Moore County, NC power outage

[Brightonian]

domestic violent extremists "have developed credible, specific plans to attack electricity infrastructure since at least 2020, identifying the electric grid as a particularly attractive target."

"There's a very few number of substations you need to take out in the entire United States to knock out the entire grid," Jon Wellinghoff, former chairman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, told "60 Minutes" correspondent BIll Whitaker.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/north-caro ... ke-energy/

[IvanV]

"There's a very few number of substations you need to take out in the entire United States to knock out the entire grid," Jon Wellinghoff, former chairman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, told "60 Minutes" correspondent BIll Whitaker.

I find that a somewhat surprising statement.

First, the US has a poorly interconnected grid by European standards. In part it is a practical matter because of the large distances involved. It has not been worth building lots of long distance power-lines, with their consequent losses on them, to the same extent as in more closely connected Europe. But there have also been policy differences between different grid areas which means that they haven't built all of the connections that might have been wise. So, for example, Texas has only small connections at all to the rest of the US electrically, such that it is barely relevant to them. This weak interconnection means that stuff happening in one place has rather less consequence for another place. Stuff happening in Texas has no effect on other places, and vice versa. On the other hand, it does mean that knocking out the grid in any specific area is easier than in Europe, because there isn't much interconnection from other places to re-route electricity in.

Another factor is that they learned the lessons of some solar flare 30-40 years ago or something that knocked out a large amount of the grid in the NE US and adjacent parts of Canada. They are now much better at isolating the effects of some failure and not letting it have knock-on effects to take down more and more - areas get isolated rather than trying to serve them and overloading other parts of the grid.

[monkey]

No one seems to be describing this as a terrorist attack, which I would*.

There have been rumours (not confirmed by the authorities) that this was done to prevent a drag show from happening - apparently some local right winger alluded to it. This would not surprise me, given what's going on in this country at the moment.


*Given the proxy discussion, I hope I'm not opening a can of worms here.

[EACLucifer]

No one seems to be describing this as a terrorist attack, which I would*.

There have been rumours (not confirmed by the authorities) that this was done to prevent a drag show from happening - apparently some local right winger alluded to it. This would not surprise me, given what's going on in this country at the moment.


*Given the proxy discussion, I hope I'm not opening a can of worms here.

It would likely meet any sensible definition of terrorism. Indiscriminate, targetting uninvolved people, and done for a political goal.