On November 9, 1965, a power outage occurred that affected Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and Vermont in the United States, as well as Ontario, in Canada. More than 30 million people and 207,000 square kilometers were without power for thirteen hours. Some areas were not affected because they had their own power plants. For example, in the state of New York it was the circumstance that in some cities the supply continued to arrive and in others it did not. Some emergency generators worked, but others failed. An example of the latter was the critical situation experienced at the Upstate Medical Center in Syracuse, where they were forced to operate with simple flashlights. The New York Times editorial itself had to resort to the Newark Evening News press to print the ten pages of November 10. The cover of this issue represented an icon that today we seem to have forgotten: the photograph of the city skyline with the lights off. The mythical and seemingly inviolable New York skyline blurred by the failure of technology.
Austrian Defense Minister Klaudia Tanner assured that in five years we will have a blackout that will affect the entire European Union. “The question is not if there will be a blackout, but when.” The ghost of a great blackout seems to have been resurrected, but it has always been with us. And this is reminiscent of the pandemic, when it arrived, masks were missing. The question is, when the blackout comes will we have flashlights? What’s more, do you just need flashlights? Today we depend on electricity for practically everything: mobile telephony, water heaters, kitchen, internet or ATMs. If we run out of power for a long time, forget to see if you have charged at the end of the month, because you will most likely check it through the App of your bank. What’s more, the operation will not have been carried out.
Austria’s plan to be prepared for a major blackout is not a waste of time, although perhaps in some countries that of “great” remains, precisely, great. In Spain, for example, it is committed to multiple supply points to ensure non-interruption or, at least, so that possible cuts are partial and fleeting. One of the areas dealt with by the National Security Council is that of Energy Security.
On the official website of the State you can read:
“National energy security is conceived as the action of the State aimed at guaranteeing the supply of energy in an environmentally and economically sustainable manner, through external supply and the generation of indigenous sources, within the framework of international commitments”.
The factors that define the Spanish electricity system, according to this page, “are its robustness and strength as it is composed of a meshed system.” Indeed, “energy security is closely related to the degree of energy self-sufficiency of each region.” Despite this, the low energy interconnection with the rest of Europe should not be an obstacle to underestimate possible supply failures. So think about the face masks you didn’t have in 2019 and have a couple packets of legumes, batteries, and a stove for what you can get by. Without going crazy.
On January 8, 1981, a group of inmates from Utah State Prison (Draper, Utah) burned rubble and debris as they went about their assigned duties. However, something went wrong and an explosion resulted in a fireball that reached the power supply. It was never known if it was deliberate or a simple chain of human failures, but the truth is that they left a million and a half people without power for 138 days. The Venezuelan government, on the other hand, said that the 2019 intermittent blackout was an electromagnetic attack. The human imagination is wonderful. It affected 30 million people for 300 days. The war left one million two hundred thousand people without electricity in Crimea (Ukraine) for 94 days, due to explosions that occurred in the transmission towers. Natural disasters are behind many other blackouts: Hurricanes Irma and María affected 2 million people in Puerto Rico for 137 days (2017-2018), lightning struck the power grid in southern Brazil in 1999, affecting 97 million citizens for 97 days and an earthquake in New Zealand left 160,000 people in Christchurch in the dark for 68 days. There are many more smaller examples, but here the only human failures are either the lack of foresight or the economic and technical limitations to avoid the effects of nature’s annoyances.
The 1965 blackout in the northeastern United States was an unprecedented phenomenon, due to design errors in security systems in the face of peak demand. As we consume more energy, security systems increase and perhaps we can control it with an efficiency close to perfection. But variables will always appear that we will not be able to control or, simply, that would not have been raised. There are blackouts that seemed distant to us and that worry us when the minister of a first power manifests its importance. A few weeks before Klaudia Tanner’s statements, there was a blackout in Lebanon that left six million people without electricity, nationwide. The cause: the lack of fossil fuels as a supply. This specific situation, together with the distribution crisis and the history of blackouts due to various causes, should keep us attentive to a reality: the generation of energy from different sources is important. Energy is a door in the era of wellness. But be careful, because we have a system that can be fragile.
People are talking in the street about self-consumption, people who are wanting to disconnect from the network, convinced that this is the solution. The origin is the raw material, so it does not matter what is used. If we want photovoltaic energy, we depend on China for some electronic components. And with the current situation of the distribution chain, things are not easy either for self-consumption. Power generators … usually use diesel. More dependence also for self-consumption. That panic of the electric zero is not fixed with the self-consumption, although it weighs us. In the end we all depend on everyone. The generation and distribution of energy is a door, but a weak door.
If we depend on others, be careful, that “at each door its owner”; if technology is becoming complex, be careful, that “to each door, its key”; if we inherit old systems, watch out, that “to a new house, old door.” But we have ways of solving it, with security systems, “behind closed doors, the devil comes back” and with a diversified system, “when one door closes, another opens”. In the meantime, have some cash and a good pantry with cans of various kinds.
