actually doing the work required to build something durable.

Slava_Propanei 1y ago
[dead]
maxerickson 1y ago
What are some examples of modern system collapse? We've had substantial disruptions, but they've not been particularly irrecoverable or sustained.
- exe34 1y ago
  For the people who died of normally preventable death during covid while the health services were overwhelmed, the damage is irrecoverable. The chips shortage lasted years. Every year we become more, not less, dependent on the supply chain working. Every year we become less, not more, resilient.
  - maxerickson 1y ago
    I don't think it's crass to separate the deaths that occurred from a novel disease from the impact it had in society. In the medium term, it's a blip, never mind the long term. There's a huge chunk of society that thinks there was a huge overreaction! The chips shortage has been difficult, but it's also been little more than an inconvenience when you look at it in terms of goods being available to consumers or whatever.
    - tehjoker 1y ago
      That chunk is heavily influenced by the propaganda that over a million dead people isn't a big deal. The propaganda is economically incentivized because slowing down the economy is bad for business even if it protects human lives.
      - maxerickson 1y ago
        Do you consider this significant failure a collapse? I fell into the other poster's trap, talking about something emotionally charged that isn't really responsive to what I said initially.
        tehjoker 1y ago
        Nearly all collapses are of limited temporal duration (except for extinction events....). I think it is fair to call a health system that failed to protect the nation and world a collapse. It failed to perform its function in a dramatic way. Now, the fact that most of us survived at least is being exploited to say it was no big deal and actually, why not trash every public health institution so the economy is never shut down again? Sad whomp whomp horn: the economy is going to be negatively affected by covid disability and death on an ongoing basis and a new pandemic will still cause so much fear the economy will shut down.
Xelbair 1y ago
"Just in time" is a phrase I hate with vehement passion. You aren't optimizing the system, you're reducing safety marigns - and consequences are usually similar to Challanger. This is a solution that teenager put in management position would think of(along with hire more people as solution to inefficient processes), not a paid professional. Systems like electric grid, internal water management (anti-flood) shouldn't be lean, they should be antifragile. What's even more annoying that we have solutions for a lot of those problems - in case of electric grids we have hydroelectric buffers, we have types of powerplants that are easier to shutdown and startup than coal, gas or wind/solar(which cannot be used for cold start at all). The problem is that building any of this takes longer than one political term.
- exe34 1y ago
  > You aren't optimizing the system Of course not, they're optimising shareholder profit.
- Marsymars 1y ago
  > Systems like electric grid, internal water management (anti-flood) shouldn't be lean, they should be antifragile. How do you make those systems antifragile rather than simply highly resilient?
  - shermantanktop 1y ago
    Step 1: read a book by nnt
    - Marsymars 1y ago
      Yeah, I have, that’s why I’m asking the question.
  - baq 1y ago
    Things which can’t self improve can’t be antifragile by definition. NNT alludes to this multiple times - systems together with processes and people running them can be antifragile, but just things cannot. I postulate the grid as a whole is antifragile, but not enough for the renewable era. We still don’t know what was the root cause of the Spanish blackout almost 24h after it happened.

the_duke 1y ago

Just to highlight this: the last significant power outage in Western/middle Europe was 2003. [1] That's 20 years without any significant problems in the grid, apart from small localized outages. It's not hard to start taking things for granted if it works perfectly for 20 years. Many people don't even have cash anymore, either in their wallet or at home. In case of a longer power outage a significant part of the population might not even be able to buy food for days. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2003_Italy_blackout https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2003_Italy_blackout

genewitch 1y ago
> a significant part of the population might not even be able to buy food for days. And who's fault is that? Why did europe allow this? Why will the US allow this, eventually?
- olyjohn 1y ago
  Why will the US allow this? Because there's too much money to be made by middle men who want their cut of the transactions.
- ithkuil 1y ago
  I don't know but I find it very practical to not carry piles of cash in my pocket and home and know that we're less likely to get robbed just because of the cash we have. I don't know how true the relationship between the cashless lifestyle and safety actually is, but it works and I feel ok; I'm not sure that the prospect of a few hours of national blackout once in 20 years will make me change my mind significantly.
  - artursapek 1y ago
    Cash is extremely easy to conceal. fear of burglary is a ridiculous reason not to have some saved for a rainy day
    - AStonesThrow 1y ago

jrs235 1y ago

Honest question, are we better off in the long run, and is it a better solution, to decentralize energy generation and make more smaller grids rather than linking them all up? This isn't to say completely getting rid of the ability to transfer between the smaller grids to assist with power disruptions but to decouple and make it less likely for catastrophic "global" failures like this.

zanellato19 1y ago
It's hard to build big generators, so as we already struggle with infrastructure I don't think that's feasible, but it would be great.
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
mhandley 1y ago
With a high fraction of renewables, the reverse is probably better in the long run. The larger geographic area you connect, the less you're affected by weather systems, and the wider area you can draw dependable dispatchable power such as hydro from. But that depends on having enough grid capacity to move enough power around, which is currently a problem. But I wonder from a reliability (or lack of cascading failures) point of view whether synchronous islands interconnected with DC interconnects is more robust than a large synchronous network?

pyrale 1y ago

Burying lines is not a panacea, it generates massive reactance changes compared to a classic line.

yibg 1y ago

Maybe a good reason (in parts of the world where this is practical) to have some solar + battery storage. Doesn't even need to fully replace grid power, just enough to run the barebones when the grid goes out.

marcosdumay 1y ago
If we are talking about a 72 hours blackout, I would be concerned about water and sewer working before one even thinks about home electricity.
- Vilian 1y ago
  Houses have water tank that work as buffer for when the water stop, couldn't residential batteries work the same way?, it could detect drops in voltage and stop charging, so even if the grid is unstable in a black out, the residential isn't going to light up immediately, or only the houses without batteries

miki123211 1y ago

We're slowly reaching this point with the internet too. I feel like to many technologists, the internet is still "the place you go to to play games and chat with friends", just like it was 20 years ago. Even if our brains know it isn't true, our hearts still feel that way. I sometimes feel like the countries cutting off internet access during high school final exams have a point. If you know the internet will be off and on a few days a year, your systems will be designed accordingly, and if anything breaks, you'll notice quickly and during a low-stakes situation.