Fire Hydrant of Freedom
Politics, Religion, Science, Culture and Humanities => Science, Culture, & Humanities => Topic started by: Crafty_Dog on July 13, 2013, 10:52:14 AM
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The importance of the US electrical grid and its increasing dilapidation is a theme that first crossed my radar screen in the year 2000 at Huber-Mills Powercosm conference. Also, as technology evolves, the quality requirements of the electricity itself ("high nines"-- i.e. smoothing out farts in the flow of the current) evolve as well.
Despite the trillions spent on "shovel ready jobs investing in America's future", as best as I can tell little to none of it has made it to desperately needed upgrades to the US grid. Furthermore, it appears that our grid may well have been infiltrated by the Chinese, to disrupt at will should ever they see fit to do so.
It is against that background I open this thread-- unfortunately with a piece from Pravda on the Hudson. :lol:
Ideas to Bolster Power Grid Run Up Against the System’s Many Owners
Charlie Riedel/Associated Press
Turbines in central Kansas, where there are few major power lines.
By MATTHEW L. WALD
Published: July 12, 2013
WASHINGTON — Bill Richardson often denigrated America’s power transmission network as a “third-world grid” when he was President Bill Clinton’s energy secretary, but the more current description of it is “balkanized,” with 500 separate owners. Marc L. Spitzer, a former member of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, said even that analogy was not harsh enough.
Bill Richardson, the former energy secretary, who called the American network a “third-world grid.”
“To call the U.S. grid balkanized would insult the Macedonians,” he said.
When President Obama presented his plans last month for executive action that would cut emissions of greenhouse gases, one item on his list was strengthening the power grid. It was on the lists of President George W. Bush and Mr. Clinton, too. But for the most part, experts say the grid is not being changed, at least not on a scale big enough to make much difference.
Their view is reflected in what they say is a largely hypothetical three-year effort by hundreds of engineers to redraw the grid for the eastern two-thirds of the United States. Engineers in the project, which is now drawing to a close, have proposed a basic redesign for beefing up the Eastern Interconnection, the part of the grid that stretches from Nova Scotia to New Orleans.
The redesign would reduce carbon dioxide emissions by replacing coal with wind energy and give the United States something it has never had, a grid designed for shipping bulk amounts of electricity across the continent. The planning, which cost $16 million, shows a substantial carbon emissions reduction.
But the project is covered with footnotes that assert that it does not represent the position of the participants.
“Our work goes into the general knowledge base of the kind of answers you would get when you ask certain policy questions,” said David Whiteley, the executive director of the Eastern Interconnection Planning Collaborative, which carried out the study. Christopher Russo, an energy consultant at Charles River Associates, which helped with the redesign, called it “a technical road map” of thousands of miles of high-capacity transmission lines, and calculations of electricity supply and load and the paths between them.
“We said, ‘Here’s what we could do,’ ” he said. “We haven’t said how we would pay for it.”
Still, drawing a sketch is a step forward. The grid is divided into regions that cover a state or a compact area (like New England) or slightly larger units, like PJM, which once stood for Pennsylvania-Jersey-Maryland but now extends through West Virginia, Ohio and the Chicago area. Almost all planning is done within those regions, as if they were islands. Federal officials say there is not even a regulatory mechanism for planning a line that does more than connect two regions.
“Given the history of this particular industry and its complexity, it is just not going to happen, at least not any time soon,” said James J. Hoecker, a former member of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, which has some jurisdiction over transmission lines. One problem, he said, is “resource nationalism,” in which individual states want to use local resources, whether they are coal or yet-to-be-built offshore wind, rather than importing from neighbors in a way that could be more economical.
For now, engineers in the grid redesign project have determined that conducting business as usual between 2010 and 2030 would require $18.5 billion in new transmission lines in the United States, while a system designed to integrate renewables like wind energy on a large scale would cost $115.2 billion. In some places, however, renewables could cut electricity costs by allowing the replacement of high-cost generators with lower-cost ones.
The technology, the engineering skill and even the money are all available, experts say, but the ability to reach agreement on such a grid is not. Dozens of experts said in interviews that there were simply too many players, both commercial and governmental, and too many conflicting interests.
Some of the players have a stake in cleaner or cheaper electricity, but others do not. “There are participants who have a vested interest in the high price of electricity, not the low price of electricity,” said Douglas Gotham, an industry analyst at Purdue University.
At the Illinois Citizens Utility Board, a state-chartered organization that represents consumer interests in regulatory proceedings, David Kolata, the executive director, said new lines could lower costs for customers. But, he said, “for every winner, you get just as many losers, perhaps even more losers.”
The hurdles are particularly acute with wind. Electricity can be made from natural gas almost anywhere, because a superb gas network, built under federal regulation over the last 60 years, will move the gas to wherever it is most convenient to burn it. Energy from coal can also be made almost anywhere. But to make electricity from wind, the generator has to be where the resource is, and for wind, that means places with few major power lines.
In Kansas, for example, sites are available where the wind is so strong that over the course of a year, a wind machine will produce half of its theoretical maximum capacity — an excellent output. But wind machines are more common in eastern locations where energy production is only one-third of the theoretical maximum.
“You could expect 40 or 50 percent more energy” with wind machines in western Kansas, said Michael Skelly, the president of Clean Line Energy Partners, a company that is trying to build, piecemeal, elements of the current plan. In an end run around the traditional regulatory process, Clean Line’s transmission lines would be a bit like private toll roads, financed outside the usual system, and available under contract. The company is planning four large projects but faces significant regulatory hurdles.
The existing grid also makes it difficult to predict the energy output from wind projects. At a single wind farm, energy production can range from zero to 100 percent. But with hundreds of wind farms networked together, production would almost never be zero. Utility planners could in fact derive a minimum likely capacity, an important statistic as more resources are poured into building wind farms.
However, wind energy works only if it is widely shared. Already, there are times in the Pacific Northwest and the Midwest when wind production exceeds demand in the regions to which it can be easily sent. Electricity is a supply chain with a time lag even shorter than the one for sushi. If the power cannot be sent somewhere instantly, it is useless.
For now, there is simply no momentum for a transmission system that would connect the best sites for renewable energy with the biggest areas of demand. “There’s no overall transmission planning for the entire interconnection,” said Vladimir S. Koritarov, deputy director of the Center for Energy, Environmental and Economic Systems Analysis at Argonne National Laboratory.
There is some hope for individual projects, although experts say they are the equivalent of building Interstate highways one route at a time.
“We’ve found a lot of different ways that transmission will fail to be built,” said David S. Hamilton, the director for clean energy of the Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal Campaign “This, at least, is one that has not yet failed.”
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http://m.washingtonexaminer.com/massive-solar-flare-narrowly-misses-earth-emp-disaster-barely-avoided/article/2533727
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http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/15/business/energy-environment/intermittent-nature-of-green-power-is-challenge-for-utilities.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20130815&_r=0
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http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/11/us/imagining-a-cyberattack-on-the-power-grid.html?src=recg&_r=0
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Back in 2000 the Huber-Mills Powercosm (an off-shoot of the Gilder Technology Newsletter) spoke of the importance of "High 9s" electricity i.e. the level of smoothness in the current i.e. no "burps" as the level of the technology advanced. Looks like NSA is learning this lesson the hard way.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304441404579119490744478398.html?mod=WSJ_MIDDLENexttoWhatsNewsSecond
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I am not sure I can access to article from the link.
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Meltdowns Hobble NSA Data Center
Investigators Stumped by What's Causing Power Surges That Destroy Equipment
By
SIOBHAN GORMAN
Chronic electrical surges at the massive new data-storage facility central to the National Security Agency's spying operation have destroyed hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of machinery and delayed the center's opening for a year, according to project documents and current and former officials.
[image]
There have been 10 meltdowns in the past 13 months that have prevented the NSA from using computers at its new Utah data-storage center, slated to be the spy agency's largest, according to project documents reviewed by The Wall Street Journal.
One project official described the electrical troubles—so-called arc fault failures—as "a flash of lightning inside a 2-foot box." These failures create fiery explosions, melt metal and cause circuits to fail, the official said.
The causes remain under investigation, and there is disagreement whether proposed fixes will work, according to officials and project documents. One Utah project official said the NSA planned this week to turn on some of its computers there.
Electrical surges at the new data-storage facility central to the National Security Agency's spying operation have destroyed hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of machinery and delayed the center's opening for a year. Siobhan Gorman reports. Photo: Getty.
NSA spokeswoman Vanee Vines acknowledged problems but said "the failures that occurred during testing have been mitigated. A project of this magnitude requires stringent management, oversight, and testing before the government accepts any building."
Washington Wire
Failures Follow History of Electrical Troubles
The Utah facility, one of the Pentagon's biggest U.S. construction projects, has become a symbol of the spy agency's surveillance prowess, which gained broad attention in the wake of leaks from NSA contractor Edward Snowden. It spans more than one-million square feet, with construction costs pegged at $1.4 billion—not counting the Cray supercomputers that will reside there.
Exactly how much data the NSA will be able to store there is classified. Engineers on the project believe the capacity is bigger than Google's largest data center. Estimates are in a range difficult to imagine but outside experts believe it will keep exabytes or zettabytes of data. An exabyte is roughly 100,000 times the size of the printed material in the Library of Congress; a zettabyte is 1,000 times larger.
But without a reliable electrical system to run computers and keep them cool, the NSA's global surveillance data systems can't function. The NSA chose Bluffdale, Utah, to house the data center largely because of the abundance of cheap electricity. It continuously uses 65 megawatts, which could power a small city of at least 20,000, at a cost of more than $1 million a month, according to project officials and documents.
Utah is the largest of several new NSA data centers, including a nearly $900 million facility at its Fort Meade, Md., headquarters and a smaller one in San Antonio. The first of four data facilities at the Utah center was originally scheduled to open in October 2012, according to project documents.
In the wake of the Snowden leaks, the NSA has been criticized for its expansive domestic operations. Through court orders, the NSA collects the phone records of nearly all Americans and has built a system with telecommunications companies that provides coverage of roughly 75% of Internet communications in the U.S.
In another program called Prism, companies including Google, Microsoft, Facebook and Yahoo are under court orders to provide the NSA with account information. The agency said it legally sifts through the collected data to advance its foreign intelligence investigations.
The data-center delays show that the NSA's ability to use its powerful capabilities is undercut by logistical headaches. Documents and interviews paint a picture of a project that cut corners to speed building.
Backup generators have failed numerous tests, according to project documents, and officials disagree about whether the cause is understood. There are also disagreements among government officials and contractors over the adequacy of the electrical control systems, a project official said, and the cooling systems also remain untested.
The Army Corps of Engineers is overseeing the data center's construction. Chief of Construction Operations, Norbert Suter said, "the cause of the electrical issues was identified by the team, and is currently being corrected by the contractor." He said the Corps would ensure the center is "completely reliable" before handing it over to the NSA.
But another government assessment concluded the contractor's proposed solutions fall short and the causes of eight of the failures haven't been conclusively determined. "We did not find any indication that the proposed equipment modification measures will be effective in preventing future incidents," said a report last week by special investigators from the Army Corps of Engineers known as a Tiger Team.
The architectural firm KlingStubbins designed the electrical system. The firm is a subcontractor to a joint venture of three companies: Balfour Beatty Construction, DPR Construction and Big-D Construction Corp. A KlingStubbins official referred questions to the Army Corps of Engineers.
The joint venture said in a statement it expected to submit a report on the problems within 10 days: "Problems were discovered with certain parts of the unique and highly complex electrical system. The causes of those problems have been determined and a permanent fix is being implemented."
The first arc fault failure at the Utah plant was on Aug. 9, 2012, according to project documents. Since then, the center has had nine more failures, most recently on Sept. 25. Each incident caused as much as $100,000 in damage, according to a project official.
It took six months for investigators to determine the causes of two of the failures. In the months that followed, the contractors employed more than 30 independent experts that conducted 160 tests over 50,000 man-hours, according to project documents.
This summer, the Army Corps of Engineers dispatched its Tiger Team, officials said. In an initial report, the team said the cause of the failures remained unknown in all but two instances.
The team said the government has incomplete information about the design of the electrical system that could pose new problems if settings need to change on circuit breakers. The report concluded that efforts to "fast track" the Utah project bypassed regular quality controls in design and construction.
Contractors have started installing devices that insulate the power system from a failure and would reduce damage to the electrical machinery. But the fix wouldn't prevent the failures, according to project documents and current and former officials.
Contractor representatives wrote last month to NSA officials to acknowledge the failures and describe their plan to ensure there is reliable electricity for computers. The representatives said they didn't know the true source of the failures but proposed remedies they believed would work. With those measures and others in place, they said, they had "high confidence that the electrical systems will perform as required by the contract."
A couple of weeks later, on Sept. 23, the contractors reported they had uncovered the "root cause" of the electrical failures, citing a "consensus" among 30 investigators, which didn't include government officials. Their proposed solution was the same device they had already begun installing.
The Army Corps of Engineer's Tiger Team said the contractor's explanations were unproven. The causes of the incidents "are not yet sufficiently understood to ensure that [the NSA] can expect to avoid these incidents in the future," their report said.
Write to Siobhan Gorman at siobhan.gorman@wsj.com
A version of this article appeared October 8, 2013, on page A1 in the U.S. edition of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: Meltdowns Hobble NSA Data Center.
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http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/american-blackout-a-real-life-nightmare-nearer-than-you-think?f=must_reads
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http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/american-blackout-a-real-life-nightmare-nearer-than-you-think?f=must_reads
I think this is part of the argument against ethanol, wind, solar subsidies. By definition, you pay more (willingly) for a source other than lowest cost power, that will work when the grid is down. Undermining and distorting the free market is not how you bring down those prices.
My experience with a gasoline generator is that you run out of gas very quickly and stations require electricity to pump gas. Wind and solar tend to small in output and weather dependent. In this part of the country where we have severe winters and natural gas pipelines to nearly everyone, a natural gas backup system seems far more useful. Blackouts have tended to happen during the air conditioning season or as the result of storms. But if a grid attack or failure happened in winter, most people don't seem to realize their natural gas furnace requires electricity to operate.
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Assault on California Power Station Raises Alarm on Potential for Terrorism
April Sniper Attack Knocked Out Substation, Raises Concern for Country's Power Grid
By Rebecca Smith
Feb. 4, 2014 10:30 p.m. ET
SAN JOSE, Calif.—The attack began just before 1 a.m. on April 16 last year, when someone slipped into an underground vault not far from a busy freeway and cut telephone cables.
Within half an hour, snipers opened fire on a nearby electrical substation. Shooting for 19 minutes, they surgically knocked out 17 giant transformers that funnel power to Silicon Valley. A minute before a police car arrived, the shooters disappeared into the night.
A sniper attack in April that knocked out an electrical substation near San Jose, Calif., has raised fears that the country's power grid is vulnerable to terrorism. WSJ's Rebecca Smith has the details. Photo: Talia Herman for The Wall Street Journal
With over 160,000 miles of transmission lines, the U.S. power grid is designed to handle natural and man-made disasters, as well as fluctuations in demand. How does the system work? WSJ's Jason Bellini has #TheShortAnswer.
To avoid a blackout, electric-grid officials rerouted power around the site and asked power plants in Silicon Valley to produce more electricity. But it took utility workers 27 days to make repairs and bring the substation back to life.
Nobody has been arrested or charged in the attack at PG&E Corp.'s PCG -0.41% Metcalf transmission substation. It is an incident of which few Americans are aware. But one former federal regulator is calling it a terrorist act that, if it were widely replicated across the country, could take down the U.S. electric grid and black out much of the country.
The attack was "the most significant incident of domestic terrorism involving the grid that has ever occurred" in the U.S., said Jon Wellinghoff, who was chairman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission at the time.
The Wall Street Journal assembled a chronology of the Metcalf attack from filings PG&E made to state and federal regulators; from other documents including a video released by the Santa Clara County Sheriff's Department; and from interviews, including with Mr. Wellinghoff.
Related
Q&A: What You Need to Know About Attacks on the U.S. Power Grid
The 64-year-old Nevadan, who was appointed to FERC in 2006 by President George W. Bush and stepped down in November, said he gave closed-door, high-level briefings to federal agencies, Congress and the White House last year. As months have passed without arrests, he said, he has grown increasingly concerned that an even larger attack could be in the works. He said he was going public about the incident out of concern that national security is at risk and critical electric-grid sites aren't adequately protected.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation doesn't think a terrorist organization caused the Metcalf attack, said a spokesman for the FBI in San Francisco. Investigators are "continuing to sift through the evidence," he said.
