All Power Grids are Vulnerable — Not Just India’s

Power has been restored to blacked-out portions of North and East India. But the danger is far from passed.

A series of failures and excessive demand on the national grid knocked out power for 640 million people in northern and central India on July 31, a day after a separate blackout left 360 million in seven states without lights. A three-member committee appointed by India’s government is investigating.

“Blackouts like that and cascading failures can occur and we have seen them occur in other countries,” Carl Hansen, chief executive of New Zealand’s Electricity Authority, said in an interview. “It is something that is constantly on the mind of grid planners.” _Business Week

When grid planners neglect basic issues of supply and demand, they leave the grid open to catastrophic cascading failures. This is what happened in India, where the vulnerability remains.

India can only meet its growing demand for power via coal or nuclear. All the happy talk about “green energy” is nothing but hot air — dangerously irresponsible hot air.

Ominously, the same type of neglectful attitude toward growing reliable and affordable power supplies, can be seen in governments of Europe, Australia, and the US. When such governments turn away from reliable and affordable sources of power such as coal and nuclear, and gamble their economies on intermittent unreliables such as big wind and big solar, they are placing their people in the same vulnerable position as the people of India.

Al Fin