Free Republic

Imagine one of your kids freezing to death in your home. Eleven-year-old Cristian Pineda's mother found her son dead during the Texas blackout in February 2021. Or you have a power outage for three days, losing a couple of hundred dollars worth of food because your refrigerator didn’t work, as Michelle Jones did last summer. The food she had just bought to feed herself, her daughter, and her granddaughter spoiled without electricity. This is likely to become all too common in the future. Why? My years as a Wisconsin state senator and in Gov. Scott Walker’s administration gave me some...

Former San Luis Obispo mayor and climate change activist Heidi Harmon attempted to “do the right thing,” and travel to a rally in San Francisco in an electric car. After multiple attempts to find a working charging station in San Jose, Harmon realized charging the car would take up to seven hours and there was no way she could make the rally. Harmon posted multiple videos about her difficulties in traveling in an all-electric vehicle. She discusses calling the police or asking someone to send a helicopter to rescue her. Harmon spearheaded an effort last summer to enact a city...

BY ALEX LAUER @ALEXLAUER After a winter storm left hundreds of motorists stranded on Interstate 95 in Virginia earlier this month, many for over 24 hours, we were left with plenty of questions. What went wrong on a governmental level that led to this? How could similar traffic shutdowns be avoided in the future? What should we be carrying in our cars in case of an emergency like this? The most perplexing question of the bunch was a hypothetical one: what would have happened if all of these cars — stuck on icy roads in the snow in temperatures that...

After Friday night's 11th-hour vote in the House resulted in the passage of the $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill - thanks to 13 uniparty Republicans who joined the Congressional Black Caucus in short-sheeting House Progressives - the Wall Street Journal and Forbes have published refreshers of what what America is supposedly getting out of the largest investment in infrastructure in more than a decade.From 10,000 feet, investments span refurbishing aging roads, bridges and ports, replacing lead pipes, upgrading and hardening the nation's power grid, and of course - a healthy investment in 'infrastructure' to battle the ever-looming man-made climate change disaster...

A newly-released intelligence bulletin, obtained by ABC News, reveals a plot involving the use of a drone to disrupt an electrical grid in Pennsylvania in July 2020.

More than a million customers across Lousiana are without power on Tuesday morning. Some reports indicate it could take weeks for the lights to come back on as thousands of miles of transmission lines were damaged after Hurricane Ida rolled through on Sunday. The Category 4 hurricane raises fresh questions about how well New Orleans and other coastal areas across Lousiana are prepared for natural disasters. As of 0630 ET, PowerOutage.US reports a little more than one million customers are without power across the state’s coastal plain. Energy provider Entergy Corp has been surveying the damage since Monday and has...

President Joe Biden’s proposed infrastructure legislation has the political class seemingly locked in a debate about what “infrastructure” means. Biden and Democratic leaders—backed by a majority of the U.S. population—believe that “infrastructure” is more than just roads and bridges and encompasses all the structures that help modern society function. Their new bill reflects that understanding, including improvements to water pipes and the electrical grid, universal broadband access, charging stations for electric vehicles, physical upgrades to schools and universities, and—perhaps most innovatively—home care for the elderly and disabled, support for families with children, and expanded access to health care. Republican elected...

The revelations of the so-called Panama Papers that are roiling the world’s political and financial elites this week include important facts about Team Clinton. This unprecedented trove of documents purloined from a shady Panama law firm that arranged tax havens, and perhaps money laundering, for the globe’s super-rich includes juicy insights into how Russia’s elite hides its ill-gotten wealth. Almost lost among the many revelations is the fact that Russia’s biggest bank uses The Podesta Group as its lobbyist in Washington, DC. Though hardly a household name, this firm is well known inside the Beltway, not least because its CEO...

USA, Washington: President Joe Biden suspended for 90 days “Executive Order on Securing the United States Bulk-Power System,” signed by former President Trump. Biden’s “Executive Order on Protecting Public Health and the Environment and Restoring Science to Tackle the Climate Crisis” noted that the Secretary of Energy and director of the Office of Management and Budget are to jointly consider whether to recommend that a replacement order be issued. As the source reported, in his 1 May 2020 executive order, Trump said that he finds that “the unrestricted acquisition or use in the United States of bulk-power system electric equipment...

DALLAS - A winter storm dropping snow and ice also sent temperatures plunging across the southern Plains, prompting a power emergency in Texas a day after conditions canceled flights and impacted traffic across large swaths of the U.S. Rotating power outages were initiated by the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, or ERCOT, early Monday morning, meaning hundreds of thousands went without electricity for short periods as temperatures fell into the teens near Dallas and 20s around Houston. The council described the rotating outages as a “last resort to preserve the reliability of the electric system as a whole,” adding that...