Some people in the utility industry share Mr. Wellinghoff's concerns, including a former official at PG&E, Metcalf's owner, who told an industry gathering in November he feared the incident could have been a dress rehearsal for a larger event.
"This wasn't an incident where Billy-Bob and Joe decided, after a few brewskis, to come in and shoot up a substation," Mark Johnson, retired vice president of transmission for PG&E, told the utility security conference, according to a video of his presentation. "This was an event that was well thought out, well planned and they targeted certain components." When reached, Mr. Johnson declined to comment further.
A spokesman for PG&E said the company takes all incidents seriously but declined to discuss the Metcalf event in detail for fear of giving information to potential copycats. "We won't speculate about the motives" of the attackers, added the spokesman, Brian Swanson. He said PG&E has increased security measures.
View Graphics
Utility executives and federal energy officials have long worried that the electric grid is vulnerable to sabotage. That is in part because the grid, which is really three systems serving different areas of the U.S., has failed when small problems such as trees hitting transmission lines created cascading blackouts. One in 2003 knocked out power to 50 million people in the Eastern U.S. and Canada for days.
Many of the system's most important components sit out in the open, often in remote locations, protected by little more than cameras and chain-link fences.
Transmission substations are critical links in the grid. They make it possible for electricity to move long distances, and serve as hubs for intersecting power lines.
Within a substation, transformers raise the voltage of electricity so it can travel hundreds of miles on high-voltage lines, or reduce voltages when electricity approaches its destination. The Metcalf substation functions as an off-ramp from power lines for electricity heading to homes and businesses in Silicon Valley.
The country's roughly 2,000 very large transformers are expensive to build, often costing millions of dollars each, and hard to replace. Each is custom made and weighs up to 500,000 pounds, and "I can only build 10 units a month," said Dennis Blake, general manager of Pennsylvania Transformer in Pittsburgh, one of seven U.S. manufacturers. The utility industry keeps some spares on hand.
A 2009 Energy Department report said that "physical damage of certain system components (e.g. extra-high-voltage transformers) on a large scale…could result in prolonged outages, as procurement cycles for these components range from months to years."
Mr. Wellinghoff said a FERC analysis found that if a surprisingly small number of U.S. substations were knocked out at once, that could destabilize the system enough to cause a blackout that could encompass most of the U.S.
Not everyone is so pessimistic. Gerry Cauley, chief executive of the North America Electric Reliability Corp., a standards-setting group that reports to FERC, said he thinks the grid is more resilient than Mr. Wellinghoff fears.
"I don't want to downplay the scenario he describes," Mr. Cauley said. "I'll agree it's possible from a technical assessment." But he said that even if several substations went down, the vast majority of people would have their power back in a few hours.
The utility industry has been focused on Internet attacks, worrying that hackers could take down the grid by disabling communications and important pieces of equipment. Companies have reported 13 cyber incidents in the past three years, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis of emergency reports utilities file with the federal government. There have been no reports of major outages linked to these events, although companies have generally declined to provide details.
"A lot of people in the electric industry have been distracted by cybersecurity threats," said Stephen Berberich, chief executive of the California Independent System Operator, which runs much of the high-voltage transmission system for the utilities. He said that physical attacks pose a "big, if not bigger" menace.
There were 274 significant instances of vandalism or deliberate damage in the three years, and more than 700 weather-related problems, according to the Journal's analysis.
Until the Metcalf incident, attacks on U.S. utility equipment were mostly linked to metal thieves, disgruntled employees or bored hunters, who sometimes took potshots at small transformers on utility poles to see what happens. (Answer: a small explosion followed by an outage.)
Last year, an Arkansas man was charged with multiple attacks on the power grid, including setting fire to a switching station. He has pleaded not guilty and is undergoing a psychiatric evaluation, according to federal court records.
Overseas, terrorist organizations were linked to 2,500 attacks on transmission lines or towers and at least 500 on substations from 1996 to 2006, according to a January report from the Electric Power Research Institute, an industry-funded research group, which cited State Department data.
An attack on a PG&E substation near San Jose, Calif., in April knocked out 17 transformers like this one. Talia Herman for The Wall Street Journal
To some, the Metcalf incident has lifted the discussion of serious U.S. grid attacks beyond the theoretical. "The breadth and depth of the attack was unprecedented" in the U.S., said Rich Lordan, senior technical executive for the Electric Power Research Institute. The motivation, he said, "appears to be preparation for an act of war."
The attack lasted slightly less than an hour, according to the chronology assembled by the Journal.
At 12:58 a.m., AT&T fiber-optic telecommunications cables were cut—in a way that made them hard to repair—in an underground vault near the substation, not far from U.S. Highway 101 just outside south San Jose. It would have taken more than one person to lift the metal vault cover, said people who visited the site.
Nine minutes later, some customers of Level 3 Communications, LVLT +10.00% an Internet service provider, lost service. Cables in its vault near the Metcalf substation were also cut.
At 1:31 a.m., a surveillance camera pointed along a chain-link fence around the substation recorded a streak of light that investigators from the Santa Clara County Sheriff's office think was a signal from a waved flashlight. It was followed by the muzzle flash of rifles and sparks from bullets hitting the fence.
The substation's cameras weren't aimed outside its perimeter, where the attackers were. They shooters appear to have aimed at the transformers' oil-filled cooling systems. These began to bleed oil, but didn't explode, as the transformers probably would have done if hit in other areas.
About six minutes after the shooting started, PG&E confirms, it got an alarm from motion sensors at the substation, possibly from bullets grazing the fence, which is shown on video.
Four minutes later, at 1:41 a.m., the sheriff's department received a 911 call about gunfire, sent by an engineer at a nearby power plant that still had phone service.
Riddled with bullet holes, the transformers leaked 52,000 gallons of oil, then overheated. The first bank of them crashed at 1:45 a.m., at which time PG&E's control center about 90 miles north received an equipment-failure alarm.
Five minutes later, another apparent flashlight signal, caught on film, marked the end of the attack. More than 100 shell casings of the sort ejected by AK-47s were later found at the site.
At 1:51 a.m., law-enforcement officers arrived, but found everything quiet. Unable to get past the locked fence and seeing nothing suspicious, they left.
A PG&E worker, awakened by the utility's control center at 2:03 a.m., arrived at 3:15 a.m. to survey the damage.
Grid officials routed some power around the substation to keep the system stable and asked customers in Silicon Valley to conserve electricity.
In a news release, PG&E said the substation had been hit by vandals. It has since confirmed 17 transformers were knocked out.
Mr. Wellinghoff, then chairman of FERC, said that after he heard about the scope of the attack, he flew to California, bringing with him experts from the U.S. Navy's Dahlgren Surface Warfare Center in Virginia, which trains Navy SEALs. After walking the site with PG&E officials and FBI agents, Mr. Wellinghoff said, the military experts told him it looked like a professional job.
In addition to fingerprint-free shell casings, they pointed out small piles of rocks, which they said could have been left by an advance scout to tell the attackers where to get the best shots.
"They said it was a targeting package just like they would put together for an attack," Mr. Wellinghoff said.
Mr. Wellinghoff, now a law partner at Stoel Rives LLP in San Francisco, said he arranged a series of meetings in the following weeks to let other federal agencies, including the Department of Homeland Security, know what happened and to enlist their help. He held a closed-door meeting with utility executives in San Francisco in June and has distributed lists of things utilities should do to strengthen their defenses.
A spokesman for Homeland Security said it is up to utilities to protect the grid. The department's role in an emergency is to connect federal agencies and local police and facilitate information sharing, the spokesman said.
As word of the attack spread through the utility industry, some companies moved swiftly to review their security efforts. "We're looking at things differently now," said Michelle Campanella, an FBI veteran who is director of security for Consolidated Edison Inc. ED -0.37% in New York. For example, she said, Con Ed changed the angles of some of its 1,200 security cameras "so we don't have any blind spots."
Some of the legislators Mr. Wellinghoff briefed are calling for action. Rep. Henry Waxman (D., Calif.) mentioned the incident at a FERC oversight hearing in December, saying he was concerned that no one in government can order utilities to improve grid protections or to take charge in an emergency.
As for Mr. Wellinghoff, he said he has made something of a hobby of visiting big substations to look over defenses and see whether he is questioned by security details or local police. He said he typically finds easy access to fence lines that are often close to important equipment.
"What keeps me awake at night is a physical attack that could take down the grid," he said. "This is a huge problem."
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a) I learned last night that to create an EMP, even a localized one, is not easy
b) http://live.wsj.com/video/how-does-the-us-power-grid-work/1671AA83-D0D2-4C75-913C-B381341159F4.html?mod=trending_now_video_2#!1671AA83-D0D2-4C75-913C-B381341159F4
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The Power Grid: Our Achilles' Heel
Chain-link fencing is all that protects the U.S. from a major disaster.
By
L. Gordon Crovitz
Feb. 9, 2014 5:53 p.m. ET
Tens of thousands of cyber attacks on the power grid are troubling, though so far they have rarely caused damage. More alarming is news of an old-fashioned armed attack on a physical location that proved the vulnerability of the grid.
Last April, a nighttime attack destroyed a power substation in San Jose, Calif., the center of Silicon Valley. The attackers had a good understanding of the facility and how to destroy it. They broke into an underground vault off Highway 101 and cut fiber-optic cables. Then they fired on the substation for almost 20 minutes, apparently using AK-47s, and wrecked 17 of 23 transformers. News of the incident was suppressed, with Pacific Gas & Electric Co. PCG +0.29% blaming vandalism. The damage took a month to repair.
We now have a better understanding of what happened thanks to a page-one article last week in this newspaper. Jon Wellinghoff, who was head of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission when the incident occurred, says this could be a trial run for attacks to bring down large parts of the electrical grid.
In an interview, Mr. Wellinghoff was careful to say he doesn't know if a terrorist group was responsible. But he called it a "purposeful attack, extremely well planned and executed by professionals who had expert training." He visited the scene with Pentagon experts who train Navy SEALs how to destroy enemy infrastructure. They pointed to the precision of the attack and evidence of its careful preparation. Mr. Wellinghoff said this was the only time Pentagon experts have concluded that damage to the grid in the U.S. has been caused by professionals.
The power substation in San Jose, Calif., that came under attack last April. Reuters
"Coordinated attacks on just a few substations could have a devastating impact," Mr. Wellinghoff warned. Destroying the right targets could knock out power for most of North America. Government agencies keep classified which combination of substations would create the most damage if attacked.
The FBI, which downplayed the likelihood of terrorism, still has no suspects. The bureau recently told the Los Angeles Times: "Until we understand the motives, we won't be 100% sure it's not terrorism."
Former CIA director Jim Woolsey told the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco in October that three or four men operating in a "disciplined military fashion" were responsible for the attack. "This wasn't hooliganism," he said. "This was a systematic attempt to take down the electric grid."
Mr. Wellinghoff, who came to Washington as an advocate for renewable energy, says physical security became a focus for him even before the San Jose attack. "I talked to anyone who would listen in the administration to say that physical security is key to the grid," he recalled. He left office late last year frustrated that few officials seemed to care.
"Terrorism and the Electric Power Delivery System," a National Academy of Sciences report written in 2007 and declassified in 2012, detailed the risks of a physical attack on facilities. "If it were carried out in a carefully planned way, by people who knew what they were doing, it could deny large regions of the country access to bulk system power for weeks or even months," the report said. "Terrorist attacks on multiple-line transmission corridors could cause cascading blackouts."
After Hurricane Sandy in 2012 we saw how much damage can be caused even by short-term, isolated outages. Areas of the Northeast lost access to the Internet, commerce came to a halt, and hospitals soon ran out of power from generators.
The power grid is especially vulnerable because many substations are in rural areas, protected only by chain-link fences. Mr. Wellinghoff urged power companies to take basic steps like building metal or concrete walls.
There are also new tools on the Internet that can be deployed to protect its source of power. Wireless digital sensors could alert security services to intruders. Mr. Wellinghoff says a Silicon Valley firm contacted him to offer sensors that can send alerts as soon as gunshots are fired. Sensors could automatically shut systems down to minimize damage from attacks.
Surveillance drones could be deployed 24/7 around especially sensitive facilities. The need for cheap, reliable drones is another reason the Federal Aviation Administration should legalize commercial uses of drones, which would accelerate their development.
Much of the discussion about surveillance in recent months has focused on the hypothetical risks to privacy from telephone metadata collected by the National Security Agency. Back in the physical world, no government agency is accountable for safeguarding the power grid. Power companies fear legal liability if they change their security systems, even to shore up defenses.
The security of the electrical grid is too important to be left to chain-link fencing. By deploying more Internet security technologies, the power grid can be empowered to help defend itself.
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http://www.thespacereview.com/article/1549/1
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http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/systems/munitions/hpm.htm
Second Item:
Syria Has Non-nuke EMP Bombs
Op-Ed: Syria Has Non-nuke EMP Bombs
Published: Friday, October 11, 2013 8:11 AM
Sometimes you need to spend billions to unearth supreme strategic military secrets. Other times, self-intoxicated leaders let the cat out of the bag.
Mark Langfan
The writer, who writes on security issues, has created an original educational 3d Topographic Map System of Israel to facilitate clear understanding of the dangers facing Israel and its water supply. It has been studied by US lawmakers and can be seen at www.marklangfan.com.
On 3 March 1917, German Foreign Minister Arthur Zimmerman blurted out, "I cannot deny it. It is true." Zimmerman had just admitted that as a German gambit to keep America "busy," Germany had secretly offered Mexico funding to attack America, and regain Texas and virtually America's entire Southwest.
In no small part due to Zimmerman's admission, America entered the war against Germany the next month, April 1917.
On 26 September 2013, Syrian president Bashar Assad said that Syria possesses "more advanced weaponry, which can serve as a deterrent, and blindside Israel within seconds." Loose lips sink ships.
Sometimes you need to spend billions to unearth supreme strategic military secrets. Other times, self-intoxicated leaders like Zimmerman articulate a casus belli of Germany against America in World War I.
Today, Assad gives a game-changing military secret to Israel more valuable than rubies. By letting slip that Syria could "blindside" Israel, Assad admitted Syria likely possesses non-nuclear, conventional Electro-Magnetic Pulse (EMP) weapons. The ramifications of a conventional EMP attack on Israel apply not only from Syria, but also, most critically, from any Palestinian Arab "demilitarized" state.
(I have previously discussed nuclear EMP weapons in my article, “The 100% Fatwa-Compliant Iranian EMP NuclearWeapon.” (/Articles/Article.aspx/11551#.Uk4umDK9KK0))
As explained in previous articles, a nuclear EMP bomb is merely a regular nuclear weapon which is ignited 50 kilometers above the earth where they don't kill people but kill electronics, instead of 1-5 kilometers above the ground where it would kill many people. Non-nuclear EMP bombs are microwave-emitting weapons which electronically fry a much smaller electronic kill radius than a nuclear EMP bomb would.
But, a conventional EMP bomb has the same end result in that it totally destroys any electronics in a given target zone. The reason I hadn't raised this issue previously is because it is the likeliest critical element to any possible strike on Iran. But since Assad let the cat out of the bag, it must now be discussed openly.
No one can describe non-nuclear conventional EMPs better than its maker the Boeing Company. On 22 October 2012, Boeing released a press release http://www.boeing.com/Features/2012/10/bds_champ_10_22_12.html, and video that explained conventional EMP weapons as follows:
No one can describe non-nuclear conventional EMPs better than its maker the Boeing Company...
"A recent weapons flight test in the Utah desert may change future warfare after the missile successfully defeated electronic targets with little to no collateral damage.
Boeing and the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) Directed Energy Directorate, Kirtland Air Force Base, N.M., successfully tested the Counter-electronics High-powered Microwave Advanced Missile Project (CHAMP) during a flight over the Utah Test and Training Range.
CHAMP, which renders electronic targets useless, is a non-kinetic alternative to traditional explosive weapons that use the energy of motion to defeat a target.
During the test, the CHAMP missile navigated a pre-programmed flight plan and emitted bursts of high-powered energy, effectively knocking out the target's data and electronic subsystems. CHAMP allows for selective high-frequency radio wave strikes against numerous targets during a single mission.
‘This technology marks a new era in modern-day warfare,’ said Keith Coleman, CHAMP program manager for Boeing Phantom Works. ‘In the near future, this technology may be used to render an enemy’s electronic and data systems useless even before the first troops or aircraft arrive.’”
It is entirely feasible, if not highly probable, that Syria possesses such a conventional EMP weapon. How Syria could deliver the weapon to Israel's electronic soft-underbelly is another question. But leaving the question of delivery aside for the moment, the real question is: how does this effect Israel's strategic equation?
