Got a couple of people here scared that the US electricity grid can collapse. No, that’s impossible. First the electricity grid is a bit like the internet - apart from some rural areas - most places are multiply connected so that if one power line goes down the electricity can get to them in another way. They repair lines quickly and reroute the power around the grid.
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Nercmap.JPG
The US grid is very resilient. There are about 3 main grids supplied by numerous electricity companies with interconnections between the different areas. Texas for political / historical reasons has a grid that it keeps separate from the others which is why it’s a bit more vulnerable to power cuts but it has interconnections too with the rest of the US grids and also with Mexico. Then there’s the Western interconnection region from California to the rockies and the Eastern interconnection to the East of the Rockies.
As you see the Eastern interconnection is divided into lots of subgrids
Then there are numerous smaller subgrids
https://www.epa.gov/green-power-markets/us-grid-regions
The US grids also have interconnections with Mexico and Canada and often trade electricity across the borders.
The Mexico border interconnections are more for emergencies both ways.
The Canada interoconnections are used for large scale electricity flow especially from Canada to the USA and there are several dozen of them. This is from 2017 shows some of the main Canada / US interlinks.
https://www.c2es.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/canada-interconnected.pdf
This makes it very resilient except Texas is somewhat more vulnerable.
Sometimes in rare conditions you get shortages of electricity - when that happens the grid doesn’t fail. Instead you get rolling blackouts. That happened in Texas and in 14 other states 3 year ago. You’ll have a scheduled time when the electricity goes out for an hour so you work around it.
BLOG: Blackouts in Mexico, Texas, and rolling one hour blackouts in 14 other states — because of unusual cold weather and because Texas didn’t harden its equipment for cold weatherYou can read it here: https://debunkingdoomsday.quora.com/Blackouts-in-Mexico-Texas-and-rolling-one-hour-blackouts-in-14-other-states-because-of-unusual-cold-weather-and-beca
If you worry about solar storms see my:
BLOG: You never need to be scared of solar storms
— we get lots during solar max but our power grid is well hardened
You can read it here:
https://robertinventor.substack.com/p/you-never-need-to-be-scared-of-solar
BLOG: Effects of major solar storm: at most short term local power cuts
— 9 hours in Quebec, 1989
— 1 hour in Sweden 2003
— newer transformers unaffected
— older models may turn off briefly for protection
You can read it here:
https://robertinventor.substack.com/p/effects-of-a-major-solar-storm-at-d83