The Electric Reliability Council of Texas emphasized the need for people to reduce energy use... As temperatures dropped to near-record lows Sunday, electricity operators warned that demand could overwhelm the state’s power grid and force rotating power outages. The Electric Reliability Council of Texas, which operates the state’s power grid, emphasized the need for Texans to reduce energy consumption. “We are experiencing record-breaking electric demand due to the extreme cold temperatures that have gripped Texas ... At the same time, we are dealing with higher-than-normal generation outages due to frozen wind turbines ... If power reserves fell too much, an...

Pacific Gas & Electric may cut power to over 1 million people on Sunday to prevent the chance of sparking wildfires as extreme fire weather returns to the region, the utility announced Friday. The nation’s largest utility said it could black out customers in 38 counties — including most of the San Francisco Bay Area — as weather forecasts called for a return of bone-dry, gusty weather that carries the threat of downing or fouling power lines or other equipment that in recent years have been blamed for igniting massive and deadly blazes in central and Northern California. The safety...

California officials warned that as many as three million utility customers could lose power Sunday night, as parts of the state suffer record-breaking temperatures. The California Independent System Operator, which operates much of the state’s electric grid, said it anticipated a 4,000-megawatt power supply shortage, driven partly by import constraints and wildfires affecting transmission lines in parts of the state. As a result, California ISO said it may require the state’s utilities to initiate rotating outages for several hours Sunday evening to alleviate strain on the system. “Today is probably sizing up to be our most challenging day of the...

The head of the National Transmission Corporation confirmed the possibility during a senate session. China has part-owned the Philippines' national grid since 2009 - leading one senator to question whether China's "hegemonic ambitions" posed a security threat to the Philippines. The countries have a territory dispute in the South China Sea. "We have given our grid - although 40% it appears - to a foreign corporation that has interests that collide with our country in the West Philippine Sea," said Senator Richard Gordon, using the Philippine name for the eastern parts of the South China Sea. "And that [country] obviously...

The Democrats’ Green New Deal calls for a fully renewable electric power grid. Regardless of the economic or political challenges of bringing this about, it is likely technologically impossible. An electric power grid involves second-by-second balancing between generated supply and consumer demand. In the case of a sudden imbalance—such as from the loss of a generator’s output—all the remaining generators on the grid instantaneously pool together. Each one pitches in a small part of the required power to make up for the lost generator fast enough to keep supply and demand balanced. This doesn’t work for wind and solar because...

Executive Summary The nation has steadily improved its ability to respond to major disasters and the power outages that often result. But increasing threats—whether severe natural disasters, cyber-physical attacks, electromagnetic events, or some combination—present new challenges for protecting the national power grid and recovering quickly from a catastrophic power outage. The President’s National Infrastructure Advisory Council (NIAC) was tasked to examine the nation’s ability to respond to and recover from a catastrophic power outage of a magnitude beyond modern experience, exceeding prior events in severity, scale, duration, and consequence. Simply put, how can the nation best prepare for and...

In a new DHS report that warns that the electric grid is the “prime target” of terrorists, Americans are being urged prepare for the up to six months without electricity, transportation, fuel, money and healthcare. “People no longer keep enough essentials within their homes, reducing their ability to sustain themselves during an extended, prolonged outage. We need to improve individual preparedness,” said a just-published report to President Trump. “There needs to be more individual accountability for preparedness,” adds the report, “Surviving a Catastrophic Power Outage,” from the President’s National Infrastructure Advisory Council and published by the Department of Homeland Security....

The U.S. electric grid has become increasingly vulnerable to what the federal government is describing as an unprecedented wave of attacks that threatens to cripple the nation, according to a new investigative report that warns the energy industry is lagging in efforts to boost physical security of these critical sites. Amid a wave of increasing attacks across the country on key power stations, the North American Electric Reliability Corporation, or NERC, has been struggling to force the power industry to enact a series of security improvements meant to stop would-be attackers and terrorists from crippling the nation's infrastructure. Since 2014,...

Experts: North Korea Targeted U.S. Electric Power Companies by ANDREA MITCHELL and KEN DILANIAN WASHINGTON — The cybersecurity company FireEye says in a new report to private clients, obtained exclusively by NBC News, that hackers linked to North Korea recently targeted U.S. electric power companies with spearphishing emails. The emails used fake invitations to a fundraiser to target victims, FireEye said. A victim who downloaded the invitation attached to the email would also be downloading malware into his or her computer network, according to the FireEye report. The company did not dispute NBC's characterization of the report, but declined to...

South Korea is ready to deploy graphite bombs - also known as "blackout bombs" - that will paralyse North Korea's electrical power plants in the event of war breaking out on the peninsula. Blackout bombs were first used by the United States in Iraq in the 1990 Gulf War and work by releasing a cloud of extremely fine, chemically treated carbon filaments over electrical components. The filaments are so fine that they act like a cloud, but cause short circuits in electrical equipment. South Korea is actively looking to increase its defensive capabilities against the North and has been keen...