Apart from other aspects, the most worrisome effect would be if Israel attempted to strike Iran's nuclear facilities. Such a sophisticated weapon in Syria is likely under the control of Iran's al Quds forces in Syria. And, it would likely be used as a second-strike against Israel if Israel attacked. A non-nuclear counter strike against Israel when Israel is in the midst of attacking Iran could bring Israel a grievous military catastrophe.
Therefore, it now becomes a military necessity that Assad is liquidated before any Israeli attack on Iran proceeds. By Israel's supplying the rebels with critical real-time intelligence of the locations of Assad's weapons' depots, and an unlimited amount of untraceable small caliber bullets (preferably 7.62x39mm Kalash rounds), Assad will crumble and crumble fast.
But the most dramatic threat posed by a non-nuclear conventional EMP bomb is not from Syria, it's from the "demilitarized" Palestinian Arab State that Tzipi Livni is concocting for Israel's future. The reason being, with absolute Israeli military control of all goods coming into that area and absolute military control over the Samarian mountains facing Tel Aviv, it will be impossible to keep out the electronic parts necessary for the Palestinian Arabs to make such a conventional EMP bomb.
They wouldn't need a "delivery system" because the EMP bomb would have already been "delivered" to striking range of Israel's electronic soft-underbelly, Tel Aviv. The Palestinian Arabs could then conventionally first-strike decapitate Israel's entire military force structure and electronic system as a prelude to a second wave attack by Iranian or Arab missiles or armies. The Kirya (Israel's "Pentagon" in Tel Aviv) would be electronically toasted from the word "go." All of Israel's anti-missile, air defense and mobilization systems would be paralyzed from the very first second of a Muslim war of decimation. It would be lights-out, game-over for Israel before the war against Israel even began.
A Palestinian Arab state no longer threatens Israel with chemical Katyushas, it now threatens Israel with annihilation by EMP bombs. Unless Israel short-circuits its suicidal "peace" process, a Palestinian CHAMP EMP bomb could instantly turn Israel's electronic defense into a clump of burning wiring.
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Hat tip to GM
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The cost of energy should be going DOWN!
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http://gizmodo.com/the-price-of-electricity-in-the-u-s-is-about-to-skyroc-1568384997
As the U.S. becomes more reliant on renewable energy like solar and wind, our electricity bills are going to go up. Way up.
...
But the real problem lies in switching those old systems off and getting the renewable systems—wind power, solar farms—online. Many states have a mandate to convert a certain percentage of their energy production to renewable energy by a certain date, but they still haven't figured out exactly how that plan will work. Plus all these renewable systems need to have access to a backup system, adding still more costs.
RELATED
Take a Tour of California's Insane Solar Thermal Energy Plant
Sometime in the next few months, the Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System will flip the switch on the largest solar plant of its kind in the… Read…
California, which is seen as a leader for renewable energy, has the most aggressive mandate: 33 percent of its power must be renewable by 2020. But that means the cost of electricity could rise 47 percent over the next 16 years.
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In 16 years, Californians will WISH electricity only went up 46% under their mandates!
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Interesting piece on the grid by a qualified author. Doesn't answer all questions or solve all challenges but makes good sense for as far as it goes. Nuclearis not mentioned?
"Demand for reliability is rising faster than demand for kilowatt-hours themselves."
"the entire planet’s annual production of lithium batteries for all purposes can store about five minutes worth of U.S. electric demand."
"the Energy Information Administration (EIA) forecasts a 12 percent rise over the next decade – that will require the United States to add capacity equal to Germany’s entire current grid."
"PV costs [solar] will decline by [only] another 30 percent by 2030 — important but hardly revolutionary.
"EIA sees natural gas and coal, in almost equal shares (coal still dominates in EIA’s forecast), providing about 70 percent of electric supply a decade out. These two fuels are now in a race to the bottom in terms of price, to the benefit of consumers and ensuring a permanent, low-cost electricity future (absent meddling from policymakers) that will confer an enormous economic advantage on U.S. industries."
The Future Electric Grid
AEI Online Magazine
http://american.com/archive/2014/may/the-future-electric-grid-greener-or-harder
The Future Electric Grid
By Mark P. Mills
Saturday, May 31, 2014
Filed under: Science & Technology, Economic Policy
We hear increasingly that technology is making today’s electric utility model ‘obsolete’ and will put its companies into a ‘death spiral.’ Is it possible that so much has changed so quickly?
It was only a little more than ten years ago that a National Academy of Engineering report ranked the invention of the electric grid at the top of a list of the 20 greatest inventions of the 20th century. Not just one of the great engineering achievements, but first amongst them. The Academy ranked the Internet 13th.
Now we hear increasingly that technology is making today’s electric utility model “obsolete” and will put its companies into a “death spiral.” Is it possible that so much has changed so quickly?
Post-utility advocates point to three technologies as disrupters: photovoltaics (PV), batteries, and smart or micro grids. The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), along with a conga line of venture firms in Silicon Valley, invested tens of billions of dollars in these three domains over the past half-dozen years. Volumes of analyses and claims can be summarized in three paragraphs:
Solar arrays on the roofs of homes and buildings, it is argued, will obviate central power generation, especially much-reviled coal plants, and will do so rapidly, as PV costs decline and approach “grid parity.” The Department of Energy released a report chronicling the progress, titled Solar Revolution, that inspired palpitations from New York Times columnist Paul Krugman, who wrote that “it’s no longer remotely true that we need to keep burning coal to satisfy electricity demand.”
It is true that the nation’s electric grid is morphing, but just not quite the way green energy proponents imagine.
Lithium battery technology, incredibly improved courtesy of the mobile Internet, we’re told will now migrate into basements of homes and buildings to store PV electricity for nights and cloudy days, obviating the grid as backup. The global proliferation of lithium-powered hybrid-electric cars is just a first step. And when Tesla recently announced plans to build a “gigafactory” that would alone produce more than all of the world’s existing lithium battery factories combined, the green-tech media erupted with excitement, claiming such economies-of-scale promise revolution, not just for electric cars, but also the grid.
Finally, third in the triad, a smart grid, in particular in the form of “micro grids,” connects everything. With far more granular and real-time information about how much, when, and where electricity is used, advocates assert that social and economic behavior will change to radically reduce energy use and further undermine utility revenues.
These three technology forces in combination, the post-utility analysts claim, will “transform the way the utility industry meets energy demand.” It is, we frequently hear, analogous to and as inevitable as the destruction of the Ma Bell landline phone model when cell phones emerged. (Apparently none who offer this analogy notice that AT&T is doing just fine, and is still a huge if differently regulated business.)
The central problem with this post-utility construct is that the physics of information and electricity are profoundly different, and render the Bell analogy meaningless. More on that shortly. First though, it is true that the nation’s electric grid is morphing, but just not quite the way green energy proponents imagine.
The need for a harder grid
Modern society is in much more urgent need of a harder grid, not so much a greener grid. Demand for reliability is rising faster than demand for kilowatt-hours themselves. Two words epitomize this new reality – Metcalfe and Sandy.
In the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy’s widespread and persistent outages, federal and state policymakers called for more spending on grid resilience and recovery. And more recently, policymakers and utilities are still reacting to the fallout from learning about a terrorist-like gunfire attack on California’s Metcalf substation last year, an incident that had been kept a secret until this past spring. That attack prompted a flurry of “what if” scenarios about potential blackouts from future, similar attacks on any of the nation’s tens of thousands of substations.
Electricity powers everything people think is modern about our economy, from older but indispensable things like lights, motors, refrigerators, and air conditioners, to new technologies like the Internet, electric cars, 3D printing, and gene sequencing.
On average though, more mundane events lead to the vast majority of increasingly intolerable blackouts: car accidents, squirrels chewing through cables, and old equipment failing. The average incidence of grid outages has been rising at about 8 percent to 10 percent annually since 1990. And the duration of outages has also been rising by about 14 percent per year. (Eaton Corporation provides revealing state-by-state data and trends in their Blackout Tracker.) And then there are the rising concerns over cyber attacks on the grid – arguably one of the most critical areas, demanding increased spending and attention.
All this comes at a time of greater demand for “always on” power to keep our digital and information-centric economy humming. Electricity powers everything people think is modern about our economy, from conventional but indispensable things like lights, motors, refrigerators, and air conditioners, to new technologies like the Internet, electric cars, 3D printing, and gene sequencing.
The share of the U.S. GDP associated with information is three times bigger than the share associated with the transportation sector that moves people and stuff. The former is entirely dependent on electricity and is growing far faster than the latter, which uses oil. (For more on the Cloud’s surprising electricity appetite, see my earlier report.)
It should thus be unsurprising to learn that studies find the cost of outages, measured per kilowatt-hour, is ten to ten thousand times more than the cost of the power itself.
Even as the importance of reliability grows, the consumption of kilowatt-hours also keeps growing, despite billions invested trying to stifle that growth. U.S. electric demand today is 10 percent higher than 2001, perhaps a seemingly modest amount, but for a grid the scale of America’s this increase equals Italy’s entire annual use. For the future, the Energy Information Administration (EIA) forecasts a 12 percent rise over the next decade – that will require the United States to add capacity equal to Germany’s entire current grid.
Thus the future will not be dominated by trying to bolt more renewables onto the grid for their own sake, but in using them to meet growing demand and to add resiliency and reliability.
Technological limits
Smart grids. The key to a more resilient, flexible, and useful grid is to operate it like the Internet, which is nodal, interactive, and highly controllable. This is where “smart” meters and microgrids come in, and where solar energy and batteries play a role.
The future will not be dominated by trying to bolt more renewables onto the grid for their own sake, but in using them to meet growing demand and to add resiliency and reliability.
An Internet-like grid will know how much power is needed, when and where, and even what "flavor" of electrons some customers prefer — say, greener or cheaper. It would help moderate variations in peak demand by using software to negotiate in real-time with local and remote power sources, as well as by purchasing “avoided” power (temporarily cycling off air conditioners and refrigerators, but not computers and TVs). It would also reduce outage frequency through predictive analytics that anticipate maintenance before failures. And when failures occur, it would reduce outage duration by more rapidly locating, identifying, and optimally dispatching.
But thus far, spending on the smart grid has been dominated by smart meters that allow more granular and frequent readings and the transmission of that data to the utility, eliminating the old-fashioned meter reader. But just adding a communications feature to the meters is not deeply game-changing; it is the equivalent of installing a speedometer and gas gauge without a steering wheel and brakes. The game-changer is in controlling power.
Internet-like real-time control of power is mainly found at low power levels inside homes and buildings, not on the grid, and is unimaginatively labeled “building automation.” This is a small part of the smart-grid architecture wherein, to continue the information analogy, it is equivalent to the era of stand-alone mainframe computing before the Internet. But control of megawatt-hours, not megabytes, on big grids is a daunting technology problem.
The difference between the two power levels, controlling traffic on the Internet versus grid-power traffic, is what dictates physical material, and safety challenges. That difference is comparable to going from controlling a toy drone to a Boeing 777. Technologies are emerging that make grid-level dynamic switching and control possible, but they’ll take some time yet to get deployed. In the future you’ll hear a lot more about new classes of power transistors and semiconductors, like gallium nitride and silicon carbide, that can manage weapons-grade flows of electrons.
It’s still early days for such technology, and deployment in smart microgrids has barely begun. The country’s most successful and arguably only operational microgrid to date is on the campus of the University of California at San Diego. That 40 MW microgrid seamlessly exits the local public grid when regional demand (or prices) peak, and keeps the campus and its supercomputer lit with on-site power that includes fuel cells, solar arrays, batteries, and natural gas turbines. Notably it’s natural gas that supplies 75 percent of the on-site power.
Microgrids are a start but not the end game. To continue the information analogies, microgrids no more replace central power plants than WiFi networks replace Google’s central computing.
Photovoltaics. It is with the collapsing cost of PV cells that post-utility advocates assert we are close to the tipping point for grid and central power plant disruption.
No regulatory fiat, as exhibited notably by California policymakers implementing the nation’s only mandate for that state’s utilities to install grid-scale storage, can change the reality of simple arithmetic.
The capital cost of PVs has improved by a remarkable 200 percent in the past decade. But that rate of decline is slowing as the underlying technologies mature and physics limits are approached. (This happens to everything: aircraft engines improved more than 200 percent in their early years too, and now get better at single-digit percentages at best). Going forward, Germany’s Fraunhofer Institute recently estimated that PV costs will decline by another 30 percent by 2030 — important but hardly revolutionary. And today, an unsubsidized PV array on homes and buildings, Fraunhhofer notes, produces far more expensive electricity than a central power plant.
And, it is argued, the central plant depends on a costly grid to get power to consumers. But solar needs the grid too. In order to ensure the 24-7 electric supply society demands, a PV array today uses the grid as “back-up.” But that raises questions about how to share the cost of the grid’s power plants and infrastructure, an issue regulators are struggling with in many states.
The alternative is to convert episodic on-site solar generation into “always on” power using batteries, or on-site back-up generators. The latter solution, distributing millions of small car-sized engine-driven power plants to every home or office to back up solar arrays, is not economically viable, much less sensible. It is battery technology that post-utility solar advocates hold out as the Holy Grail. Just store the electricity for when the sun’s not shining.
Batteries. Assume for the sake of argument that big batteries are cheap. Even then, a solar-only or solar-dominated system remains economically untenable. Supplying electricity all day, every day with a battery-solar combination requires, on average, buying two to three extra solar panels for every one installed in order to generate and store extra power when the sun is shining, thereby doubling or tripling system costs.
And assume again that batteries are cheap, the world would have difficulty producing enough of them to be impactful at grid levels. California policymakers apparently think otherwise, having implemented the nation’s only mandate for that state’s utilities to install grid-scale storage. Consider the reality of simple arithmetic:
All the world’s lithium battery factories collectively produce about 30 GWhr (30 billion watt-hours) of storage capacity annually. The United States alone consumes about 4,000,000 GWhr of electricity a year. Thus the entire planet’s annual production of lithium batteries for all purposes can store about five minutes worth of U.S. electric demand.
Politicians face increasing peril if their policies cause something as important as electricity to become increasingly expensive and less reliable.
As for Tesla’s putative gigafactory, if it gets built, its entire annual output adds another five minutes of U.S. grid-scale storage. And at that, Tesla batteries cost at least 500 percent more than today’s solution for providing electricity when outages or peaks happen. Reliability of supply comes from building extra power plants to have on standby, and storing gas in caverns or coal in piles adjacent to those power plants.
This reality is precisely why society-levels of reliable, affordable electricity supply is such a great engineering challenge, and why the National Academy honored that achievement. For other energy commodities (and in general, most commodities), it is technically easy and inexpensive to store several months — not minutes — of demand at any given time in order to ensure price stability and physical reliability.
Still, better battery technology will emerge in due course. But it will come from some university research lab using big data to unravel chemical mysteries, not from building bigger buildings using yesterday’s chemistry. And you can bet that the company that invents the new way to store electricity will focus on selling into the huge high-value market for powering mobile devices. That’s where battery fortunes will be made, because consumers pay $20 per kilowatt-hour to keep iPads and iPhones lit, compared to $0.20 a kWh to keep the grid lit.
And, as better, cheaper battery technology does emerge, it will be as valuable, arguably more valuable, for conventional power plants, for reasons of simple economics. One would store the cheapest electrons when they are in surplus — i.e., coal-fired electricity in surplus at night delivered on uncongested lines — to resell later when prices and grid congestion are highest, around midday. Cheap grid-scale batteries will reinforce and arbitrage a complementary role for coal and solar. Somewhat ironic perhaps.
Speaking of coal, it’s impossible to talk about the grid and not make note of the carbon and global warming issues. To tilt the field away from hydrocarbon fuels, policymakers and regulators have taken actions that increase their costs, and also subsidize non-hydrocarbon energy. But the laws of physics of energy, and laws of economic reality, cannot be ignored. Politicians face increasing peril if their policies cause something as important as electricity to become increasingly expensive and less reliable.
Today’s technological breakthroughs: Smart drilling and big data
The two technologies that are reshaping the electric grid, allowing both more resilience and reliability, are not the ones pundits and policymakers expected: smart drilling, and big data.
Smart drilling has unleashed an entirely unexpected bounty of shale gas, not only making it easier to meet rising demand, but also to ensure reliability with plenty of spare capacity, all at low cost.
The entire planet’s annual production of lithium batteries for all purposes can store about 5 minutes worth of U.S. electric demand.
Just as technology lead to a 200 percent drop in the capital needed to produce a unit of PV electricity over the past decade, so too has technology driven a similar 200 percent (and even greater) decline in capital needed to produce a unit of shale gas – but the latter has happened in the past four years, and continues.
EIA sees natural gas and coal, in almost equal shares (coal still dominates in EIA’s forecast), providing about 70 percent of electric supply a decade out. These two fuels are now in a race to the bottom in terms of price, to the benefit of consumers and ensuring a permanent, low-cost electricity future (absent meddling from policymakers) that will confer an enormous economic advantage on U.S. industries.
The other disruptor, big data analytics, is made possible by the combination of proliferating low-cost sensors, ubiquitous wireless connectivity, and the Promethean power of computing. While big data will eventually impact every sector of the economy, one of the immediate benefits that real-time analytic intelligence brings is to wring greater value out of existing supply chains and infrastructures.
For some indication of the power of big data, consider the unheralded success of the PJM ISO — the system operator for the long-distance transmission system that lies between Chicago, New York City, and Washington, D.C., and its new sensor, control, and big data analytics system. After bringing it on line a little more than a year ago, it not only resulted in greater reliability and hundreds of millions of dollars in operational savings, but it also increased the system’s power-carrying capacity two-fold without adding new power lines.
Tesla batteries cost at least 500 percent more than today’s solution for providing electricity when outages or peaks happen.
While it is technically more difficult to implement that architecture on the local grids — the urban roads of the grid, versus the interstates of long-distance transmission — that is what will come next. Big data will also create greater markets for solar arrays and batteries as a feature of a central-power-plant grid. While the future may lead to different kinds of companies owning some or all the pieces of the grid, it will still be a grid and for consumers it will still feel as much like a “utility.”
Still, some utility CEOs, notably NRG’s outspoken chief David Crane, believe in a post-grid world. Earlier this year, Crane said: “Think how shockingly stupid it is to build a 21st-century electric system based on 120 million wooden poles... the system from the 1930s isn’t going to work in the long term.” This is not much of an improvement over the flawed Ma Bell analogy. Today we still build furniture and houses out of wood, a system predating the Romans; we just use the same materials much more efficiently.
When the National Academy of Engineering gets around to a 21st-century retrospective, odds are that ranked as top achievements will be whatever we end up calling big data, and whatever we end up calling the technologies that unlocked the shale. And the grid, pioneered in the 20th-century, will still be around, just a lot better.
Mark P. Mills is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and CEO of the Digital Power Group.
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Along with Huber, Mills wrote the Huber-Mills Powercosm newsletter starting back in 2001-- I even attended an investor conference for it back in 2001. I regard him as highly qualified and thoughtful in this area.
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Hat tip to GM:
http://spectrum.ieee.org/aerospace/military/electromagnetic-warfare-is-here
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http://www.foxnews.com/tech/2014/01/14/emps-how-to-detect-blast-that-could-darken-world/
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http://www.capoliticalreview.com/capoliticalnewsandviews/another-thanks-to-barack-lost-electricity-generation-capacity-7x-higher-than-epa-estimates/
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http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/lockheed-claims-breakthrough-on-fusion-energy1/
ENERGY & SUSTAINABILITY
Lockheed Claims Breakthrough on Fusion Energy
Lockheed Martin Corp said on Wednesday it had made a technological breakthrough in developing a power source based on nuclear fusion, and the first reactors, small enough to fit on the back of a truck, could be ready in a decade.
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http://letsfixthiscountry.org/2015/01/02/a-movie-studio-how-about-the-national-grid/
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http://pamelageller.com/2015/03/iran-endorses-nuclear-emp-attack-on-united-states-while-obama-clings-clinging-to-preposterous-argument.html/
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https://www.facebook.com/theblaze/videos/1057675700936436/
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2016/02/08/for-the-record-understanding-the-threat-of-emp/?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Firewire%20-%20HORIZON%202-8-16%20FINAL&utm_term=Firewire
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http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2016/02/15/ready-for-monday-for-the-record-how-the-sun-could-knock-out-electrical-grids-worldwide/?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Firewire%20-%20HORIZON%202-15-16%20FINAL&utm_term=Firewire
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http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2016/02/22/for-the-record-is-iran-working-toward-an-emp-strike/?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Firewire%20-%20HORIZON%202-22-16%20FINAL&utm_term=Firewire
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http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/infrastructure/a7984/us-woefully-unprepared-for-a-blackout-like-indias-analysis-11413652/?src=soc_fcbk
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http://www.heritage.org/defense/report/emp-attacks-what-the-us-must-do-now
An electromagnetic pulse (EMP) attack represents one of the greatest threats imaginable—to the United States and the world. An EMP occurs when a nuclear device is detonated high in the atmosphere—a phenomenon of which America’s enemies are well aware. The electromagnetic discharge can permanently disable the electrical systems that run nearly all civilian and military infrastructures. A massive EMP attack on the United States would produce almost unimaginable devastation. Communications would collapse, transportation would halt, and electrical power would simply be non-existent. Not even a global humanitarian effort would be enough to keep hundreds of millions of Americans from death by starvation, exposure, or lack of medicine. Nor would the catastrophe stop at U.S. borders. Most of Canada would be devastated, too, as its infrastructure is integrated with the U.S. power grid. Without the American economic engine, the world economy would quickly collapse. Much of the world’s intellectual brain power (half of it is in the United States) would be lost as well. Earth would most likely recede into the “new” Dark Ages.
All past calamities of the modern era would pale in comparison to the catastrophe caused by a successful high-altitude EMP strike.
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Its not just an article, its also an advertisement
http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2017/09/07/exclusive-north-korea-openly-threatens-electromagnetic-pulse-attack-for-first-time/?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_term=daily&utm_content=links&utm_campaign=20170908
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https://mises.org/blog/cashless-world-youd-better-pray-power-never-goes-out
In a Cashless World, You'd Better Pray the Power Never Goes Out
10/10/2017Ryan McMaken
When Hurricane Maria knocked out power in Puerto Rico, residents there realized they were going to need physical cash — and a lot of it.
Bloomberg reported yesterday that the Fed was forced to fly a planeload of cash to the Island to help avert disaster:
William Dudley, the New York Fed president, put the word out within minutes, and ultimately a jet loaded with an undisclosed amount of cash landed on the stricken island...
[Business executive in Puerto Rico] described corporate clients’ urgent requests for hundreds of thousands in cash to meet payrolls, and the challenge of finding enough armored cars to satisfy endless demand at ATMs. Such were the days after Maria devastated the U.S. territory last month, killing 39 people, crushing buildings and wiping out the island’s energy grid. As early as the day after the storm, the Fed began working to get money onto the island,
For a time, unless one had a hoard of cash stored up in one's home, it was impossible to get cash at all. 85 percent of Puerto Rico is still without power, as of October 9. Bloomberg continues: "When some generator-powered ATMs finally opened, lines stretched hours long, with people camping out in beach chairs and holding umbrellas against the sun."
In an earlier article from September 25, Bloomberg noted how, without cash, necessities were simply unavailable:
“Cash only,” said Abraham Lebron, the store manager standing guard at Supermax, a supermarket in San Juan’s Plaza de las Armas. He was in a well-policed area, but admitted feeling like a sitting duck with so many bills on hand. “The system is down, so we can’t process the cards. It’s tough, but one finds a way to make it work.”
The cash economy has reigned in Puerto Rico since Hurricane Maria decimated much of the U.S. commonwealth last week, leveling the power grid and wireless towers and transporting the island to a time before plastic existed. The state of affairs could carry on for weeks or longer in some remote parts of the commonwealth, and that means it could be impossible to trace revenue and enforce tax rules.
Note the deep concern with "trac[ing] revenue" and "enforc[ing] tax rules" — as if making payroll for ordinary people were not the real problem here.
Puerto Rico has been fortunate that the United States, so far, has not attempted to implement many anti-cash measures that have been popular among central bankers in recent years.
Abolishing cash, of course, has become de rigueur among mainstream economists who have long argued that physical cash is an impediment to "nontraditional" monetary policy like negative interest rates. Moreover, advocates claim, physical cash makes it harder to control the flow of money, collect taxes, and control black markets.
This drive to supposedly fight crime and corruption was given as the justification for the disastrous war against cash in India in 2016. Hatched as a scheme to assert more government control over the economy, the Indian government removed mostly large bills from circulation in India, which accounted for 85% of its physical cash by value.
The demonetization badly damaged the economy. The Wall Street Journal reported in December:
Not surprisingly, shock waves from the announcement continue to crash through the economy. The Asian Development Bank cut its growth estimate for India for the financial year ending March 31 to 7% from 7.4%. JP Morgan expects growth to decline by half a percent to 6.7%.
Meanwhile, falling sales have begun to translate into layoffs spanning various sectors, including construction, textiles and jewelry. The Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy estimates the transaction costs alone of swapping out an estimated 14.2 trillion rupees’ worth of currency to be 1.28 trillion rupees, or about $19 billion.
India’s economy will eventually recover from this self-inflicted wound, but there’s no question that demonetization has created doubts about Mr. Modi’s competence. The decision, reportedly hatched in secret with a coterie of trusted bureaucrats, showcases the prime minister’s faith in the command-and-control ethos of the civil service rather than in the “minimum government” he once promised.
One can only imagine how much more grim matters would be for Puerto Rico if most physical cash were made illegal as happened in India.
It's unlikely, however, that any well-known economists — such as Kenneth Rogoff who has deemed physical cash "a curse" — will be recanting their anti-cash views.
If you want to make an omelet, you have to break some eggs, and while some of the "little people" like Indian peasants and Puerto Rican workers might have to suffer greatly whenever the power goes out, we all have to make sacrifices.
Perhaps this is what Richard Thaler — the newly announced economics Nobel-Prize winner — had in mind when he came in out in favor of demonetization in India.
Certainly, abolishing cash is likely to devastate a poor economy more than a wealthy one. A wealthy country, with more advanced and reliable infrastructure, and with greater access to resources in general, is more fully able to weather a shortage of physical cash, and natural disasters. Overall, though, going cashless makes an economy more fragile, and makes ordinary people sitting ducks whenever there is a natural disaster, or even worse disruptions such as wars.
thaler_twitter_2.PNG
Ryan McMaken (@ryanmcmaken) is the editor of Mises Wire and The Austrian. Send him your article submissions, but read article guidelines first. Ryan has degrees in economics and political science from the University of Colorado, and was the economist for the Colorado Division of Housing from 2009 to 2014. He is the author of Commie Cowboys: The Bourgeoisie and the Nation-State in the Western Genre.
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http://www.dickmorris.com/emp-north-korea-threatens-congress-dawdles-lunch-alert/?utm_source=dmreports&utm_medium=dmreports&utm_campaign=dmreports
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http://gatesofvienna.net/2017/10/a-bang-followed-by-whimpering-and-silence/
A Bang Followed by Whimpering… and Silence
Posted on October 18, 2017 by Dymphna
EMP blast
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http://www.askaprepper.com/usaf-developed-new-bomb-creates-general-darkness-champ/
Electromagnetic pulse attacks are one of the most alarming threats facing the western world.
There are two reasons for that:
#1. The damage the attack would actually do, would be extreme. Look around you at all the things you use every day. How many of them contain electronics? An EMP attack would destroy them all – and it would also destroy most of the infrastructure you rely on. Utilities, traffic signals, the railways and much more would all be wrecked by electromagnetic pulse. So, using such a weapon against the aging and overly-taxed United States power grid could quickly wreak havoc and ultimately cause millions of deaths in America.
Related: 5 Things You Need to Do When There’ll Be No Rule of Law
#2. The second reason is that, politically, they’re a weapon that’s very easy to use for blackmail. After all, an EMP attack on the USA wouldn’t directly kill anyone. As the famous Don Cheadle noted in the ever-relevant Ocean’s 11, this new weapon “is a bomb — but without the bomb”.
So, sure, thousands of people would die as transportation, medical and water purification systems failed, but nobody would be killed by the actual weapon. Would the USA be able, politically, to retaliate with a nuclear strike when the enemy had “only” detonated a weapon in space, a couple of hundred miles above the country? After all, the explosion wouldn’t even be in US airspace – that ends at an altitude of 50 miles. Would Congress agree to incinerate North Korean cities in reply to a “soft” attack like an EMP? In a sane world they would, because a big EMP would do more damage to the USA than actually nuking a single decent-sized city would, but the indirect nature of an EMP attack makes it a gray area.
Related: Affordable Vehicles That Can Survive an EMP
Unfortunately the risk of an EMP attack by a rogue state, especially North Korea, is increasing fast. In fact Pyongyang announced in September that they’ve developed a weapon that’s suitable for using as a high-altitude EMP, and they’ve made enough technological progress recently that this claim has to be taken seriously.
Now, experts reporting to the House Committee on Homeland Security are urging the federal government to develop its own EMP capability as a deterrent. If the USA could reply in kind to an EMP attack, instead of having to escalate to nuclear strikes on actual ground targets, a potential attacker will know that a counterstrike is almost inevitable.
What’s caused this is the realization that, when it comes to North Korea’s nuclear arsenal, most people have been seriously underestimating the threat. The Pentagon now think the Stalinist regime already has around 60 nuclear warheads, and can reach the USA with them. So far, North Korea doesn’t have a missile capable of reaching the contiguous states, and even if they developed one it wouldn’t have the accuracy to hit even a large target like a city. The problem is, if they opted for an EMP attack, that doesn’t matter.
emp military manual
DoD Technical Report – EMP Handbook for Air Force Communications Service
To devastate a huge chunk of the USA with an EMP, all the North Koreans have to do is get a warhead to detonate somewhere in a target area hundreds of miles across. That doesn’t need much in the way of technology to achieve. Building a rocket capable of carrying the warhead is a brute-force problem; it’s just a matter of packing enough fuel into a big enough steel tube, and there’s no need for sophisticated guidance systems. As long as the rocket can be relied on to go in the right direction, a clockwork timer is literally good enough.
Even worse, they wouldn’t necessarily even need a big rocket. A nuclear-armed satellite could be launched into low Earth orbit, then commanded to detonate as it passed over the USA. Alternatively, weapons could be suspended from balloons and released so high-altitude winds would carry them across North America. Warheads could even be launched by SCUD-type missiles from commercial ships off the US coast, to explode at high altitude several hundred miles inland. There are lots of options; what matters is that, however the attack was launched, it would be devastating.
Related: Emergency Bag to Keep in Your Car in Case of an EMP
It wouldn’t be hard for the USA to develop its own EMP capability, allowing any country that attacked in this way to get a rapid dose of its own medicine. In fact, a software edit would probably allow current strategic weapons – Trident II sub-launched missiles or Minuteman-III ICBMs – to detonate a warhead at high altitude. Modifying warheads to create a much greater EMP effect wouldn’t be much harder; the USA already knows how to do that. It’s most likely that modified weapons would be launched by Trident, which can carry up to twelve warheads – that would allow an attacker to be blanketed with relatively small weapons, each devastating electronics and power cables over a radius of hundreds of miles.
If the Pentagon decides to build this capability the chances of a hostile nation launching an EMP attack at the USA go way down; it might be politically risky for a president to nuke another country in response to a “non-lethal” attack on infrastructure, but nobody can complain if the USA retaliates like for like.
The problem is, it might take years for even the simplest weapons program to work its way through the Washington bureaucracy, so even if a decision was made tomorrow there isn’t much chance of the capability existing before about 2023 at the earliest – and a deterrent doesn’t work until the weapons actually exist. But it might come to life sooner than everyone expects. Keep reading…
If the North Koreans know that the USA can’t retaliate with EMP weapons now, but will be able to in a few years, they might just be tempted to get their attack in before America can reply to it. That’s quite a low risk strategy; if they launch a successful EMP it’s going to delay the US program by years, or maybe kill it off altogether – it depends how much damage their attack does. This isn’t a reason to not build an American EMP weapon; the risk exists already, and the USA has to be able to deter it. What it does mean is that there’s a trade-off; the USA has to accept a higher risk of EMP attack for a few years, in exchange for it dropping sharply once the country is able to reply in kind.
Related: How To Make A Tin Can Directional WiFi Antenna to Extend your Communication after an EMP
What the US government has to do is identify the simplest way to build an EMP capability – even if it’s not perfect – and get it into service as fast as possible. Then a better one can be developed, if necessary. What we have to do is take another look at the precautions we’ve taken against EMP and make sure they’re up to the job – because the risk of an attack looks like it’s quite a bit higher than it seemed to be just a few months ago.
But given the last few years’ international and national rise of turmoils, the US together with the private company Boeing, had decided to “bring to life” such an weapon that would make an EMP attack actually a preventable homeland security catastrophe. So, after years of discussions and failed experiments, Boeing has announced that it successfully tested an electromagnetic pulse missile capable of disabling electronics without affecting structures. The Counter-electronics High-powered Advanced Missile Project (CHAMP) was tested by a Boeing Phantom Works/U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory Directed Energy Directorate team on October 16 at the Utah Test and Training Range. This American military project is an attempt to develop a device with all the power of a nuclear weapon but without the death and destruction to people and infrastructure that such a weapon causes. Theoretically, the new missile system would pinpoint buildings and knock out their electrical grids, plunging the target into darkness and general disconnectedness.
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second post of day
Lots of marketing in this, but , , ,
http://www.askaprepper.com/will-not-survive-emp-strike-without/
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http://havokjournal.com/national-security/emps-dont-work-like/?utm_source=Havok+Journal&utm_campaign=c1c6a2ceaa-Havok_Journal_Daily&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_566058f87c-c1c6a2ceaa-214571297
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If the grid is fried by an EMP, the fact that your refrigerator wasn't won't be of much help.
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Pithily stated.
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February 19, 2018
The EMP Threat: How It Works and What It Means for the Korean Crisis
By George Friedman and Phillip Orchard
Before we begin with this week’s installment of This Week in Geopolitics, I want to draw your attention to the 2018 Strategic Investment Conference. Last year at the SIC, I said the United States would likely launch a pre-emptive attack on North Korea. I failed to anticipate the level of opposition from South Korea, which would bear the brunt of the casualties in such an attack. Without South Korea’s support, the US reconsidered its position. No attack came.
Obviously, I would like it if GPF were right about everything. Our track record is pretty good, but in this case, we were wrong. Still, I view this as the reason the SIC is such a valuable conference. The SIC’s greatest asset is how it brings together thinkers with profoundly different viewpoints to discuss the most important issues in the world today—people who aren’t afraid to tell you what they think, or to admit when they were wrong. I’m honored to be speaking once more at the SIC, where the theme for the year ahead is “Crossroads.”
And indeed, the world is at a crossroads. The post-2008 financial crisis “recovery” has not curbed speculation or reduced inequality. It has not halted the rise of political instability in the world’s most important countries. As Europe celebrates what 10 years ago would have been meager growth rates—and as the US celebrates sky-high stock prices one day only to watch them fall the next—the world stands on a precipice where the choices seem to be imminent chaos or delayed crisis.
Over the past year, North Korean state media have repeatedly featured warnings of a potential high-altitude electromagnetic pulse, or EMP, attack against the United States. The North is moving rapidly toward both a high-yield weapon (which is likely needed to pose a major EMP threat to the US) and the ballistic missile capability needed to deliver it. Depending on which group of scientists you believe, the threat of a high-altitude EMP attack can range from an overhyped doomsayer fever dream to a grievously overlooked and near-existential threat to the US. But given the uncertainty around the crisis on the Korean Peninsula, the debate about the severity of the EMP threat is worth examining.
A high-altitude EMP attack would work like this: A nuclear device explodes at high altitude, somewhere between 25 miles (40 kilometers) and 250 miles above the Earth, producing powerful gamma rays that radiate outward. Upon colliding with molecules in the Earth’s atmosphere, the downward-directed gamma rays create a powerful electromagnetic energy field. The EMP doesn’t hurt humans directly, but it makes some electrical devices and attached cables act as antennas, hitting electronic systems with a surge of high-voltage current.
Source: Geopolitical Futures (Click to enlarge)
The EMP arrives in three phases—a near-instantaneous, powerful pulse known as E1, a subsequent high-amplitude pulse known as E2, and a slower and lower-amplitude (but still damaging) waveform known as E3. E1 causes most of its damage by inducing voltage in electrical conductors beyond what they can handle. E2 pulses behave similarly to the current produced by a lightning strike, and thus would likely be the least-damaging phase (assuming standard lightning protections haven’t been disabled by E1). E3, which can last from several seconds to several minutes, occurs when the fireball from a large detonation briefly warps the Earth’s magnetic field. Its effects are akin to those of a geomagnetic storm caused by solar flares. It feasts on long electrical conductors, such as power and telecommunications lines, allowing its effects to ripple outward.
Prone to Disagreement
The damage that could be done by an EMP is difficult to assess—and thus prone to major disagreement within the scientific and national security communities—in part because it hinges on an array of factors. The first, of course, is the power of the EMP, which depends on things like the size of the blast and the altitude at which it is set off. The power of the EMP can also differ from one part of the globe to another, based on distance from the equator and the strength of the magnetic field of the region below. (Generally, the farther the blast is from the equator, and the stronger the magnetic field, the stronger the pulse.)
One area of debate about the EMP threat is whether a simple fission device with a yield of, say, less than 10 kilotons—the sort of device that would most likely be held by a fledgling nuclear state or non-state actor—would really be powerful enough to cause widespread damage. The power of the first phase of the EMP for a low-yield device is believed to be limited by the narrow range of altitudes at which it can be detonated while still causing significant damage. For example, a 1-kiloton device is believed to be strongest if detonated at around 25 miles above the Earth. If detonated much higher, the electromagnetic pulse would dissipate too much. If detonated much lower, deep inside the Earth’s atmosphere, it wouldn’t produce an EMP of consequence at all. (Any high-altitude EMP attack must be conducted at an altitude of 20 miles or above.)
At 25 miles, the area of the Earth’s surface within line of sight of the blast, and thus theoretically exposed to the E1 pulse, would have a radius of some 440 miles. Skeptics also argue that E1 from a low-yield device (by some estimates anything with a yield less than 100 kilotons) would also weaken considerably toward the periphery of the exposed region, shrinking the potential area of damage further to a 250-mile radius.
Source: Geopolitical Futures (Click to enlarge)
Given all the variables involved in assessing the impact of a high-altitude EMP attack, along with the disagreements within the scientific community and the lack of publicly available information from classified US research into the issue, estimates about the potential damage vary widely and tend to be short on empirical evidence.
The most routinely cited estimates come from a pair of assessments put together by the Congressional EMP Commission in 2004 and 2008. The commission had access to classified research and was allowed to conduct some testing of its own in a laboratory environment. Its findings weren’t optimistic.
According to the 2008 report on critical infrastructure:
The cascading effects from even one or two relatively small weapons exploded in optimum location in space at present would almost certainly shut down an entire interconnected electrical power system, perhaps affecting as much as 70 percent or possibly more of the United States, all in an instant.… Should significant parts of the electrical power infrastructure be lost for any substantial period of time, the Commission believes that the consequences are likely to be catastrophic, and many people may ultimately die for lack of the basic elements necessary to sustain life in dense urban and suburban communities.
The following year, the chairman of the EMP Commission told Congress that the damage in areas within the blast radius would be an order of magnitude worse than what Hurricane Katrina inflicted on the Gulf Coast in 2005—and that a 90% fatality rate nationwide within a year due to starvation and systems breakdown was plausible.
Since then, public officials, including a former CIA director, have routinely given credence to the 90% figure. But experts in the scientific community have dismissed this figure, along with a number of other commission findings, as speculative and/or contingent on factors that are basically impossible to model.
Use It or Lose It
Still, even if the EMP threat is prone to exaggeration, it can’t be dismissed altogether—especially given that North Korea is moving toward the sort of high-yield nuclear weapons that have been most successful at generating damaging EMPs in the past. So it’s worth investigating what is perhaps the pivotal question: In what scenarios would it even make sense for a country like North Korea to resort to a high-altitude EMP attack? To put it bluntly, there aren’t many.
The main hurdle to a high-altitude EMP attack is the same argument against a nuclear attack—the threat of retaliatory annihilation. Even if the North were able to trigger an EMP with a nuclear device far more powerful than anything it’s tested to date (delivered via an intercontinental ballistic missile capable of carrying a heavier warhead than any rocket it’s tested to date), and even if the resulting EMP is as strong and effective as feared in the most extreme scenarios, it would not strip the United States of its ability to strike back. Most critical military equipment is hardened to protect against an EMP, particularly strategic systems.
So, in reality, the choice facing the North would be no different than if it were deciding whether to conduct a direct nuclear strike on the United States. And if the North gets to the point where thermonuclear war is an acceptable risk, it’s hard to see why it would waste its limited arsenal of nuclear warheads on unproven EMPs rather than on trying to incinerate Los Angeles. (Ummm , , , because they might believe it would fry the grid?)
At this point, it would make sense for the North to launch a high-altitude EMP attack in only one scenario: if it were faced with a choice to either use it or lose it.
If the North finds itself under attack by the United States and determines that it will soon be denied the chance to master re-entry technology, attempting a high-altitude EMP attack may be one of its few cards left to play. This is because a high-altitude EMP attack does not require sophisticated re-entry or guidance technologies. The device is detonated above the atmosphere, after all. In this way, EMP can serve as a sort of bridge between the North’s status as nuclear aspirant and full nuclear power.
This is why the North has floated the possibility of an EMP attack. It knows that the US knows it still needs time to make its traditional nuclear deterrent credible, and it's looking for ways to stall a US attack until it crosses the Rubicon. An EMP attack may or may not live up to the hype. But the possibility that it could cause serious problems for the US, combined with the possibility that the North will empty its chamber when under attack even if doing so invites massive retaliation, gives the US one more factor to consider before moving forward with the military option.
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http://www.askaprepper.com/reinforce-shipping-container-bury-emp-proof/
http://www.askaprepper.com/affordable-vehicles-can-survive-emp/
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TAC!
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LPSCrfp16-12.pdf
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Upgrade America’s 19th-Century Electric Grid
The U.S. relies on regional networks vulnerable to terrorism and blackouts.
Upgrade America’s 19th-Century Electric Grid
Photo: iStock/Getty Images
By Charles Bayless and
Thomas Petri
June 4, 2018 6:52 p.m. ET
60 COMMENTS
The U.S. electrical system is inefficient and vulnerable to natural and man-made threats—from severe weather and solar storms to cyber and electromagnetic attacks. To stay competitive in the 21st century, the U.S. should upgrade its system before it’s too late.
What is commonly known as “the grid”—consisting mostly of aboveground transmission wires—is actually a patchwork of three regional networks that share few interconnections. Periods of high demand, such as a prolonged heat wave, can trigger regional imbalances in electricity supply and demand, leaving consumers to contend with price spikes and blackouts or brownouts. Insufficient transmission capacity also means that during periods of low local demand, surplus electricity is wasted rather than sold to other regions.
The U.S. grid relies on alternating-current technology, a legacy of its 19th-century creation. But a direct-current system would be far superior. Thanks to technological breakthroughs, direct-current technology can now transmit electricity over longer distances with less power loss than existing alternating-current networks.
The Climate Institute has proposed constructing a new overlay network that balances the generation and consumption of electrical power. The North American Supergrid is a concept for a multinodal, high-voltage direct-current transmission network that would extend across the lower 48 states, eventually linking with Canada and Mexico. The new grid would work as a resilient backbone to the existing electrical grid. Built largely underground alongside highways or railway rights of way, it would also be less vulnerable to attack.
By creating a level, nationwide market, the supergrid would allow energy generators throughout the country to compete directly. Because transmission distance would no longer be a constraint, the grid would promote the easy transfer and trade of energy—from renewable and traditional sources—between power-abundant and power-hungry regions. The increased transmission capacity would turn America’s enormous size into an advantage. It would permit, for example, the transmission of inexpensive energy produced by Mojave Desert solar farms or Great Plains wind farms to East Coast urban centers, supplanting more expensive power derived from fossil fuels. A 2016 study from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Earth System Research Laboratory estimated that a similar supergrid could achieve roughly an 80% reduction in power-sector carbon emissions, relative to 1990 levels.
Upfront private investment could reduce costs for consumers and taxpayers. The projected cost of as much $500 billion over 30 years to construct the North American Supergrid would be outweighed by eventual savings to U.S. electricity consumers, according to the NOAA study. And construction of the new grid would create between 650,000 and 930,000 jobs yearly across the entire energy sector over the estimated three decades needed to build and maintain its necessary infrastructure, according to a 2017 Climate Institute study. Many of these jobs would come to economically depressed rural areas.
Other nations are embracing advanced direct current transmission. China is moving aggressively to build nationwide high-voltage direct-current lines, investing $88 billion between 2009 and 2020. As a part of its energy-transition strategy, the European Union plans to invest some $1 billion toward 17 new supergrid projects on the Continent.
The Trump administration can propel the U.S. into the supergrid era by expanding upon the president’s infrastructure permitting executive order to cut still more red tape. It should push Congress to streamline the grid-permitting process to promote far-reaching infrastructure proposals. The White House also should direct the Energy Department and other executive agencies to develop plans for interregional transmission, then work with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to implement such plans. Congress should allocate federal funds to study the future of U.S. electricity transmission.
The North American Supergrid could transform the country, much like creation of the interstate highway system did in the 1960s and ’70s. In contrast to the localized economic payoffs received from new roads and bridges, it would benefit the entire U.S. economy and produce significant environmental and security improvements. Constructing it will require leadership from the highest levels. It would be fitting if the real-estate developer president paved the way for the U.S. to enter the supergrid era.
Mr. Bayless is a former CEO of Tucson Electric Power. Mr. Petri, a Republican, is a former U.S. representative from Wisconsin. They are board members of the Climate Institute
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Way overdue.
Upgrade America’s 19th-Century Electric Grid
The U.S. relies on regional networks vulnerable to terrorism and blackouts.
Upgrade America’s 19th-Century Electric Grid
Photo: iStock/Getty Images
By Charles Bayless and
Thomas Petri
June 4, 2018 6:52 p.m. ET
60 COMMENTS
The U.S. electrical system is inefficient and vulnerable to natural and man-made threats—from severe weather and solar storms to cyber and electromagnetic attacks. To stay competitive in the 21st century, the U.S. should upgrade its system before it’s too late.
What is commonly known as “the grid”—consisting mostly of aboveground transmission wires—is actually a patchwork of three regional networks that share few interconnections. Periods of high demand, such as a prolonged heat wave, can trigger regional imbalances in electricity supply and demand, leaving consumers to contend with price spikes and blackouts or brownouts. Insufficient transmission capacity also means that during periods of low local demand, surplus electricity is wasted rather than sold to other regions.
The U.S. grid relies on alternating-current technology, a legacy of its 19th-century creation. But a direct-current system would be far superior. Thanks to technological breakthroughs, direct-current technology can now transmit electricity over longer distances with less power loss than existing alternating-current networks.
The Climate Institute has proposed constructing a new overlay network that balances the generation and consumption of electrical power. The North American Supergrid is a concept for a multinodal, high-voltage direct-current transmission network that would extend across the lower 48 states, eventually linking with Canada and Mexico. The new grid would work as a resilient backbone to the existing electrical grid. Built largely underground alongside highways or railway rights of way, it would also be less vulnerable to attack.
By creating a level, nationwide market, the supergrid would allow energy generators throughout the country to compete directly. Because transmission distance would no longer be a constraint, the grid would promote the easy transfer and trade of energy—from renewable and traditional sources—between power-abundant and power-hungry regions. The increased transmission capacity would turn America’s enormous size into an advantage. It would permit, for example, the transmission of inexpensive energy produced by Mojave Desert solar farms or Great Plains wind farms to East Coast urban centers, supplanting more expensive power derived from fossil fuels. A 2016 study from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Earth System Research Laboratory estimated that a similar supergrid could achieve roughly an 80% reduction in power-sector carbon emissions, relative to 1990 levels.
Upfront private investment could reduce costs for consumers and taxpayers. The projected cost of as much $500 billion over 30 years to construct the North American Supergrid would be outweighed by eventual savings to U.S. electricity consumers, according to the NOAA study. And construction of the new grid would create between 650,000 and 930,000 jobs yearly across the entire energy sector over the estimated three decades needed to build and maintain its necessary infrastructure, according to a 2017 Climate Institute study. Many of these jobs would come to economically depressed rural areas.
Other nations are embracing advanced direct current transmission. China is moving aggressively to build nationwide high-voltage direct-current lines, investing $88 billion between 2009 and 2020. As a part of its energy-transition strategy, the European Union plans to invest some $1 billion toward 17 new supergrid projects on the Continent.
The Trump administration can propel the U.S. into the supergrid era by expanding upon the president’s infrastructure permitting executive order to cut still more red tape. It should push Congress to streamline the grid-permitting process to promote far-reaching infrastructure proposals. The White House also should direct the Energy Department and other executive agencies to develop plans for interregional transmission, then work with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to implement such plans. Congress should allocate federal funds to study the future of U.S. electricity transmission.
The North American Supergrid could transform the country, much like creation of the interstate highway system did in the 1960s and ’70s. In contrast to the localized economic payoffs received from new roads and bridges, it would benefit the entire U.S. economy and produce significant environmental and security improvements. Constructing it will require leadership from the highest levels. It would be fitting if the real-estate developer president paved the way for the U.S. to enter the supergrid era.
Mr. Bayless is a former CEO of Tucson Electric Power. Mr. Petri, a Republican, is a former U.S. representative from Wisconsin. They are board members of the Climate Institute
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https://havokjournal.com/national-security/emps-dont-work-like/
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https://americanmilitarynews.com/2020/03/chinese-expert-says-viable-option-to-attack-us-warships-with-emp-in-south-china-sea/?utm_campaign=DailyEmails&utm_source=AM_Email&utm_medium=email
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https://americanmilitarynews.com/2020/03/chinese-expert-says-viable-option-to-attack-us-warships-with-emp-in-south-china-sea/?utm_campaign=DailyEmails&utm_source=AM_Email&utm_medium=email
If things get spicy, the US grid will be one of their first targets, IMHO.
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HT GM
https://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/infrastructure/a7984/us-woefully-unprepared-for-a-blackout-like-indias-analysis-11413652/
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http://www.capoliticalreview.com/capoliticalnewsandviews/chinas-trojan-horse-real-estate-acquisition-threatens-americas-power-grid/
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second
https://www.popsci.com/story/environment/why-us-lose-power-storms/?utm_source=internal&utm_medium=email&tp=i-1NGB-Et-QHo-15NirN-1c-gcVB-1c-15NGsZ-l50CgNRZHr-abrKE
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Digital Economy Disruption Possible As "Terminator Event" Suggests Strongest Sunspot Cycle On Record Imminent
Profile picture for user Tyler Durden
by Tyler Durden
Wed, 12/09/2020 - 22:45
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Researchers at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) are forecasting the Sun is about to wake up, expected to hurl pulses of energy into space. Earth's implications could be dire as stormy "space weather" could be disastrous for the digital economy.
NCAR's new paper published in Solar Physics and titled "Overlapping Magnetic Activity Cycles and the Sunspot Number: Forecasting Sunspot Cycle 25 Amplitude," predicts Sunspot Cycle 25 could peak with a maximum sunspot number between 210 and 260. This contradicts the official forecast by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, who both expect Sunspot Cycle 25 to be as weak as Sunspot Cycle 24 peaked around 116.
If the NCAR forecast is correct, it will support the research team's theory that the Sun has "overlapping 22-year magnetic cycles that interact to produce the well-known, approximately 11-year sunspot cycle as a byproduct. 22-year cycles repeat like clockwork and could be a key to finally making accurate predictions of the timing and nature of sunspot cycles, as well as many of the effects they produce," according to NCAR & UCAR News, citing the study's authors.
Using 140 years of solar observations, researchers were able to identify "terminator" events that signal the end of a sunspot cycle. They believe Sunspot Cycle 24 ended in the first half of 2020, with Sunspot Cycle 25 beginning imminently.
"McIntosh believes the bright points mark the travel of magnetic field bands, which wrap around the Sun. When the bands from the northern and southern hemispheres – which have oppositely charged magnetic fields – meet at the equator, they mutually annihilate one another leading to a "terminator" event. These terminators are crucial markers on the Sun's 22-year clock, McIntosh says, because they flag the end of a magnetic cycle, along with its corresponding sunspot cycle, — and act as a trigger for the following magnetic cycle to begin," NCAR & UCAR News said.
Terminator Event
NCAR Deputy Director Scott McIntosh, a solar physicist who led the study, said, "evidence for terminators has been hidden in the observational record for more than a century, but until now, we didn't know what we were looking for. By combining such a wide variety of observations over so many years, we were able to piece together these events and provide an entirely new look at how the Sun's interior drives the solar cycle."
A sunspot's source is a solar flare, which can interrupt satellite activity, navigation systems, and even blow out transformers on power grids. Simultaneously, sunspots may also release coronal mass ejections, which is magnetic energy that can produce northern lights.
With the Sun entering a possibly record-breaking period of activity, Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope in Hawaii released an image of a sunspot in unprecedented detail.
"Each of the 'scales' around the sunspot itself is a convection cell – areas roughly 1,500km (932 miles) across, with hot plasma erupting from the center that then cools as it flows outwards, creating the patterned effect around the periphery of the sunspot itself," RT News said.
Perhaps the NCAR forecast is right. Last week, one of the strongest solar explosions, measured as an M4.4-category eruption, was recorded.
A few years back, Mike Hapgood, head of space weather at the UK Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, said the Sun has been "very quiet for the last ten years. It reminds people not to be complacent."
Even the federal government has started to prepare the nation for a space weather event with the 2016 executive order signed by the Obama administration titled "Coordinating Efforts to Prepare the Nation for Space Weather Events."
A super active solar cycle could be horrible news for the digital economy as disruptions sparked by solar flares could create massive economic damage. Just imagine if a solar storm knocks out power grids or communication networks, with everyone working from home, the economy would be virtually paralyzed.
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https://www.theepochtimes.com/mumbais-electrical-blackout-chinese-gray-area-warfare_3719404.html?utm_source=morningbrief&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=mb-2021-03-04
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https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/why-isnt-us-preparing-emp-war-rest-world?utm_campaign=&utm_content=Zerohedge%3A+The+Durden+Dispatch&utm_medium=email&utm_source=zh_newsletter
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MILITARY
U.S. vulnerable to electromagnetic pulse attack from foreign nations
BY BEN WOLFGANG THE WASHINGTON TIMES
America’s electric grid and other key infrastructure remain vulnerable to an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) attack from China, North Korea or other adversary, and the U.S. is at a pivotal moment if it wants to avoid a potential doomsday scenario, a panel of experts warned Tuesday.
At a major virtual forum hosted by the Universal Peace Federation, specialists warned of the growing threat of an EMP attack that could knockout communications, water and sewer services, transportation systems, retail and other central components of American society.
The dangers of EMP attacks have long been understood, but China’s shocking test of a new hypersonic glide vehicle last summer has some analysts fearing it could give the nation’s Communist leaders the perfect avenue to deploy a high-altitude EMP, offering the chance to defeat the U.S. by sparking a long-lasting blackout, shutting down food and water delivery systems, and crushing military communications and contact with far-flung posts.
China already possesses so-called “super EMPs,” or weapons designed to create bursts of energy
much stronger than past versions, according to an analysis by the Task Force on National and Homeland Security, a congressional advisory board.
Combining EMP attacks with other modern unconventional military tactics could be even more devastating.
“That poses a real threat of possibly being able to win a war with a single blow by means of an EMP attack. Moreover ... they don’t envision employing an EMP by itself. It would be used in conjunction with cyberattacks and physical sabotage, and nonnuclear EMP,” Peter Vincent Pry, the task force’s executive director, said at Tuesday’s event, which was moderated by Washington Times Foundation President Michael Jenkins.
“This is regarded by Russia, China, North Korea and Iran as potentially the most decisive military revolution in history,” Mr. Pry said. “By attacking the technological Achilles heel of a nation like the United States, you could bring us to our knees and not even have to do battle with the Marines or the Navy or the Air Force, and win a war in 24 hours with a single blow — a combined EMP cyberattack.”
American scholars and lawmakers have warned for decades that U.S. infrastructure — especially the electric grid system — is highly vulnerable to EMPs. Huge swaths of infrastructure aren’t adequately protected against such an attack, specialists warned, despite widespread agreement on the importance of the problem and the existence of technology to solve it.
President Trump in 2019 signed an executive order directing a new level of governmentwide coordination on combating a potential EMP attack. Recent federal spending bills also have included measures to ramp up EMP defenses.
But many specific steps have yet to be implemented, such as bringing all pieces of the electric grid up to the military’s “hardening” standard so they are able to withstand a major electromagnetic pulse.
“We do know how to protect against it. It’s not a technological problem. It’s a political problem,” Mr. Pry said, citing federal bureaucracy and other factors that make the issue especially complex and difficult.
Other specialists said the Biden administrationshould keep the nation’s EMP vulnerability firmly in mind as it doles out billions of dollars in infrastructure money.
“There are active protection measures that will ground the pulse as it strikes the electric system of a vehicle, for example. The good news is those technologies are out there, they exist,” said David Winks, managing director at AcquSight, a leading cyber, physical and electromagnetic resilience firm. “I think it would be a good use of some of this infrastructure money to start investing in this.”
One of the largest hurdles is the vast number of state agencies and utility companies involved with the nation’s electric grid, making it difficult to install a single set of hardening standards across the entire country.
Meanwhile, China has invested heavily in its offensive EMP programs, and those investments are bearing fruit. In August, for example, the South China Morning Post and other regional media outlets reported that China very likely conducted its first test of an EMP weapon, successfully using the pulse to knock drones out of the sky. The Post cited papers published by Chinese technology journals that reported the test but offered little detail.
The Pentagon warns that electronic warfare is an increasingly important piece of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) arsenal and its preparations for a potential clash with the U.S.
China’s electronic warfare strategy “emphasizes suppressing, degrading, disrupting, or deceiving enemy electronic equipment throughout the continuum of a conflict while protecting its ability to use the cyber and electromagnetic spectrum,” reads a recent Pentagon report on Chinese military capabilities. “The PLA is likely to use electronic warfare early in a conflict as a signaling mechanism to warn and deter adversary offensive action. Potential EW targets include adversary systems operating in radio, radar, microwave, infrared and optical frequency ranges, as well as adversary computer and information systems.”
Even nations without China’s cutting-edge military capabilities could be able to infl ict serious damage using EMP technology.
“There is no need for precision. North Korea doesn’t need to have a very good ballistic missile in order to precisely deploy and detonate the weapon,” said Plamen Doynov, a professor at the University of Missouri-Kansas City and chief technology officer at the company EMP Shield.
Mr. Doynov also warned that unlike a nuclear strike, traditional bombing campaign or ground invasion, an EMP attack doesn’t directly cause any casualties, potentially allowing an enemy to more easily justify the move and make retaliation a more difficult political decision for the state that is targeted.
“It’s bloodless, at least initially,” he said. But over time, hundreds of millions of lives could be lost. Mr. Pry has estimated that a yearlong blackout caused by an EMP could kill 90% of Americans.
Such a catastrophic situation at home, of course, would allow American adversaries to essentially do as they pleased around the globe.
“Imagine the president in the situation where the dispute is over Taiwan, or the dispute is with Russia over the Baltic states,” Mr. Pry said at Tuesday’s event. “And they do an EMP [attack] on the United States. What’s the president going to do? Try to go into World War III, which he will surely lose? ... Or is he going to use the residual capabilities that we have, especially the military capabilities, to try to recover those critical civilian infrastructures because the clock is ticking toward the deaths of millions of Americans?”
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From the article:
"China’s electronic warfare strategy “emphasizes suppressing, degrading, disrupting, or deceiving enemy electronic equipment throughout the continuum of a conflict while protecting its ability to use the cyber and electromagnetic spectrum,” reads a recent Pentagon report on Chinese military capabilities. “The PLA is likely to use electronic warfare early in a conflict as a signaling mechanism to warn and deter adversary offensive action. Potential EW targets include adversary systems operating in radio, radar, microwave, infrared and optical frequency ranges, as well as adversary computer and information systems.”
- I still meet people who don't know China is our enemy.
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"U.S. vulnerable to electromagnetic pulse attack from foreign nations
BY BEN WOLFGANG THE WASHINGTON TIMES"
How many years now have we been reading about this and posting here on this board
and how many yrs do we keep reading and posting this has not been taken care of ?
20?
despite the fix not being a big investment.
yet we destroy our country over climate change and "convert to electricity"
which makes us even more vulnerable.........
we won't do anything until it happens ....
:x :x :x
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"which makes us even more vulnerable........."
Everything they do, it seems, makes us more vulnerable.
The never read "Anti-Fragile".
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https://www.freethink.com/technology/superconductors?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=BigThinkScience&fbclid=IwAR1E8UIDMLm5wMniScR3Jinm8fUNN_DTN-SDG7oj1hZoWtGl_MjcHgDz9B0
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https://bigthink.com/hard-science/discovery-of-metal-breathing-bacteria-can-change-electronics/#Echobox=1641130770
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https://thesilicongraybeard.blogspot.com/2022/01/the-i-95-traffic-jam-and-electric-cars.html?m=1
Plan accordingly.
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https://thesilicongraybeard.blogspot.com/2022/01/the-i-95-traffic-jam-and-electric-cars.html?m=1
Plan accordingly.
Right. This stuff isn't funny. Not just that your EV battery won't make it to the end of the snowstorm which can last 2-3 days, more than 24 hours in this I95 example, the authorities don't have a way to clear the EVs en masse. You could bring gas to a car or jump start it. What are they going to do when it's a thousand adult sized golf carts (Teslas). Tow them one by one before a plow and an ambulance can get through. Real people die in winter storms; it's not a high school social experiment:
https://www.newsweek.com/virginia-man-who-tried-walk-home-after-car-accident-storm-found-dead-woods-1667165
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https://thesilicongraybeard.blogspot.com/2022/01/the-i-95-traffic-jam-and-electric-cars.html?m=1
Plan accordingly.
Right. This stuff isn't funny. Not just that your EV battery won't make it to the end of the snowstorm which can last 2-3 days, more than 24 hours in this I95 example, the authorities don't have a way to clear the EVs en masse. You could bring gas to a car or jump start it. What are they going to do when it's a thousand adult sized golf carts (Teslas). Tow them one by one before a plow and an ambulance can get through. Real people die in winter storms; it's not a high school social experiment:
https://www.newsweek.com/virginia-man-who-tried-walk-home-after-car-accident-storm-found-dead-woods-1667165
California struggles to provide electricity now. Imagine millions more EVs on the grid.
https://www.cityofpaloalto.org/News-Articles/Utilities/Flex-Alert-in-Effect-Please-Help-Us-Conserve-Energy
What You Can Do to Help
We are asking our residents and businesses to voluntarily conserve energy to help us lower demand. Consumers are urged to reduce energy use during the most critical time of the day between 4 pm and 9 pm when temperatures remain high and solar production is falling due to the sun setting.
Tips to conserve energy and stay cool while the Flex Alert is in effect between 4 p.m. and 9 p.m.:
Set air conditioning thermostats to 78 degrees or higher, if health permits.
Use a fan instead of air conditioning. -Close blinds and drapes.
Defer use of major appliances, such as dishwashers and washing machines.
Turn off unnecessary lights.
Unplug unused electrical devices, including electric vehicles.
Limit time the refrigerator door is open.
Prepare for a Flex Alert
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https://thesilicongraybeard.blogspot.com/2022/01/the-i-95-traffic-jam-and-electric-cars.html?m=1
Plan accordingly.
Right. This stuff isn't funny. Not just that your EV battery won't make it to the end of the snowstorm which can last 2-3 days, more than 24 hours in this I95 example, the authorities don't have a way to clear the EVs en masse. You could bring gas to a car or jump start it. What are they going to do when it's a thousand adult sized golf carts (Teslas). Tow them one by one before a plow and an ambulance can get through. Real people die in winter storms; it's not a high school social experiment:
https://www.newsweek.com/virginia-man-who-tried-walk-home-after-car-accident-storm-found-dead-woods-1667165
California struggles to provide electricity now. Imagine millions more EVs on the grid.
https://www.cityofpaloalto.org/News-Articles/Utilities/Flex-Alert-in-Effect-Please-Help-Us-Conserve-Energy
What You Can Do to Help
We are asking our residents and businesses to voluntarily conserve energy to help us lower demand. Consumers are urged to reduce energy use during the most critical time of the day between 4 pm and 9 pm when temperatures remain high and solar production is falling due to the sun setting.
Tips to conserve energy and stay cool while the Flex Alert is in effect between 4 p.m. and 9 p.m.:
Set air conditioning thermostats to 78 degrees or higher, if health permits.
Use a fan instead of air conditioning. -Close blinds and drapes.
Defer use of major appliances, such as dishwashers and washing machines.
Turn off unnecessary lights.
Unplug unused electrical devices, including electric vehicles.
Limit time the refrigerator door is open.
Prepare for a Flex Alert
Palo Alto, home of Stanford University and gateway to Silicon Valley, invented a new energy source called "do without", right out of the James Earl Carter School of Energy. Meanwhile, the chips we invented are being made on the other side of the world with coal stacks spewing carbon into the same, one-world atmosphere. Geniuses.
Elon Musk says we need to double the capacity of the electric grid. That doesn't mean more wind and solar if you want to charge overnight. California's answer: 1. Close their last nuclear plant with no plans yet to build anew. 2. Let China eat our lunch, clean our clock, cook our goose.
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I have no idea about these products, just putting this out there:
https://www.empshield.com/emp-technology/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=psocial&utm_campaign=*Lookalike&utm_content=Lookalike%201%25%20-%20Email%20list%2010%2F15%2F21&fbclid=IwAR0yXeYXHpjOuKD8DWXOzwAWYqa_qh2IxhDvGjqubY0YCEWHiDmYuwwvDNg
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https://metro.co.uk/2022/04/22/russias-electromagnetic-attack-on-starlink-failed-spectacularly-16516830/?fbclid=IwAR2Xr_uqRSTYvmDYzDbdLlJKVhEuQl6y71zNQQA1Bci9dXXiKEvWdymoyPw
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Death of tens/hundreds of millions in short order. TEOTWAWKI :x :x :x :x :x :x :x :x :x
https://www.lawenforcementtoday.com/expert-china-has-built-in-back-door-that-could-completely-take-out-the-u-s-electric-grid/
https://centerforsecuritypolicy.org/houston-has-a-problem-chinese-backdoor-threatens-next-texas-blackout/
https://www1.cbn.com/cbnnews/us/2021/july/the-weak-link-how-china-built-in-a-backdoor-threat-that-could-take-down-the-us-electric-grid
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"Death of tens/hundreds of millions in short order."
For yrs we have been hearing this threat
though was not clear China could do it
For yrs we hear the fix for this would not be that hard or expensive
For yrs we hear nothing has been done to protect us against this.
Yet we hear democracy is threatened and almost lost because of a couple thousand proud boys
and Donald Trump ....
I agree : :x
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PS
what the hell are we buying such critical infrastructure
from our enemies
for?
the mass stupidity of DC to allow this.....
any moron could see China was screwing us over ever since Bush Sr. was President.....
if they did this to us we all die
they take out our carriers with hypersonic missiles
our only options are sub or land based ICBMs nucs as a deterrent
what are these war game people doing in DC beside spending money
and getting cushy lobbyist jobs after they leave their government jobs
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Some are bought off, some are blindingly stupid.
PS
what the hell are we buying such critical infrastructure
from our enemies
for?
the mass stupidity of DC to allow this.....
any moron could see China was screwing us over ever since Bush Sr. was President.....
if they did this to us we all die
they take out our carriers with hypersonic missiles
our only options are sub or land based ICBMs nucs as a deterrent
what are these war game people doing in DC beside spending money
and getting cushy lobbyist jobs after they leave their government jobs
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" only options are sub or land based ICBMs nucs as a deterrent
"
just occurred to me the land based would not work and maybe not even the subs
which may simply sink to the bottom
can EMP go through the water?
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Unlike our civilian infrastructure, military assets are hardened against EMP.
" only options are sub or land based ICBMs nucs as a deterrent
"
just occurred to me the land based would not work and maybe not even the subs
which may simply sink to the bottom
can EMP go through the water?
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https://www.thoughtco.com/starfish-prime-nuclear-test-4151202
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https://michaelyon.locals.com/upost/2645611/electric-cars-no-juice
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https://www.theepochtimes.com/a-surprising-threat-to-the-us-power-grid-could-plunge-the-country-into-darkness_4833105.html?utm_source=Opinion&src_src=Opinion&utm_campaign=opinion-2022-11-02&src_cmp=opinion-2022-11-02&utm_medium=email&est=cAPSpC9u06OvAxlvKzvpj7W7eBEVMq%2BqgIMGA7r%2FJE43XJgJVmsY7AtA4Cbn8xvxVals
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No idea as to the validity here, posting it for future reference:
https://www.empshield.com/emp-technology/
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https://www.aier.org/article/the-new-normaling-of-blackouts/
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https://www.aier.org/article/the-new-normaling-of-blackouts/
Unreliable grid is (a major) part of the definition of a third world country.
I don't like not knowing who attacked the Russia pipeline and who is attacking ours. I know one thing, it's not people politically aligned with me.
Beyond terrorism is the STUPIDITY of relying on known, unreliable sources, sun and wind while eschewing the best known sources (nuclear).
--------------------------------------------
From the article:
"To be very clear: rolling blackouts are not now, nor have they been, normal in the US. Therefore, having to expect rolling blackouts going forward would be abnormal. Nevertheless, as utility providers and power grid monitors have recently warned, the more grids are saddled with intermittent, unreliable wind and solar facilities, the more unreliable they are becoming. They’re more prone to capacity shortfalls and blackouts."
--------------------------------------------
Self.Inflicted.Wounds.
Unforced Errors, we call them in tennis. Only this isn't a game. Heart lung machines run on the grid. Just in time manufacturing - for critical industries. Not just electric can openers and Christmas lights.
Gas furnaces require electricity. 30 deaths in Buffalo NY in the last storm. It would be nice to have the heat when you are stranded - at home!
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TTT
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FksEGpBLfis
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amazing description explanation of what happens with high altitude EMP!
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https://mybroadband.co.za/news/energy/490121-south-africans-must-start-thinking-about-total-grid-collapse.html
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https://www.theburningplatform.com/2023/06/08/blackout-warfare-the-world-war-iii-threat-more-deadly-than-nukes/
Hat tip to GM
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Elon Musk’s Latest Mission: Rev Up the Electricity Industry
‘My biggest concern is that there’s insufficient urgency,’ the billionaire tells energy executives
By Tim Higgins
July 29, 2023 5:30 am ET
Elon Musk wants more power—literally.
The man behind the race to replace gasoline-fueled cars with electric ones is worried about having enough juice.
In recent days he has reiterated those concerns, predicting U.S. consumption of electricity, driven in part by battery-powered vehicles, will triple by around 2045. That followed his saying earlier this month that he anticipates an electricity shortage in two years that could stunt the energy-hungry development of artificial intelligence.
“You really need to bring the time scale of projects in sooner and have a high sense of urgency,” Musk told energy executives Tuesday at a conference held by PG&E, one of the nation’s largest utilities. “My biggest concern is that there’s insufficient urgency.”
Musk’s participation with PG&E Chief Executive Patti Poppe at the power company’s conference marked the third major energy event the billionaire has appeared at in the past 12 months. He has played the part of Cassandra, trying to spark more industry attention on the infrastructure required for his EV and AI futures as he advocates for a fully electric economy.
“I can’t emphasize enough: we need more electricity,” Musk said last month at an energy conference in Austin. “However much electricity you think you need, more than that is needed.”
PG&E Chief Executive Patti Poppe speaks with Elon Musk virtually at the power company’s conference. PHOTO: PG&E
The U.S. energy industry in recent years already has struggled at times to keep up with demand, resorting to threats of rolling blackouts amid heat waves and other demand spikes. Those stresses have rattled an industry undergoing an upheaval as old, polluting plants are being replaced by renewable energy. Utilities are spending big to retool their systems to be greener and make them more resilient. Deloitte estimates the largest U.S. electric companies together will spend as much as $1.8 trillion by 2030 on those efforts.
Adding to the challenge is an industry historically accustomed to moving slowly, partly because of regulators aiming to protect consumers from price increases.
And that has been mostly OK. For the past 20 years, U.S. electricity demand has grown at an average rate of 1% each year, according to a Deloitte study.
“If you have a fairly static electricity demand, which has been the case in the U.S. for a while, it hasn’t changed a lot, then having projects take a long time is OK,” Musk said Tuesday. “But in a rapidly changing scenario, where electricity demand is increasing, we have to move much faster.”
Executives and consultants do see stark change coming—but not as dramatic as what Musk predicts.
Deloitte estimates the top U.S. electric companies together will spend as much as $1.8 trillion by 2030 to revamp their systems to be greener and more resilient. PHOTO: DAVID PAUL MORRIS/BLOOMBERG NEWS
PG&E expects electricity demand will rise 70% in the next 20 years, which, the California company notes, would be unprecedented. Similarly, McKinsey expects U.S. demand will double by 2050.
“This is an opportunity of the century for the power sector, and they could blow it if they don’t get it right,” Michael Webber, an energy resources professor at the University of Texas, Austin, said of the industry. “This demand growth is partly from EVs, but also heat pumps, data centers, AI, home devices…you name it.”
PG&E’s Poppe seemed receptive to Musk’s warning, if not exactly leaping to update her plans. “We are definitely taking notes here,” she told Musk. “I’m going to be the last person to doubt your predictions for the future.”
Part of the differing views of growth may boil down to how Musk wants the world to change. He wants cars and heating systems running on electricity.
His push for tripling output is part of his advocacy for a transition to a fully electric economy, a more ambitious step than many in the industry are pursuing.
Beyond seeking a greener future, Musk is also warning that a lack of electricity could be crippling, much like the recent chips shortage that damaged the tech and auto industries. This time, it might stunt the burgeoning development of AI.
“My prediction is that we will go from…an extreme silicon shortage today to…an electricity shortage in two years,” Musk said during an event earlier this month to discuss his new startup, xAI, which aims to develop advanced intelligence. “That’s roughly where things are trending.”
Rabble-rousing isn’t new for Musk. His entrepreneurial career has long involved jawboning entrenched industries, attempting to bend their plans and spending to his will and ambitions.
A decade ago, his predictions for electric-car growth were seen by some as wildly optimistic, but his determination helped make him the world’s richest man and Tesla the world’s most valuable automaker.
As the chief executive of Tesla, Musk does have a vested interest in more electricity, especially as he chases the goal of being able to build 20 million EVs annually by 2030. Tesla is centered around the mission of ushering in renewable energy and has smaller parts of its business selling solar panels and battery storage, including to utilities.
One of Musk’s solutions is to better optimize the grid by running power plants around-the- clock and storing the energy not used during peak hours in battery packs for use later. “I’m not sure it might be as much as a 2x gain…but it’s at least 50% to 100% increase in total energy output,” Musk said recently.
Advertisement - Scroll to Continue
He is advocating for more electricity at the same time he is stoking demand. And no place in the U.S. better illustrates that than in California, where car buyers continue to embrace EVs sold by him and others.
Elon Musk shared the stage in June in Austin, Texas, with Edison International CEO Pedro Pizarro, who said he didn’t quite agree with the billionaire entrepreneur’s projections for electricity demand. PHOTO: MATTHEW BUSCH FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
The success of Tesla helped EVs make up 21% of new vehicle registrations in the state through the first half of this year, an increase from just 5.2% in all of 2019. Nationally, EVs haven’t yet grabbed market share like they have in California, but sales are growing. Musk predicts half of all new vehicles sold globally by 2030 will be electric.
The rate of EV load on the energy grid has surprised Edison International, company CEO Pedro Pizarro said.
At the June conference, Pizarro was on stage with Musk, who told the energy executive that his prediction of 60% demand growth in California by 2045 wasn’t enough, saying, “I think it’s much more load than that.”
“It may be,” Pizarro responded as awkward laughter erupted in the auditorium full of energy executives.
“Uh, by like a lot,” Musk continued. “It’s just, everything is going to be electric.
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https://www.eurasiantimes.com/catastrophic-impact-us-experts-flag-the-threat-of-emp-attack/
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Can EV's be hacked :
CAN ELECTRIC CARS BE HACKED?
By Dan Rafter | August 18, 2023 | 7 min read
Sponsored Content
A growing number of consumers are ready to ditch the gas pump. They’re instead turning to electric vehicles when they’re ready to buy a new car or truck.
That's good for the environment. But the surge in electric car sales also provides a new opportunity for cybercriminals. Yes, electric vehicles can be hacked, and the high-tech scammers behind these cyberattacks will gladly use your EV and public charging stations to steal your personal and financial information or even disable your car or truck.
Couple looking at electric car in dealership
THE EV BOOM
Experian reported that of the 1.24 million new light vehicles—cars, vans, SUVs or pick-up trucks—consumers purchased in January of 2023, more than 87,700 were all-electric. That's 7.1% of the light vehicles purchased in that month, up 74% from January of 2022 when that share stood at 4.3%.
Electric vehicles, or EVs, are seeing this popularity surge for several reasons.
First, there are high gas prices. While the price of gas might have fallen from its recent highs, AAA reported that a gallon of gas still cost an average of $3.44 in the United States as of March 24 of this year. With an electric car, SUV or truck, consumers don’t have to worry about busting their budgets to fill up their cars’ tanks each week.
There are also other financial incentives to buying an EV. While electric vehicles tend to cost more than their gas-fueled counterparts, consumers can take advantage of tax breaks when buying electric-powered cars and trucks. If you bought an electric vehicle or fuel cell vehicle on Jan. 1, 2023, or later and meet certain income limitations, you might qualify for a clean vehicle tax credit of up to $7,500.
Other consumers embrace the green attributes of electric vehicles. As the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency says, an electric vehicle over its lifetime will emit a lower amount of greenhouse gases than will a gasoline-powered car. This holds true even when you factor in the electricity used to charge electric vehicles.
Electric vehicles today are also more reliable than they used to be. The U.S. Department of Energy says that electric cars today can travel for 100 to 400 miles on a single charge, depending on model. This longer driving range makes these cars more attractive to drivers.
Electric vehicle charging
CAN ELECTRIC CARS BE HACKED?
Because electric vehicles contain chips and software that control their batteries, cruise control systems and braking, they are vulnerable to cyberattacks. Cybercriminals can also launch attacks when the owners of electric vehicles plug them into chargers. Electric vehicles also communicate wirelessly with WiFi networks and with apps that their drivers have installed on their phones.
This combination leaves these vehicles open to malicious attacks by skilled hackers. An example? The Brokenwire attack.
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In this attack, hackers wirelessly send signals to targeted electric vehicles. This causes electromagnetic interference and interrupts the connection between a public EV charging station and the vehicle. The charging station, then, won't provide the vehicle with a charge until the attack ends, according to a feature story in Security Week.
Brokenwire attacks target a specific EV charging system, the Combined Charging System, a DC rapid charging system that is used in many public charging stations. Fortunately, Brokenwire attacks don't work against home EV chargers because these systems typically rely on AC currents.
close up of emergency vehicles
A Brokenwire attack is an inconvenience: The owners of targeted electric cars won't be able to charge their vehicles until the attack ends. But these attacks don't cause any permanent damage to electric vehicles, researchers said. The real fear is that hackers will use Brokenwire attacks to interrupt the charging of emergency vehicles, such as electric ambulances, something that could have life-threatening consequences, according to researchers.
In a recent story by the Wall Street Journal, cybersecurity experts say that in a worst-case scenario, hackers could spread malicious software to thousands of electric vehicles. The cybercriminals could freeze these cars, demanding that their owners pay a fee to unlock them. This would be a new form of the ransomware attacks that so often shut down the computers of individuals, companies and governments.
Then there are those cybercriminals who are more interested in stealing the personal and financial information of consumers. These hackers can take advantage of the increased demand for electric vehicles to launch phishing campaigns designed to trick victims into giving them their personal information, including their Social Security numbers and bank account information.
Maybe you are waiting for a specific electric car. A hacker might send an email saying that the manufacturer of this car has bumped you up in line and that your vehicle is now ready. The catch? You’ll first have to click on a link that takes you to a new web page that asks for your personal and financial information.
If you send this information, you won’t be providing it to an EV maker. Instead, you’ll be sending it to a scammer, who can use it to take out loans or credit cards in your name or access your online bank or credit card accounts. Others will sell this information on the Dark Web.
tesla dashboard
EV CYBERATTACKS ARE RARE … SO FAR
In good news, though, cyberattacks on electric vehicles or charging stations have been rare. Last February, after Russia invaded Ukraine, EV chargers along a Russian highway were shut down and their screens displayed pro-Ukraine slogans. And in April of last year, public EV chargers on the Isle of Wight were hit by cyberattacks that displayed pornography on their screens.
Another notable hack occurred in 2019 when a 19-year-old security researcher gained access to the digital car keys of more than 25 Tesla EVs scattered across the globe. From a remote location, the hacker ran programs that disabled the vehicles' security mode, unlocked their doors and opened their windows.
Fortunately, this Whitehat hacker only exposed a hole in Tesla's cybersecurity and didn't use the access he gained to steal the personal information of owners or take over control of their cars. The hack, though, does show that EVs are vulnerable to cyberattacks.
car system checking for updates
WHAT CAN YOU DO TO PROTECT YOUR ELECTRIC VEHICLE?
But while the attacks are rare now, that doesn’t mean they’ll always be. So what can you do to protect your electric vehicle from cyberattacks?
DISABLE ANY WIRELESS SERVICES THAT YOU DON'T USE
Your electric vehicle probably comes with such services as wifi, satellite radio, and Bluetooth technology. These can be useful tools, allowing you to make hands-free phone calls or giving your passengers the chance to watch movies or YouTube videos.
But these wireless services are also tempting weak points for cybercriminals to attack. This doesn't mean that you should shut off your car's wifi network. But you should research the wireless services your vehicle offers. If there are any you don't use, see if you can disable them. That will cut off at least one entry point for cybercriminals.
BE CAREFUL WHEN INSTALLING NEW SOFTWARE OR APPS
You can download apps to your EV using its in-vehicle touchscreen. That's fine. But be careful.
Only install software or download apps from trusted sources, such as your vehicle's manufacturer.
You might infect your vehicle with malicious software if you download apps from unknown sources. The scammers behind these apps might use them to steal your personal or financial information or to disable your vehicle.
DON’T IGNORE SOFTWARE UPDATES
If your manufacturer sends a software update to your EV’s touchscreen, don’t ignore it. You’ll typically have the option to install the update immediately or schedule it for later. It’s best to begin installation immediately.
These updates are often designed to block known threats, including viruses and malicious software. It’s important, then, to approve software updates from trusted sources to equip your EV with the latest protection.
WATCH OUT FOR PHISHING EMAILS
Be wary of any email supposedly sent by an EV manufacturer. That email saying that you’ve been moved ahead in line to purchase a new Tesla? It might be from a scammer hoping to trick you into providing your personal information. An email stating that you need to install an upgrade to your EV? It might contain a link that will flood your computer with malware.
Remember, no EV manufacturer will bump you ahead in line. Emails claiming this are scams. And no car manufacturer will ask for your personal or financial information through email. Never provide this information. If you’re worried that a request might be legitimate, call your car dealer or manufacturer and ask.
mustang mach-e
THE BOTTOM LINE
As electric vehicles continue to evolve, and the computer systems and software powering them become more complex, hackers will gain new opportunities to steal drivers’ information, disrupt public charging stations, and maybe access these cars’ controls.
Fortunately, these cyberattacks aren’t overly common yet. And there are steps you can take to protect yourself, including watching out for phishing emails or texts, updating the software behind your vehicle’s operating systems, and disabling interior wifi services that you don’t use.
And the hope is that auto makers, government bodies, thinktanks, and cybersecurity experts will continue working together to boost the security of EVs as more drivers ditch gas-powered cars and trucks. Because it’s going to take all of us to keep each other safe.
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Tree ring data indicates more than a half dozen CMEs, with the piece suggesting, since we have to upgrade the grid already, we should try to CME-proof it along the way:
https://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/evidence-of-ancient-solar-flares/
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January 26, 2024
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Daunting Trends in North America's Electricity Market
Demand is rapidly outgrowing supply.
By: Geopolitical Futures
North America Electric Long-Term Reliability
(click to enlarge)
Electricity peak demand and energy growth forecasts for the next decade are projected to be higher than at any point in the past 10 years, based on industry forecasts, past consumption patterns and weather forecasts from 2023. This trend has raised concerns about the electricity sector's ability to provide sufficient transmission and generation capacity to meet the growing demand. Additionally, many industry experts highlight that, despite increasing the share of renewable energy in electricity grids, the demand for fossil fuels will remain strong.
A significant factor in these projections is the increased use of AI and other data systems, which will inevitably lead to higher energy demand. AI, especially during testing phases, is a major energy consumer, and its usage is expected to grow substantially in the next decade. Moreover, 17 of the world's top 50 power-consuming data centers are in the U.S. (15) and Canada (2), with 14 located in zones of elevated risk and one in a high-risk zone.
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https://legalinsurrection.com/2024/03/energy-department-poised-to-zap-nations-electrical-transformers-which-are-already-in-short-supply/?utm_source=feedly&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=energy-department-poised-to-zap-nations-electrical-transformers-which-are-already-in-short-supply
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ELECTRICITY PRICES OUTPACE INFLATION BEFORE PLANTS SHUT DOWN: According to newly released Bureau of Labor data, U.S. electricity prices rose by 3.6% over the last year, outpacing the broader 3.2% inflation rate.
CATO Institute energy director Travis Fisher said Biden administration energy and environmental policies “are creating predictable problems with grid reliability and affordability,” and those policies could force prices even higher.
Former Federal Electricity Reliability Corporation (FERC) Commissioner James Danly said he is skeptical that the transmission level needed to shore up the grid with renewables “is even feasible given the costs.”
Why It Matters: Biden administration environmental policies are set to increase grid fragility and spike energy costs. Energy costs are now increasing beyond the level of inflation before “Clean Power Plan 2.0” takes effect, which is expected to drive liquid natural gas (LNG) and coal power plants out of business. Green energy replacements are very unlikely to make up for lost generation due to substantially high costs to bring them online and upgrade transmission infrastructure. – R.C.
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(3) YERGIN: ENERGY CAPACITY NOW A DEVELOPED WORLD QUESTION: S&P Global Vice Chair Dan Yergin said he is fundamentally concerned about the coming surge in electricity demand from the energy transition, increased data center construction, and Artificial Intelligence development.
“Is the capacity going to be there? That used to be a developing world question. Now it’s also a developed world question,” Yergin said.
Why It Matters: A spike in new data center construction and increasing AI use is expected to increase stress on U.S. grids significantly. The push for electrification and adoption of electric vehicles, accelerating due to a new Biden administration rule coming this week on vehicle emissions, will significantly increase grid fragility due to high power draws from charging. – R.C.
(4) BIDEN ADMIN RULE CHANGE TO SHUT DOWN COAL POWER SOONER: According to people familiar with the matter, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is “seriously considering” changes to the “Clean Power Plan 2.0” that will accelerate the forced shutdown of coal-fired power plants that do not install carbon capture technology.
According to the people, the Biden administration decided to change the technology standard for the emissions restrictions, no longer allowing coal-fired plants to burn hydrogen fuel and requiring carbon capture technology only.
Why It Matters: “Clean Power Plan 2.0” is already set to cut coal and liquid natural gas power generation capacity significantly, and this change will shorten the timeline for those cuts. Utilities say carbon capture technology is not viable at scale and have already opted to let coal and some LNG plants retire. This rule change will accelerate that power generation capacity loss with no likely replacement. – R.C.
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Can We Power the EPA’s EV Fantasy?
The overhaul of electrical grids and distribution would require labor and resources we don’t have.
By Jonathan A. Lesser and Mark P. Mills
March 26, 2024 2:13 pm ET
The futurists at the Environmental Protection Agency are confident that electric vehicles will soon become cheap, reliable and easy to fuel. That’s the main bet in the agency’s new standard for carbon-dioxide emissions, released last week. Critics have rightly called the rule a backdoor EV mandate. The EPA admits it can be met only if EVs compose well above half of new vehicle sales by 2032.
That isn’t happening anytime soon. EVs are a niche product, used mostly by high-income urban consumers with garages. Electric cars accounted for shy of 8% of new auto sales last year and drained billions from automakers’ profits. It isn’t unreasonable for EV aficionados to hope for more business as technology progresses and, perhaps, as low-cost Chinese EVs flood the market. Whether the former happens quickly enough is one bet, and whether policymakers will be happy with Chinese car companies bankrupting American firms is another.
There is, however, another wild card in the EPA’s gamble. Widespread adoption of EVs will require an unprecedented and staggeringly expensive expansion of local electrical grids. This will require a huge increase in the production of electrical transformers, along with more power plants and transmission lines to produce and deliver energy.
This overhaul must include upgrading local grid distribution at the roughly 3,000 electric utilities across the country—the wires, poles and transformers that line our streets. There are 60 million to 80 million distribution transformers in neighborhoods, designed for existing loads. Around one million new ones are sold annually, two-thirds of which replace aged-out transformers. That replacement rate isn’t close to meeting the EPA’s dreams. Millions more—and heavier—transformers will be needed to handle higher power levels and more frequent use, even if many EVs are charged overnight. This will also require replacing many of the existing utility poles to handle new transformers’ extra weight.
On an individual level, millions of homes and apartment complexes will need electrical upgrades to accommodate at-home chargers. Consumers and taxpayers will pay for that multibillion-dollar price tag, whether through taxes or higher utility rates. Electricians will need to install new circuits for EV chargers, and many older homes will need new power panels to handle increased demand.
On-road fueling will still be needed, particularly for the millions of consumers without garages. Replicating the nation’s some 195,000 retail gasoline stations will require far more than the 4,000 charging facilities that the Federal Highway Administration has proposed. Given the physics of electricity, thousands of these charging stations will each have the power demand of an entire town rather than that of a typical convenience store. That will mean more massive upgrades, in this case for higher-voltage grid systems and, critically, thousands of new, large transmission-level transformers.
For EV enthusiasts, this overhaul is doable with the right amount of money. Yet they’re naive about the magnitude. One Energy Department study estimated some $50 billion to $125 billion in infrastructure upgrades will be needed to support EVs composing 10% of all on-road cars. Today they amount to less than 2%. We estimate that achieving the EPA’s goal will require north of $1 trillion in grid upgrades by 2035.
Money aside, transformers will be the big roadblock. Delivery of the largest utility transformers can already take several years, and overall transformer costs have risen 70% since 2018. Replacing tens of millions of distribution transformers would require massive quantities of copper, most of which would have to be imported. The process would also exceed the production capabilities of the handful of American manufacturers. The U.S. is heavily dependent on imports for large substation transformers, especially from Asia, itself raising obvious national-security issues.
The unique electrical steel needed for transformers and electric motors is also in short supply, served by only one major producer, Cleveland Cliffs. New Energy Department rules to improve transformer efficiency will require switching to even more specialized and costlier amorphous steel. Add to that a shrinking labor force that can build and install this specialized hardware. The EPA’s architects apparently believe there’s a magic wand to fix all this.
EV advocates at the EPA suggest that these mandates will induce market forces that will solve the attendant challenges. That’s a novel—and dubious—theory of innovation. Some behavioral changes might help, such as rationing access to EV charging or reducing the number of cars. Perhaps that’s the real goal. Whatever the motivation, the EPA’s de facto EV mandate is another green fantasy.
Mr. Lesser is a senior fellow and Mr. Mills director of the National Center for Energy Analytics.
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The Coming Electricity Crisis
Artificial-intelligence data centers and climate rules are pushing the power grid to what could become a breaking point.
By
The Editorial Board
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March 28, 2024 5:45 pm ET
President Biden and the press keep raising alarms about a climate crisis that his policies can’t do much about. Yet in the meantime they’re ignoring how government climate policies are contributing to a looming electric-grid crisis that is more urgent and could be avoided.
These pages have been warning for years about an electric-power shortage. And now grid regulators and utilities are ramping up warnings. Projections for U.S. electricity demand growth over the next five years have doubled from a year ago. The major culprits: New artificial-intelligence data centers, federally subsidized manufacturing plants, and the government-driven electric-vehicle transition.
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Georgia Power recently increased 17-fold its winter power demand forecast by 2031, citing growth in new industries such as EV and battery factories. AEP Ohio says new data centers and Intel’s $20 billion planned chip plant will increase strain on the grid. Chip factories and data centers can consume 100 times more power than a typical industrial business.
PJM Interconnection, which operates the wholesale power market across 13 Midwest and Northeast states, this year doubled its 15-year annual forecast for demand growth. Its projected power demand in the region for 2029 has increased by about 10 gigawatts—about twice as much as New York City uses on a typical day.
Don’t expect the power to come from New York, which is marching toward a power shortage as it shuts down nuclear and fossil-fuel power in favor of wind and solar. A new Micron chip factory in upstate New York is expected to require as much power by the 2040s as the states of New Hampshire and Vermont combined.
Electricity demand to power data centers is projected to increase by 13% to 15% compounded annually through 2030. Yet a shortage of power is already delaying new data centers by two to six years, according to commercial-real estate firm CBRE Group. It is also driving Big Tech companies into the energy business. Amazon this month struck a $650 million deal to buy a data center in Pennsylvania powered by an on-site 2.5 gigawatt nuclear plant.
Data centers—like manufacturing plants—require reliable power around the clock year-round, which wind and solar don’t provide. Businesses can’t afford to wait for batteries to become cost-effective. Building transmission lines to connect distant renewables to the grid typically takes 10 to 12 years.
Because of these challenges, Obama Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz last week predicted that utilities will ultimately have to rely more on gas, coal and nuclear plants to support surging demand. “We’re not going to build 100 gigawatts of new renewables in a few years,” he said. No kidding.
The problem is that utilities are rapidly retiring fossil-fuel and nuclear plants. “We are subtracting dispatchable [fossil fuel] resources at a pace that’s not sustainable, and we can’t build dispatchable resources to replace the dispatchable resources we’re shutting down,” Federal Energy Regulatory Commissioner Mark Christie warned this month.
About 20 gigawatts of fossil-fuel power are scheduled to retire over the next two years—enough to power 15 million homes—including a large natural-gas plant in Massachusetts that serves as a crucial source of electricity in cold snaps. PJM’s external market monitor last week warned that up to 30% of the region’s installed capacity is at risk of retiring by 2030.
Some plants are nearing the end of their useful life-spans, but an onslaught of costly regulation is the bigger cause. A soon-to-be-finalized Environmental Protection Agency rule would require natural-gas plants to install expensive and unproven carbon capture technology.
The PJM report cites “the role of states and the federal government in subsidizing resources and in environmental regulation.” It added: “The simple fact is that the sources of new capacity that could fully replace the retiring capacity have not been clearly identified.”
Meantime, the Inflation Reduction Act’s huge renewable subsidies make it harder for fossil-fuel and nuclear plants to compete in wholesale power markets. The cost of producing power from solar and wind is roughly the same as from natural gas. But IRA tax credits can offset up to 50% of the cost of renewable operators.
Baseload plants can’t turn a profit operating only when needed to back up renewables, so they are closing. This was the main culprit for Texas’s week-long power outage in February 2021 and the eastern U.S.’s rolling blackouts during Christmas 2022.
The media will discover this problem eventually, though not this year if it might call into question Mr. Biden’s climate agenda. Perhaps they’ll notice when more blackouts arrive.
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(3) NERC: GEOPOLITICAL DEVELOPMENTS THREATEN U.S. GRID: North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) senior vice president Manny Cancel said the current geopolitical situation “has significant ramifications” for the North American grid and is contributing to “a dramatic increase in malicious cyber activity.”
“We know activists continue to use this as a vehicle” to advance their ideology and politics, and the NERC will be very vigilant heading into the November election, Cancel added.
Why It Matters: State-affiliated cyberattacks against U.S. critical infrastructure remain the most significant threat to the U.S. grid, water, and telecommunications infrastructure. Physical attacks on power substations and energy infrastructure were previously considered a far right accelerationist tactic. However, there has been a recent push by far left anti-war anarchists to target energy infrastructure with the goal of disrupting defense contractors and supply chains. – R.C.
(4) POWER BILLS OUTPACE INFLATION AS EXPECTED DEMAND EXPLODES: According to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, electricity prices nationwide grew by 3.6% year-over-year in February, and three out of four major metropolitan areas saw increased electricity prices.
Grid Strategies president Rob Gramlich said electricity demand by 2028 will be 5% higher than all 2023 power consumption, double the increase that companies expected in 2023. “A lot of people’s eyes just popped out in the past six months,” Gramlich added.
Why It Matters: This is an early sign of increasing power bills for Americans nationwide, as demand increases and generation capacity has been flat for more than a decade. Electrification, AI, and data centers are the primary drivers of this exploding demand. Americans are likely to experience increasing energy prices and less reliable power. – R.C.
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'increasing energy prices and less reliable power'
- The March by design away from prosperity to becoming a third world country.
Our electric bills are already, in my view, 40% electricity, 60% mandates.
My last home phone bill was 60% tax, 40% phone.
Shrinking real incomes is a feature not a bug of this regime.
It's not the rich who are paying the insufficient and unreliable energy mandate taxes.
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(3) ZUCKERBERG: AI RUNNING INTO ENERGY CONSTRAINTS, REGULATIONS: Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg said Artificial Intelligence (AI) development is going to run into energy constraints before the full potential of AI is reached.
Zuckerberg added that AI development data centers have also run into issues with energy infrastructure and transmission permitting, but data centers that draw 300 megawatts (MW) to 1 gigawatt (GW) are coming.
Why It Matters: Accelerating construction of data centers, especially those dedicated to AI development, remains a threat to future U.S. grid stability due to aging energy infrastructure and flat generation capacity. A data center that draws 300 MWs of power would draw two orders of magnitude more power than proposed electric commercial truck depots with five or six MW draws, which have been canceled due to drawing more power than nearby small cities. According to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, a 1000 MW coal plant with a 75% capacity factor could power roughly 460,000 to 900,000 homes, depending on the region. – R.C.
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https://www.bizpacreview.com/2024/04/25/bidens-epa-says-sweeping-power-plant-regs-wont-harm-americas-grid-experts-are-saying-the-exact-opposite-1455217/?utm_campaign=bizpac&utm_content=Newsletter&utm_medium=Newsletter&utm_source=Get%20Response&utm_term=EMAIL